The Goodman's production of the late Roberto Bolaño's epic novel 2666 takes five-and-a-half hours to unfold on stage. It’s a beautiful mess.

Famed winemaker Roberto Cipresso takes on Natalie Oliveros as a partner. Expansion of plots, new state of the art facilities and greater production are on the radar at La Fiorita.

Jonathan Camuzeaux, Jeremy Pickard and Sarah Ellen Stephens deliver powerhouse performances in Jupiter – A Play (literally) about Power. Camuzeaux & Pickard are also responsible (respectively) for the music and script for this futuristic “what if” that explores the potential disasters that lie ahead if we continue to abuse the environment. Jupiter will be at La MaMa through February 28.

During our 7 day trip, we visited a selection of the country’s top sites of historical significance, including the battlefields of Culloden and Glencoe and Skara Brae, the best preserved prehistoric village in northern Europe dating back to 3,000 B.C.

The Berkshire Theatre Group announces a full schedule of musicals, plays and performances at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield as well as its two stages in Stockbridge. The program includes events from June through October. As usual a musical, Little Shop of Horrors, opens at the Colonial just after the July 4th holiday weekend which launches high season in the Berkshires.

When GOD, the bearer of good or bad news, makes one of his rare appearances to his earth-bound children, he wisely chooses comedy as the medium of communication. The pain of hearing the truth is mercifully muted by audience laughter in his visit to the Ahmanson Theatre’s current production.

Melbourne Fringe Award-Winning “The Good Girl” by Emilie Collyer stars Leah Gabriel and Giacomo Baessato in a humorous but horrifying glimpse into a future with no human intimacy – just robo-sex encounters! Variation from the “program” can only create disaster! At the upstairs theatre at 59 E. 59 Theaters.

Ali Rose Dachis, Jorge Eliezer Chacon and Charlie Thurston star as three teens dealing with angst and loss in the doldrums of Long Island just after the tragedy of 9/11. Written by Nick Gandiello and directed by Aaron Rossini. "The Wedge Horse" has a limited run at IATI Theater Mainstage from January 29 – February 21.

The Flick has a history of annoying playgoers. When the play premiered in 2013 at Playwrights Horizons, a well-regarded off-Broadway house in Manhattan, some subscribers were infuriated and threatened to cancel their subscriptions. And when I saw it at the Barrow Street Theatre in the Village last fall, a noticeable number of seats were empty after intermission. The Steppenwolf performance I attended was made up mainly of professional theatergoers, Jeff Committee members and press. No one left at intermission.

David Ives is a master at translation from French into English and then adapting the source material into a fresh play or a movie script. He likes to call the process: “translaptations”. Two of his “translaptations”; are two of my favorite Ives’ plays: “Venus in Fur” and “All in the Timing”.

Acknowledging the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, the BSO programmed music by some of the greats based on his works. Music director Andris Nelsons brought his lively intelligence to the enterprise, in which a new work based on Ophelia's words by the Dane Hans Abrahamsen was the stand-out hit.

This version of Snow White is for adults only. Here is a second opinion of a controversial New York production. This is a new twist in every sense of a fairy tale.

The 2016 season features an Israel Horovitz world premiere, two New England premieres, the return of Academy Award-nominated actress, and Gloucester resident, Lindsay Crouse, Managing Director Jeff Zinn’s GSC directorial debut, the re-teaming of last season’s hit, Out of Sterno director Paula Plum and playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer, and the Gloucester Stage debut of Elliot Norton Award winner Benjamin Evett and Tony nominee Barbara Walsh.

Mitsuko Uchida plays and conducts Mozart with the Cleveland Symphony. Will she continue in a new career as a conductor? In Munich, the Bayerische State Opera is often conducted by Oksana Lyniv. Gemma New is at the New Jersey Symphony, and Mirga Gražinyt-Tyla is the new music director of the Birmingham Symphony. Women are coming to the podium.

Annie and her two teenage best buds want the same things: the hottest new phones, cute boys, designer bags. But when they enter into a pregnancy pact, she wonders if there might be a different path and a brighter future. Huntington Playwriting Fellow Kirsten Greenidge (Luck of the Irish) finds raw humor and grit in this provocative production, torn-from-the-headlines drama.

The classic depression era tale Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is being given a compelling production by Threshold Repertory Theatre in Charleston, South Carolina.

Thomas Merton observed that the meditation exercises in the Buddhist tradition in many ways were more refined and subtle than those of Christianity and sought to integrate them into the monastic tradition of the Church without changing the importance of Christian notions of salvation. At a moment when his drift toward Eastern thought was picking up speed he died accidentally from electrocution due to bad wiring in a Thai hotel.

This is a strong, sweet production but it’s not clear to me why it is remounted just 2.5 years after the last identical production. If you missed it before, do see it now. The Glass Menagerie runs 2.5 hours with one intermission; the Hypocrites production continues through March 6 .

A collection of 11 short plays by Neil LaBute is now being staged at the theater in Buena Park. Each play has its own cast and directors. Amazingly, in this 4.5 total hours of theater over two separate shows, there’s not a dog in the pack. Each play is sharp and memorable.

American Buffalo is David Mamet's story of one day in the life of three Chicago hustlers who try to run a home burglary to get at a rich man’s coin collection. (The buffalo nickel is an often prized version of an early 5-cent piece.) Donny (Richard Cotovsky, a founding member of Mary-Arrchie and its artistic director, is the usually calm, business-focused owner of Don’s Resale Shop. Bobby (Rudy Galvan) is his gopher, and Teach (Stephen Walker) is a neighbor, an angry, emotionally needy man.

On a recent visit to Tereceira Island in the Azores, we discovered an amazing, local, restaurant run by Jose Costa.

Company XIV has a World Premiere of adults-only Snow White at the Minetta Lane Theatre in NYC -- the third offering in a season of rowdy entertainment by Austin McCormick and the multi-talented cast.

Toiling for years off-Broadway, John Patrick Shanley has now zoomed to the top tier of much-in-demand playwrights and screenwriters. His latest theatrical effort is the romantic comedy “Outside Mullingar”, which takes place in rural Ireland.

The Williamstown Theatre Festival season, running from June 28 – August 21, 2016, begins on the Main Stage with a production of Tennessee Williams’ Tony Award-winning play The Rose Tattoo (June 28 – July 17) directed by Obie Award winner Trip Cullman and featuring Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei; continues with the world premiere of Boo Killebrew’s comedy Romance Novels For Dummies (July 20– July 31), directed by Tony Award nominee Moritz von Stuelpnagel; and closes with the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter (August 3 – August 21), directed by Evan Cabnet.

It seems just yesterday that Placido Domingo marched into General Manager Peter Gelb’s office and told him that he must keep the great soprano Sondra Radvanovsky on the Metropolitan Opera roster. Gelb could not say no. And so we have this season Donizetti’s Queens with Radvanovsky singing Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Elizabeth.