Theatre
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On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
Musical at Irish Rep in NY
By: - Jul 18th, 2018On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, the Alan Jay Lerner/Burton Lane musical, is getting a delightful production at the Irish Rep under the skilled hand of director (and adaptor) Charlotte Moore.
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The Wedding Singer
At The Palm Canyon Theatre
By: - Jul 17th, 2018“The Wedding Singer,” the stage musical is based on the Adam Sandler movie of the same name that debuted in 1988. The current ‘Wedding Singer’ stage musical now on the Palm Canyon Theatre stage has been updated with a total of 20 musical numbers; some of which are new. The PCT show also retained some the original songs written in 2006.
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A Doll’s House Part 2
Hnath Updates Ibsen at Barrington Stage Company
By: - Jul 16th, 2018Ibsen premiered The Doll's House in 1879. That was two years after Leo Tolstoy published Anna Karenina another tale of a society woman who abandoned her marriage and children. We know of Anna's tragic end but the fate of Nora is left uncertain. With A Doll's House Part 2 Lucas Hnath provides entertaining but improbable answers. The award winning Broadway hit is having a run at Barrington Stage Company with Laila Robins in the role which won a Tony for Laurie Metcalf. Christopher Innvar plays Torvald.
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Kevin Puts' Silent Night at Glimmerglass
Pulitzer-Winning Opera Wrenching and Gorgeous
By: - Jul 16th, 2018Silent Night by Kevin Puts with libretto by Mark Campbell is being presented at the Glimmerglass Festival. Tomer Zvulen directs this complex tale revealing each subtle turn in the story of a 24 hour truce during the First World War. Nicole Paiement conducts to bring forth all the subtlety and beauty of Puts’ score. Puts is both a fabulously gifted entertainer and a deep musical thinker. The music paints the scenes. The singers capture the tone in gorgeous melodies and often appropriately harsh recitative.
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Artney Jackson by James Anthony Tyler
African American Theatre in Williamstown
By: - Jul 15th, 2018For the past decade there has been a tradition of at least one Afircan American themed production each season. This time its a benign and charming comedy Artney Jackson by James Anthony Tyler. Arguably there is progress that the well crafted and superbly acted play is a step back from polemical social and political agendas.
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Love's Labor's Lost at the Mount
Enthusiastically Perfomed By a Youthful Cast
By: - Jul 13th, 2018Shakespeare demonstrates how an earnest effort to self impose structure and separation from the world is counter to our real natures. Fun and folly ensue in this perfect setting as we watch love conquer all. Through August 18 Love's Labor's Lost at the Mount.
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Macbeth the Scotched Play at S&Co.
Botched by Misdirection of Melia Bensussen
By: - Jul 12th, 2018It helps if you have read or seen other productions of Macbeth. Without that background the radical deconstruction ot the iconic play directed by Obie winner, Melia Bensussen, won't make sense.
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I Will Speak for Myself
Evoking Historical Women of Color by Valerie Joyce
By: - Jul 11th, 2018In Professor Valerie Joyce’s visits to schools, she asks students to name African-American women they know of from before 1865. Even among black female students, the responses quickly falter – Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, maybe Sally Hemings. With 250 years of history in the United States before the Civil War, this whole segment of our population is virtually silent, unknown.
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Casting, Equity and Where to Go from Here
Responding to “Boo Yellowface!” Protests During St. Louis Conference
By: - Jul 09th, 2018A couple of weeks ago, theater leaders from across the country authored a statement asking colleagues to reexamine their casting policies in light of recent incidents in which white actors were cast to portray people of color. Since that time, nearly 800 theater artists have signed and there is a working group actively discussing next steps so that we can end this pervasive practice. Because, as managing director of Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Chad Bauman signed the petition, he withdrew from publishing this commentary in American Theatre Magazine. It is reposted from his blog with Bauman's permission.
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Hair at Berkshire Theatre Group
Celebrating 50th Anniversary
By: - Jul 08th, 2018If you plan to see Hair at the Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge, as well you should, a few tokes of medical marijuana will help to set the mood. Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. On opening night we spotted a granny with a crown of woven daisys.
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Universal Robots by Mac Rogers
Based on Karel Cepek's1921 Sci Fi Play
By: - Jul 07th, 2018In 1921, Czech playwright Karel Capek wrote a seminal science fiction work set in contemporary time entitled Rossum’s Universal Robots. It introduced chilling possibilities of an out-of-control future. In it was coined the very word robot (robota in Czech). Mac Rogers’s revision updates that work by a generation to include the rise of Hitler and World War II.
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$400,000 Raised At S & Co. Gala
50,000 School Children and Actors Benefit
By: - Jul 06th, 2018For Forty years, Shakespeare & Company have proved to the locals what theater is about. Benefactors, galore, turned out in droves to help the theater company that gives back to the community. An achievement focus about Michael A. Miller was the highlight of the evening that benefited from music from some of the members of the Silkroad Ensemble. A sit-down dinner followed by a local DJ followed.
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How NY Times Is Harming Regional Theatre
Trashing Barrington Stage Production Not an Isolated Incident
By: - Jul 06th, 2018We have posted an opinion piece "End of The Royal Family of Broadway: NY Times Review Spikes Barrington Stage Production." That evoked an e mail from playwrite Mark St. Germain which is posted with his permission. In his view the attack on a developing musical is not an isolated incident. Under its current policies the Times is now inflicting more harm than doing good for regional theatre.
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End of The Royal Family of Broadway
NY Times Review Spikes Barrington Stage Production
By: - Jul 06th, 2018The Barrington Stage world premiere of the musical Royal Family of Broadway has earned mostly positive reviews. It has been treated as a work in progress potentially bound for Broadway. The team assembled for this production have been there before. Because of a devastating review by Jesse Green in the New York Times that may not happen. While Green is an established, and well qualified critic, is it the role of the Times to nip in the bud regional productions being developed for a run in New York?
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Support Group for Men at Goodman Theatre,
By Melancholic Ellen Fairey
By: - Jul 05th, 2018For 95 minutes, Ellen Fairey explores current social issues and angst from gender identity to aging and loneliness, cultural appropriation, men in crisis and the #metoo movement. This takes place in mid-2017 in a second-floor Wrigleyville apartment above an alley where all sorts of shit happens.
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Coming Back Like a Song at Berkshire Theatre Group
World Premiere of Juke Box Musical
By: - Jul 04th, 2018It's Christmas Eve at the NY apartment of Irving Berlin. He is joined by fellow masters of the Great American Songbook Jimmy Van Heusen and Harold Arlen. With just a piano we get 35 of their songs in Berkshire Theatre Group''s world premiere of Coming Back Like a Song by Lee Kalcheim,
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Knot an Opera by Constantin Basica
Freshly Squeezed Opera Provokes
By: - Jul 03rd, 2018Knot an Opera is an amusing and provocative presentation by Freshly Squeezed Opera. The company is committed to genre pushing new works of the highest caliber that explore the depths of the opera form.
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The Big D in South Florida
World Premiere of Comic-Drama near Ft. Lauderdale
By: - Jul 03rd, 2018The Big D has a dual personality as a play, with some of the material risque and lively, while other moments are tender and tragic. Michael Mizerany's new work is having its world premiere at Wilton Manor's Abyss Theater. Prolific theater artist Ronnie Larsen is directing the play, featuring some strong acting.
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World Premiere of Tilikum by Kristiana Rae Colón
Whale of a Tale at Sideshow Theatre Company
By: - Jul 02nd, 2018“Tilikum, the infamous SeaWorld killer whale, has died.” That was the headline in the Orlando Sentinel on January 6, 2017. Sideshow Theatre’s world premiere production of Tilikum takes the story of that sea creature and creates a poetic, percussive fantasy that demands that we pay attention to a range of social justice issues.
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The Sound Inside by Adam Rapp
Williamstown Theatre Festival PremieresTwo Plays
By: - Jul 01st, 2018The Williamstown Theatre Festival started its 2018 season with two new plays on June 26/27, both billed as World Premieres. 'The Closet,' a comedy or farce, is presented on the main stage and 'The Sound Inside,' a two person drama, fills Nikos Stage. Mary-Louise Parker plays the protagonist, Bella Baird, and Will Hochman is Christopher Dunn, her 'curious' student.
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The Closet By Douglas Carter Beane
PC Gay Themed Satire at Williamstown Theatre Festival
By: - Jul 01st, 2018PC or not to be was the question in a world premiere comedy The Closet by Douglas Carter Beane at Williamstrown Theatre Festival. It stars Broadway's Matthew Broderick in his first WTF appearance. He is backed by renowned WTF veterans Jessica Hecht and Brooks Ashmanskas. There was also a breakout performance by Ann Harada.
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Everyone's Fine with Viriginia Woolf
Kate Scelsa Re-constructs Martha at Elevator Repair Service
By: - Jun 30th, 2018Elevator Repair Service is presenting Kate Scelsa's Everyone's Fine with Virginia Woolf. This production at the Abrons Art Center is a re-construction of Martha in Edward Albee's play. Director and company founder John Collins takes us seamlessly back into the world of Albee, Tennessee Williams and Samuel Beckett to deliver an hilarious and scathing 21st century production.
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Two Mile Hollow's Rolling World Premiere
At Potrero Stage in San Francisco
By: - Jun 30th, 2018The producing theater company Ferocious Lotus and playwright Leah Nanako Winkler are on the same wavelength in promoting Asian inclusion in theater. Although the narrative of Two Mile Hollow is about a white family, the pivotal character is Asian played by an Asian, and actors with Asian or Pacific Islanders blood play all of the white roles as well. So add one more brick to the building of ethnic inclusion in the arts.
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Tempest at San Diego's Old Gold Theater
Summer Shakespeare Festival
By: - Jun 30th, 2018The Old Globe’s prescient Erna Finci Artiti Viterbi Artistic Director Barry Edelstein, himself a Shakespeare scholar, understands how the hidden magic in Shakespeare’s plays can still inspire and entertain. His tapping of Irish director Joe Dowling to helm the technically challenging Old Globe production of “The Tempest,” is both a stroke of genius and of timing. Dowling ran the famous Guthrie Theatre of Minneapolis for 20 years. Kate Burton leads as Prospera.
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Long Day’s Journey Into Night
O'Neill at Stratford Shakespeare Festival
By: - Jun 29th, 2018I’m not sure that Canadian audiences share the idolatry that Americans have for O’Neill. Several Canadian critics gave this performance muted approval and a suggestion that O’Neill is a trifle unconvincing and overdone in this play’s insistent hopelessness.
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