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Theatre

  • Sharr White's Annapurna

    Launches CV Repertory Theatre's Season

    By: Jack Lyons - Nov 08th, 2016

    The narrative of Sharr White’s play is not its strongest asset. It’s the performances of the actors that win the day. The technical credits at CV REP are always top tier.

  • Tony Winner Fun Home

    Touring Company Visits Chicago

    By: Nancy Bishop - Nov 08th, 2016

    Fun Home, the prize-winning show (five 2015 Tonys including best musical), opened at Chicago's Oriental Theatre last week for a very short run. The play, based on Alison Bechdel’s best-selling graphic novel, is a story of growing up trying to figure out yourself and seeing your parents through new eyes as you mature.

  • First Berkies Theatre Awards This Sunday

    VIPs to Gather at Mr. Finn's Cabaret in Pittsfield

    By: Charles Giuliano - Nov 08th, 2016

    Theatre celebrities, from critics to thespians, will gather at 5 pm on Sunday, November 13, 2016 at Mr. Finn’s Cabaret in Pittsfield. With a champagne toast they will celebrate the first, annual Berkshire Theatre Awards AKA 'The Berkies." The 25 winners in a range of categories, many of whom plan to attend, have previously been announced. The suspense will focus on the winner of the Larry Murray humanitarian award named for the critic and founder of the awards.

  • Heisenberg by Simon Stephens

    Manhattan Theatre Club Through December 11

    By: Jack Lyons - Nov 07th, 2016

    British playwright Simon Stephens and director Mark Brokaw weave an engaging obbligato of nicely nuanced, performances by two terrifically talented stars who know how to draw the audience into their small, compelling story and make it sing. It's currently on Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club.

  • Relativity at TheaterWorks Stars Richard Dreyfuss

    St. Germain Play Asks Can a Great Man Be a Good Man

    By: Charles Giuliano - Nov 07th, 2016

    While the theories of Albert Einstein ushered in the nuclear age his private life, as examined in the new Mark St. Germain play Relativity, was just as volatile. Although he crafted an eccentric and accessible public persona we learn that he was a misogynist and misanthrope. The drama evokes a hypothetical tug of war between Einstein (Richard Dreyfuss) and an abandoned daughter Margaret (Christa Scott-Reed) who has used deception to visit and confront him.

  • Zora Neale Hurston: a Theatrical Biography

    Celebrating the Queen of the Harlem Renaissance

    By: Aaron Kraus - Nov 05th, 2016

    The "Queen of the Harlem Renaissance" would probably be thrilled with the birthday bash Off-Broadway's New Federal Theatre and Castillo Theatre are throwing in her honor. They're presenting a fresh, dynamic production of the bio-play "Zora Neale Hurston: a Theatrical Biography" through Nov. 20 in Castillo's intimate black box theater.

  • Tiger Style Purrs At Huntington

    Chinese-American Play Promises More Than It Delivers

    By: Mark Favermann - Nov 04th, 2016

    Squabbling siblings Albert and Jennifer Chen attained academic achievement. But as adults, they’re socially awkward depressed failures: he’s just been passed up for promotion and she’s been dumped by her loser boyfriend. So pivoting to the West and the East, they confront their Tiger parents and launch an Asian Freedom Tour! From California to China and back, this new comedy examines race, parenting, and success.

  • The Bottle Tree by Beth Kander

    Premiere at Chicago's Stage Left Theater

    By: Nancy Bishop - Nov 02nd, 2016

    The bottle tree is a background symbol in Stage Left Theatre’s haunting new play by that name—a world premiere script by Beth Kander—about the U.S. gun culture and its most horrific example, school shootings.

  • One Flea Spare by Naomi Wallace

    Playhouse Creatures Theatre Company Off Broadway

    By: Aaron Kraus - Nov 02nd, 2016

    The title of the play, which feels like a cross between Tennessee Williams and Harold Pinter's work, comes from words in a poem by English poet John Donne (1573-1631).

  • The Piano Lesson by August Wilson

    Revival at Hartford Stage Company

    By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 31st, 2016

    In 1987 August Wilson's The Piano Lesson premiered at Yale Rep. It was one of two plays from the ten in the decades spanning Pittsburgh Cycle that won a Pulitzer Prize. It is being revived in a production at Hartford Stage Company. The stunning, vintage, hand crafted upright piano from the original Yale production has been borrowed for this occasion. It is the centerpiece for sibling tension that informs the iconic Wilson drama.

  • Babel from the White Lights Festival

    Cacaphony of Words, Dance and Music

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 28th, 2016

    The impact of the Tower of Babel is immediately felt in the silence of the Rose Theater. Watching steel frames in the shapes of cubes and rectangles built up and toppled on stage, seeing people trapped by them and also liberated graphically, drives home our divided world and the need for human unification. These structures both divide and unite. There is hope.

  • Red Velvet at Chicago's Raven Theatre

    Actor Ira Aldridge Challenged London's Racism

    By: Nancy Bishop - Oct 27th, 2016

    In 1833, the African-American actor Ira Aldridge (Brandon Greenhouse) was the first black man to play the leading role in Othello in a London theater.

  • Hunchback of Notre Dame in Ft. Lauderdale

    Slow Burn Theatre Company Rings the Bell

    By: Aaron Kraus - Oct 25th, 2016

    Composer Alan Menken, lyricist Stephen Schwartz and book writer Peter Parnell have created a heartfelt, heartbreaking and riveting version of the popular Victor Hugo novel.

  • They’re Playing Our Song in Boca Raton

    Forty Years After Andrea McArdle Originated Role

    By: Aaron Kraus - Oct 24th, 2016

    Today, almost 40 years later, you’ll find Andrea McArdle on the Wick Theatre stage, co-starring in a musical, They’re Playing Our Song, that made its Broadway debut just about two years after her Broadway bow.

  • Williams' Night of the Iguana

    Palm Beach Dramaworks

    By: Aaron Kraus - Oct 24th, 2016

    In “Night of the Iguana,” largely considered the prolific Tennessee Williams’ last commercial success, the playwright, no stranger to symbolism, once again uses a vivid symbol to represent characters trapped in a prison of loneliness and unfulfilled desires.

  • Pirandello’s Henry IV

    Remy Bumppo’s Chicago Production

    By: Nancy Bishop - Oct 19th, 2016

    The absurdist playwright Luigi Pirandello wrote the play in 1922. The current production is based on an adaptation by Tom Stoppard. Nick Sandys’ direction makes the most of the witty dialogue written by the always engaging Stoppard.

  • 2016 Berkies Announced

    First Annual Berkshire Theatre Awards

    By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 17th, 2016

    There has been extensive media coverage of the First Annual Berkshire Theatre Awards. The winners of The Berkies have been announced. There will be an awards celebration 5 pm on November 13 at Mr. Finn’s Cabaret in Pittsfield. In this first round of awards Barrington Stage Company and Shakespeare & Company dominated in most categories. The smash hit Pirates of Penzance ran the table. The Larry Murray Award, named for the founder, will be the only suprise of the gathering of critics, media and theater mavens.

  • Roundabout Presents The Cherry Orchard

    Diane Lane, Joel Grey, John Glover, Chuck Cooper

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 16th, 2016

    The Cherry Orchard was Anton Chevkov’s last play. He drew a picture of an old Russian family at the end of their run, their beloved cherry orchard and the hundreds of acres that it fills will be auctioned in August to pay the debts of Liuboff Andreievna Raneyskaya. Liuboff, the role originally created by Chekhov’s wife, is now enlivened by Diane Lane in her return to the New York stage. Lane’s first Broadway appearance was in The Cherry Orchard decades ago.

  • First Annual Berkshire Theatre Awards

    Berkies Launched by Critic Larry Murray

    By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 14th, 2016

    For the first annual Berkshire Theatre Awards seven shows received more than five nominations each including 11 for The Pirates of Penzance and eight for Broadway Bounty Hunter, both produced by Barrington Stage Company. Seven nominations were received for Or, and six for The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare & Company. Also popular with five nominations each are The Rose Tattoo (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Little Shop of Horrors (Berkshire Theatre Group), and American Son (Barrington Stage).

  • Hand to God

    GableStage in Coral Gables, Florida

    By: Aaron Krause - Oct 14th, 2016

    “Hand to God,” the biting, darkly comic, disturbing, thought-provoking and meaty play is receiving a solid southeastern premiere at GableStage in Coral Gables, Florida through Oct. 30.

  • St. Germain’s Camping with Henry and Tom

    Barrington's Revival Seems Ripped from the Headlines

    By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 10th, 2016

    The 1993 Mark St. Germain play, Camping with Henry and Tom, is as fresh as a daisy in a timely revival at Barrington Stage Company. With an update of just five lines Henry Ford, originally inspired by third party candidate Ross Perot, has an uncanny resemblance to the worst aspects of Donald Trump.

  • Joe Sutton's Brilliant Orwell in America

    At 59E59th Street Theater

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 09th, 2016

    Playwright Joe Sutton creates George Orwell twisting moment to moment. Jamie Horton is magnificent in the wrenching role. Orwell’s discomfort, his loneliness, his humor and passion are all developed before us in language that is very much the author’s. Director Peter Hackett brings off this complicated character in an enormously engaging piece.

  • Sunday in the Park Stunning at Huntington

    Sondheim and Seurat Bring Out the Best in Each Other

    By: Mark Favermann - Oct 06th, 2016

    Stephen Sondheim’s stunning masterpiece centers on enigmatic painter Georges Seurat and his obssession with “the art of making art.” Certainly, one of the most acclaimed musicals ever, this Pulitzer Prize winner features a glorious score, with the songs “Finishing the Hat,” “Putting it Together,” and “Move On,” and is directed by Artistic Director Peter DuBois who did a superb job with last year's A Little Night Music.

  • The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer

    Florida's Outre Theatre Company

    By: Aaron Krause - Oct 04th, 2016

    “The Normal Heart” deals with multiple thought-provoking, timely themes and issues that spur discussion, make us look inward and potentially take action: The need to work together toward a common goal, the uselessness of fighting and blaming one another, reconciliation among family members, the agenda of the press and government, the right to be recognized as valued citizens and feel loved as well as to live and die with dignity.

  • The Bakelite Masterpiece by Kate Cayley

    Faking Vermeers in WAM and Berkshire Theatre Group's Co-Production

    By: Maria Reveley - Oct 03rd, 2016

    The Bakelite Masterpiece by Kate Cayley in Stockbridge at the Unicorn Theatre is a co-production of WAM and Berkshire Theatre Group. An artist is on trial for selling Vermeers to the Nazis. He has to make a fake to prove his innocence. The play is based on a true story in post war Holland.

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