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The Hungarian National Opera's arrival in New York for a two week stay has been among the more interesting events of this fall season. Unfamiliar operas, unique productions and some vocal discoveries have been made at Lincoln Center. On Monday night, the Opera's orchestra, under the leadership of music director Balász Kocsár came to Carnegie Hall for a marathon concert: its one chance to display a wide variety of orchestral wares.

During the exposition of this retelling of the classic 1933 film there is an enervating response to a generic musical. It conveys the familiar tale of a pretty farm girl falling on hard luck trying to make it big in show business. Lured into a film shoot on remote and unihabited Skull Island things change big time. From the first thrilling appearance of Kong there is little doubt that he is the new King of Broadway.

Odyssey Opera mounted a terrific production of Charles' Gounod's A Doctor in Spite of Himself at the Huntington Theater in Boston. Gil Rose, the inspired founder of this company, points out that critics often blame institutions for riding the coattails of a big birthday of an musical original. If this is so, why is Gounod's 200th not being celebrated. It turns out that it is, in Boston.

Wednesday night's concert at the New York Philharmonic felt more like Mostly Mozart. It wasn't just the program: a brief but satisfying blend of Beethoven and Schubert. It was the presence of frequent MM guest Iván Fischer, who, for a number of seasons has enlivened that summer festival by bringing his orchestra charges: the Budapest Festival Orchestra (an ensemble he founded and still currently leads) to play symphonies and operas at Lincoln Center. Here, Fischer found himself at the helm of the New York Philharmonic, but wasted no time in ensuring that this was a very different kind of concert.

Amigos: Charles Giuliano, Robert Henriquez, David Zaig is the final exhibition of the season of Eclipse Mill Gallery in North Adams. The commonality of these Berkshire based artist friends is the scale and ambition of their work. The exhibition opens on Friday, November 16, 5 to 8 PM.

The Phantom Limb Company presents Falling Out at BAM's Next Wave Festival. A decade after 9/11 in the US, an earthquake in Japan created a tsunami which swept over swept over Otsuchi, Japan. A terrorist attack and nature's own are comparable in the name dates by which they are remembered. The tsunami caused meltdowns at three nuclear reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant. Hundreds of thousand of residents were affected in what came to be called 3/11.

For the third annual Berkshire Theatre Awards, at the Zion Luteran Church in Pittsfield, it took two hours to present trophies in 21 categories. Some 27 critics voted on awards to companies in the Berkshires extending into New York, Connecticut and Vermont. The top honors went to Barrington Stage Company with nine awards and Williamstown Theatre Festival which took home five.

Ayn Inserto delivered a tour-de-force performance with her personal journey Down the Rabbit Hole accompanied by an orchestra that was sharp and flexible. She is clearly at home in any environment, executing complicated orchestration of original jazz pieces in a small, tight venue for 17 plus musicians.

Playwright Carole Lockwood’s play while set in the past resonates much too much in today’s world.

Yes size is definitely on the theatrical table for purposes of this “review/essay” of King Kong along with other observations. Perhaps, I should label this review with a sub-headline called “In Defense of Spectacle”.

“Church & State”, now on stage at the Pearl McManus theatre, in downtown Palm Springs, explores the hot button topics and issues concerning the role of guns, the Second Amendment, the NRA, and the role that God and religion play in our politics, but not necessarily in that order.

In order to survive and remain vital American Theatre Critics Association must become younger and more diverse. Intersectionality and inclusion is an ever greater driving force for producers, theatre companies and their critics. The dynamics of that synergy were explored through panels and programming of what has evolved as an annual New York conference.

As the mostly sold-out shows for the Boston Lyric Opera’s premiere of Schoenberg in Hollywood attest, the internationally acclaimed composer Tod Machover’s brilliant operatic treatment and modernist-like musical score shines. A minimal cast is “small but big.”

In a New York Times interview, the playwright, Jaclyn Backhaus, admits that the work is essentially an expanded autobiography. As it opens, an almost-30-year-old, single Punjabi-American woman is talking to herself while she’s digging into fistfuls of dirt in the backyard.

Kaija Saaariaho weaves live music, enhanced voices and electronically generated extensions of the orchestra through the Rose Theater in Only the Sound Remains. Her opera based on two Noh stories is having its US premiere at the White Light Festival of Lincoln Center. This is an intimate work which succeeds mysteriously in filling a large space.

Audiences will feel like they're not in a theater, but really an island in the Tony-Award-winning Broadway revival of Once on this Island. A hope-filled message of unity and community pervades this marvelous mounting. Caribbean-flavored music, energetic dancing, singing and authentic acting are hallmarks of this vivid staging.

Rightlynd by Ike Holter begins with Nina’s awakening as a neighborhood activist and concludes two years later, as she learns what it takes to succeed in Chicago. The story line is blended with musical set pieces, dance numbers, Nina and Pac’s first date and its romantic consequences.

For her CD release party at the Regatta Bar in Cambridge, Judith Lorick shared her soul, thoughts and beautiful voice, as she chose top-drawer selections from her 2018 release, The Second Time Around (JLJ, 2018).

Mother of the Maid by Jane Anderson had its world premiere at Shakespeare & Company in 2015. Since then there have been revisions . Tina Packer as Mother was recast with the star power of Glenn Close. This transfer of a burn baby burn slice of medieval barbarity continues to be an incongruous tear jerker.

Despite some critical pans, Frozen has a strong enough pre-sale to guarantee many weeks on Broadway’s turf. Thanks are due to all the little girls who can’t get enough of the tale of Elsa and Anna, two Scandinavian sisters who yearn to be close despite mysterious magic separating them.

Chelsea Opera is a vibrant company committed to presenting new opera as well as the classics. On 1 December they will mount two one act New York premiers by the gifted composer, Tom Cipullo. Cipullo is rightly known as a composer for the voice, as well as a dramatist who creates a sound world of apt harmonies and melodies which reveal deep character and emotion. Opportunities to hear his work in New York are eagerly anticipated.

The invulnerability of middle-class achievement is haunted. Spooked by the present staccato-like news flashes from the television tell of black men shot, killed, dead . “We” don't discuss that sort of thing at dinner. Dark phantoms, shadows of women slide along the corridor where fear is a weakness which is not part of who 'we' are.

Dennis Krausnick was a leader of Shakespeare & Compan, in Lenox, since its inception. In 1976 he was awarded an M.F.A. in Acting from New York University. It was at N.Y.U. where he met Tina Packer. They married in 1998. In 1978 Dennis helped found Shakespeare & Company with Tina and Kristin Linklater.

Hello Girls takes a most serious context, the fate of the troops in the trenches of WWI, and tackles the still relevant issue of women's rights and equality. The play harvests an engaging, upbeat and energized performance. Interesting and visually meaningful use of overhead projections (Lacey Ebb) provides both context and mood. The set plays with use of wire and lines, telephone lines, stringed instruments, rail lines battle-lines, and lines of march, which work together remarkably well.

Chelsea Opera is an enterprising company, now over fifteen years old. They presented two one-act operas by composer Tom Cipullo, a master of drama and the placement of notes in the voice. The setting in Christ and St. Stephen’s Church worked perfectly as staged by Dean Anthony, a singer who has spent the last decade successfully directing. A golden glow surrounds the now 68-year-old Josephine Baker who is being interviewed in her dressing room.