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With a combination of theatre of nihilism, taunts and insults the audience at Jacob's Pillow endured a riveting performance by Israel's Batsheva — The Young Ensemble. There was a single, hour long piece “Naharin’s Virus” (2001). It was choreographed by soon to retire artistic director Ohad Naharin. Like an ersatz Stockholm Syndrome experience the audience perhaps too politely thanked their tormentors for the assault on their sense.

If 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.

Bard's Summerscape, ever brave, captures extraordinary moments in poet T.S. Eliot's masterwork, Four Quartets. The words the poet so clearly relishes in his own reading now dance before our eyes like searing moments at the still point. Choreographer Pam Tanowitz, composer Kaija Saariaho and painter Brice Marden join forces at the Fisher Center in Annandale.

We 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.

Since April, 2017 the superstar pianist, Lang Lang, has been recovering from an injury to his left arm. In a scheduling coup he returned to performing last night during Opening Night of the BSO's 2018 season at Tanglewood., He was adored by the audience which was rewarded by sublime encore of Copin. Andris Nelsons conducted an evening of Mozart and Tchaikovsky.

With all the secrecy that surrounds the arrival of a new music director for America's oldest orchestra, one must rely on live performances and recorded documentation to assess such a relationship. Happily, such documentation arrived earlier this year in the form of a DeccaGold recording of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, made by the New York Philharmonic under the aegis of its new boss, Jaap van Zweden.

In 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.

The 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?

For 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.

The traditional James Taylor July 4th Concert was like a high school reunion. Fans returned to see JT and his All-Star Band at Tanglewood. Yet again he was knee high on the Fourth of July and as corny as Kansas in August.

It'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,

For 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.

The 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.

Knot 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.

The special exhibition Objects of Desire pairs whimsical narrative paintings by Joan Kiley with relief sculpture and polychromed assemblages by Larry Alice. There is a confluence and empathy of fantasy and the surreal in work that will be on view in the Eclipse Mill, 243 Union Street, from Friday, June 29 through Sunday, July 29. A receptiom will be held on Friday, July 6.

The 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.

PC 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.

In downtown Bennington, a new mural lets local artists shine and brings the community together.

I’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.

Recalling seeing Pilobolus over the years one readily recognized its DNA but with the realization of how it has evolved and remained fresh. Just when you think that you know what Pilobolus is about, with a tool kit and vetted skill set, they do something different. You are challenged to revise and update assumptions as an audience or critic.

The 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.

Elevator 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.

“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.

The 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.

In a tersely worded press release, offering no explanation, the Berkshire Museum announces parting ways with its controversial director, Van Shields. He was hired in 2011 and presided over the decline and potential extincton of the museum. His strategy to sell key works from the permanent collection and launch his New Vision was met with protest and global media attention. Some will praise him for "saving" the museum and endowing its future. For others he leaves behind a pariah shunned by other museums. His departure and potenial board restructuring are essential as the museum mends fences and fine tunes drastic plans for renovations and gimmicky reinstallatons.