Front Page
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Romeo & Juliet on Boston Common
Presented Free by Boston Lyric Opera
By: - Jun 29th, 2022A free, public opera adaptation of Romeo & Juliet on the historic Boston Common opens Boston Lyric Opera’s 2022/23 Season with two performances August 11 and 13 at 8PM. Based on Charles Gounod’s 1867 musical setting of the classic drama with a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, and an English translation by Edmund Tracey, the production is co-presented in partnership with (CSC) and the City of Boston.
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Paris by Eboni Booth
In Chicago Steep Theatre New Home
By: - Jun 29th, 2022Jonathan Berry (no relation) directs this script, the midwest premiere of a debut work by playwright/actor Eboni Booth, a Vermont native. It’s the first production in Steep Theatre’s new home, a short walk from its earlier home on Berwyn Avenue. She was one of 10 playwrights awarded a 2021 Steinberg Playwright Award, given annually to up-and-coming American playwrights.
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Bousquet Jazz Festival
Thursday, June 30
By: - Jun 27th, 2022First annual Bousquet Fazz Festival is free. Thursday June 30 at the base of Bousquet Ski slopes in Pittsfield.
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B.R.O.K.E.N. Code B.I.R.D. Switching
World Premiere by Tara L. Wilson Noth at Berkshire Theatre Group
By: - Jun 26th, 2022The playwright, Tara L. Wilson Noth, has taken on a lot as the program notes state: Racism, incarceration, justice, and relationships. There can be turmoil trying to follow and resolve this mélange of subplots.
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A Strange Loop, the Musical
Edwin Bates Steps into the Lead Role
By: - Jun 26th, 2022A Strange Loop, the musical, is an exuberant yet sad story about a young, queer Black man who is struggling to write a musical. In fact, Michael R. Jackson, winner of Tonys for Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical, spent twenty years putting this show together.
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The Mystery of Irma Vep
At Island City Stage near Ft. Lauderdale
By: - Jun 26th, 2022The Mystery of Irma Vep by Charles Ludlam is a spoof of genres such as Gothic melodrama and horror. Island City Stage in Wilton Manors, near Ft. Lauderdale, has mounted a consistently entertaining production. The play is purely escapist entertainment.
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Orchestra of St. Luke's at Carnegie
Exploration of Strange Loops. Part I
By: - Jun 24th, 2022A Musical Offering is Bach’s final work. After his visit to Potsdam during which King Frederick offered him a phrase to elaborate on, he returned home where he died three years later, The work’s complexity is often noted. Running many musical lines simultaneously in canons and fugues yields rich linear results. Bach undoubtedly heard the vertical harmonies which the canonical runs create. They are as radical as any composer’s who followed him: dissonance, chromaticism, even odd and undefinable sounds abound. The performance makes the case for Bach, known as the pinnacle of baroque music, as the founder of all music that followed.
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2022 Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival, Adams, MA
Return After Three Years
By: - Jun 20th, 2022Last Saturday marked the return of the Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival after three years, the fifth celebration since 2016. Cold weather and stormy winds could not keep away faeries and fair minded goblins from near and far.
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Ain’t Misbehavin: The Fats Waller Musical Show
Jukebox Musical at Barrington Stage
By: - Jun 20th, 2022Artistic director, Julianne Boyd, in her storied career will be remembered for her many stunning musicals. That run ends this season with a revival of the 1978, Tony winner, Ain’t Misbehavin: The Fats Waller Musical Show. The jukebox musical runs some two hours with an intermission.
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The Year of Magical Thinking
A Production by GableStage Near Miami
By: - Jun 21st, 2022A powerful production of "The Year of Magical Thinking" is running through June 26 at GableStage in Coral Gables (suburban Miami). In "The Year of Magical Thinking," author and journalist Joan Didion recounts the year following her husband's sudden death. The basis for the play adaptation of "The Year of Magical Thinking" is the award-winning memoir by Joan Didion.
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X in Dorchester: Malcolm Comes Home
Anthony Davis Opera Conducted by Gil Rose
By: - Jun 19th, 2022Today, decades after it was written and first premiered at New York City Opera, X, the Life and Times of Malcolm X, feels both deeply rooted in classic opera traditions of Wagner, Strauss and Berg and deeply connected to our jazz heritage. The work is as much Charlie Mingus as it is say Parsifal, which composer Anthony Davis often references. A semi-staged concert version was performed at the Strand Theatre in Dorchester, Massachusetts, near Malcom's childhood home.
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Jacob’s Pillow’s 90th Season
Chill in Renovated Ted Shawn Theatre
By: - Jun 18th, 2022Attending a performance in the Ted Shawn Theatre, a renovated barn, at renowned Jacob's Pillow could be a sweltering experience. Having been closed in 2019 it reopens for the 90th season of 2022 with a $9 million upgrade. That features a new cooling and air ventilation system, orchestra pit, expanded accessibility for artists and audience members, an increased stage depth by 10 feet and enhanced technology.
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Berkshire Opera Festival
Three Decembers by Jake Heggie
By: - Jun 16th, 2022The spirited and ambitious Berkshire Opera Festival opens its 2022 summer season with a compelling new production of Jake Heggie's intimate THREE DECEMBERS on July 21 and 23 at PS21 in Chatham, NY, conducted by Christopher James Ray and directed by Beth Greenberg. This contemporary American opera is based on Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally's original script for Some Christmas Letters. It marks BOF's 2nd Second Stage event, following Tom Cipullo's highly praised Glory Denied last summer.
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On This Ground: Being and Belonging in America
Revisionist Installation at Peabody Essex Museum
By: - Jun 17th, 2022The Peabody Essex Museum has long collected Native American material and is now doing so intensively. In that regard it is an outlier. Contemporary Native American artists have been egregiously neglected by the mainstream American art world — we lag far behind Canada. The PEM has just reinstalled its American collection, which runs from the Colonial era to the present, and it is an ambitious, intriguing, but problematic exhibition.
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Ringo to Starr at Tanglewood Afterall
The tour Now Begins September 5
By: - Jun 16th, 2022Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band - Steve Lukather, Colin Hay, Warren Ham, Gregg Bissonette, Hamish Stuart and Edgar Winter - revealed the revised itinerary for their September tour, includes all 12 of the dates that they recently had to postpone. The tour now begins September 5 at Tanglewood, in Lenox, MA and concludes in Mexico City, Mexico on October 20.
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Awakenings by Tobias Picker
Opera Theatre of St. Louis Presents Premiere
By: - Jun 15th, 2022Awakenings is a new opera by the very American opera composer Tobias PIcker. In the past, he has musicalized the stories of Judith Rossner, Theodore Dreiser, and Stephen King. His new opera premieres at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis.
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Deathtrap a Thriller
At The Legacy Theatre
By: - Jun 16th, 2022Ira Levin (author of novels Rosemary’s Baby and A Kiss Before Dying) wrote this play that he billed as a comedy/thriller in 1978. It had a long Broadway run and was made into the 1982 film starring Michael Caine, Christopher Reeves and Dyan Cannon.
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Don Giovanni
Produced by San Francisco Opera
By: - Jun 13th, 2022The dark comedy “Don Giovanni” holds a place as one of the greatest operas ever composed. In the hands of a world class company like San Francisco Opera with a great orchestra and the ability to attract some of the best artists to grace the stage, the production is as musically rich as it is professionally performed.
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Harvey Milk, the Opera, in St. Louis
Composer Stewart Wallace Creates a Smashing Success
By: - Jun 13th, 2022Harvey Milk, the re-tooled opera, premieres at Opera Theatre of St. Lotus. It is a smashing hit. Composer Stewart Wallace talks about again looking at the work, first draft created in 1994-5. He now lives in Rome and is in St. Louis for event. He presents the title character and his friends as human. Michael Korie is librettist and contributes a journalist's eye for detail in moving scenes.
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Cabaret at Goodspeed
Production Lacks Sting
By: - Jun 12th, 2022Cabaret is one of the great musicals of the 1960s. Kander and Ebb (and book writer Joe Masterhoff) created a show that used a seedy, third-class nightclub as a metaphor for Germany slipping into the Nazi era.
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Fefu & Her Friends
A Thinking Cap Theatre production
By: - Jun 10th, 2022Thinking Cap Theatre, based in South Florida, has mounted a strong production of the classic play, Fefu & Her Friends by Maria Irene Fornes. The mostly plotless play is an absurdist piece featuring eight female characters. Fefu & Her Friends touches on themes such as female relationships, insanity, and gender roles.
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Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward
Witty Summer Fun in Chicago
By: - Jun 11th, 2022Blithe Spirit is personal for me; it was my first involvement in live theater, when I joined the Cortez, Colorado, community theater many decades ago. I worked on the set, sold tickets and made new friends who were interested in the arts in that oil-boom town. Later I directed (William Inge’s Picnic) and acted (in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and a western melodrama, Deadwood Dick, or the Game of Gold). As a child and teen in Chicago, I had often gone to the theater with my Aunt Belle and also attended theater as a student at UIC. But Blithe Spirit was the first time I experienced the stage. And I still can repeat many of the lines.
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Andy Warhol in Iran by Brent Askari
Hit Premiere at Barrington Stage Company
By: - Jun 09th, 2022Overall we loved this new play. The actors were compelling in their roles and the direction of Skip Greer navigated them nicely. There were twists and turns that kept us engaged.Henry Stram was a very good if not great Warhol. He was actually too pretty with none of Andy’s awkward enigma. This was a play after all and not a documentary. To portray an authentic Andy would have added another half hour at least. This production kept it tight and sweet.
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Hadestown Produced by Broadway SF
Plays at the Orpheum Theatre
By: - Jun 10th, 2022From this play’s outset, it is clear that “Hadestown” will have a distinctive style. Although the musical’s auteur, Anaïs Mitchell, comes from the folk world, she developed a unique musical amalgam for the show with elements from blues, jazz, and pop in addition to folk. Her orchestration is as unexpected as it is brilliant in providing a magnificent background sound.
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Ringo Won't Starr at Tanglewood
Cancelled Because of Covid
By: - Jun 11th, 2022The Ringo Starr All Stars were cancelled from Tanglewood's Popular Artists last season. It was rescheduled for this coming week, Friday, June 17. The BSO announces that it yet again will be rescheduled.
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