Stockbridge, MA Dec. 10 It is a joy to be able to state that not only is Eric Hill’s adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol now playing in the Unicorn at the Berkshire Theatre Festival until December 23 a delight but will also become an annual event.
Read full review: A Christmas Carol, at Berkshire Theatre Festival
Stockbridge, MA - Aug. 30, 2006 From the moment that Jonathan Epstein, sole actor in David Hare's "Via Dolorosa," enters up center and moves down to address the audience, he has it in the palm of his hand. For 90 minutes, noone in the packed theatre coughs or rattles a program.Review of Via Dolorosa at the Berkshire Theatre Festival continued ....
Pittsfield, MA - Aug. 20, 2006 Julianne Boyd has succeeded gloriously in bringing her talents, and those of several talented members of her theatre family, into their new home at the attractive and functionally re-furbished theatre on Union Street in Pittsfield. The Barrington Stage Company, formerly located in Sheffield, has a lustrous reputation and is a welcome addition to the city's arts scene.Review of Ring Round the Moon at Barrington Stage Company continued ....
Stockbridge, MA - Aug. 18, 2006 "The Heidi Chronicles," the late Wendy Wasserstein's 1988 award-winning play that traces the life a talented baby-boomer through two and a half decades of wanting to have it all in a man's world, is playing in a stirring, hilarious, and at times, poignant production at the Berkshire Theatre Festival.Review of The Heidi Chronicles at Berkshire Theatre Festival continued ....
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Williamstown, MA - Aug. 17, 2006 The plot of "Double Double" is perhaps one of the best kept secrets in recent theatre history. The play is co-authored by Rick Elise (Jersey Boys Tony Award) and Roger Rees who in 1988 played the male lead in the West End London opening.Review of Double Double at Williamstown Theatre Festival continued ....
Gt. Barrington, MA - Aug. 12, 2006 Brian Friel's "Molly Sweeney" now running through Sept. 3rd at The Workshop Playhouse in Great Barrington, is one of his most stunning plays, and the current production under John Trainor’s direction, gives it the poignant and dedicated attention it deserves.Review of Molly Sweeney at The Workshop Playhouse continued ....
Chester, MA - Aug. 3, 2006 Two Rooms is a political drama by Lee Blessing that was first produced in 1988. The plot consists of an American citizen, a professor, Michael Wells, who is taken hostage by Arab terrorists and his wife Lainie, who strips his home office of furniture 3,000 miles away so she can symbolically be with him and share his ordeal.Review of Two Rooms at The Miniature Theatre of Chester continued ....
Williamstown, MA - Aug. 4, 2006 Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, now at the Williamstown Theater Festival, takes a modern look at love, death, family power and the angst of teenagers without destroying the essence of the play.Review of Romeo and Juliet at Williamstown Theatre Festival continued ....
Stockbridge, MA - Aug. 3, 2006 The time is 1940 and the place a run-down hotel on a jungle hilltop overlooking the beach near Costa Verde, Mexico. The heat so intense that even the horrendous thunderstorm that bombards the stage at the end of the first act, cannot break it. And emotions run high, intensely, devastatingly.Review of Night of the Iguana at Berkshire Theatre Festival continued ....
Gt. Barrington, MA - July 30, 2006 State of Play Theater's Director Daniel Barnes and co-producers Chloe Demrovsky and Rebecca Jones could hardly have crafted a more seamless presentation than the one that delighted the audience this sultry Sunday afternoon. Yes the Daniel Arts Center has air conditioning. The musical prelude was a curious mix of jazz and nursery rhymes. From then on the "fasten your seatbelt" sign should have been lit.Review of The City That Cried Wolf, at The Berkshire Fringe continued ....
Lenox, MA - July 22, 2006 "Merry Wives of Windsor" is having a frothy, boisterous romp across the stage of Shakespeare and Company's Founders' stage where it can be seen and delighted in for the rest of the season. Costumed extravagantly and ingeniously, opened with a joyous, romping dance and ending with a woodland extravaganza... Review of Merry Wives of Windsor at Shakespeare and Companycontinued ....
Williamstown, MA - July 20, 2006
Tennessee Williams's plays have long been a staple at Williamstown Theatre Festival, memorable for innovative staging and dynamic presentation. Playing through July, "Sweet Bird of Youth" carries on the tradition.
Set in St Cloud, a small gulf coast town in Mississippi on Easter Sunday in 1959, the three act play, which runs approximately three hours, centers around the violence that erupts in that small town when a native son, Chance Wayne, comes back to impress the girl he loves.Review of Sweet Bird of Youth at Williamstown Theatre Festival continued ....
Gt. Barrington, MA - July 20, 2006 Berkshire Fringe is a new alternative arts festival in Great Barrington that presents works by emerging and early career artists. Much of the work they're presenting falls into more than one category of art, such as this week's premier of "All Day Permanent Red" by Spine. This is part-video-art, performance-art-dance, and it ends the rules of each of those genres.Review of All Day Permanent Red at The Berkshire Fringe continued ....
Stockbridge, MA - July 13, 2006 If you have ever experienced a production of a Tina Howe play, you don’t have to be urged to attend "Costal Disturbances" now playing at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, you undoubtedly already have secured your ticket, but if you have never encountered the character twists and dialog delights that Howe can bring to a "romantic comedy," go.Review of Coastal Disturbances, at Berkshire Theatre Festival continued ....
Lenox, MA - July 9, 2006 The role of Hamlet is the Mt. Everest that every serious actor longs, just once, to scale. It is the ultimate challenge, the fulfillment of the desire to be there on the crest, quite alone, and finally understand how vast and complicated human life is — "What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in facilities, how like a god."Review of Hamlet, at Shakespeare and Company continued ....
Williamstown, MA - July 6, 2006 It's delightful, it's de-lovely, and you'll get at kick out of "Anything Goes" - that is, as long as you already have a ticket, because this block-buster of a musical, running at the Williamstown Theatre Festival through July 16, is already sold out.Review of "Anything Goes" at Williamstown Theatre Festival continued ....
Chester, MA - July 5, 2006 The newly-named Chester Theatre Company's production of "Duet For One," by Tom Kempinski, is a sensitive and timely work of drama. Unlike many revivals produced this summer in the Berkshires, this tragic and inspirational work is worthy of a second look.Review of Duet For One at The Miniature Theatre of Chester continued ....
Stockbridge, MA - July 3, 2006 The success of the BTF Unicorn stage production of Terrence McNally's "Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone" truly depends upon the rememberance of that past era - the 50s and 60s, and upon the believability and relevance of the major characters. Since this is one of McNally's earlier plays, it lacks the spareness and subtlety of his later work.Review of Berkshire Theatre Festival's production of "Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?" continued ....
Pittsfield, MA - June 29, 2006 This week’s New Yorker magazine announces that Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which during his lifetime he would never permit being set to music, has finally been freed by his estate for translation into an opera by Ned Rorem and is currently playing in nearby New York State. Review of The Human Comdedy at Barrington Stage Company continued ....
Stockbridge, MA - June 23, 2006 It is hard to untangle the many strands of genius that flood the stage during the seemingly short three hours that Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus takes to unfold, gloriously, as the opening play of the Berkshire Theatre Festival's 2006 season. Review of Berkshire Theatre Festival's production of Amadeus continued ....
Lenox, MA - June 4, 2006 The ingenious and adaptable Shakespeare and Company has gracefully and successfully moved its former intimate-style plays from Springlawn to the vaster, thrust Founders stage where Enchanted April, Matthew Barber's adaptation of the novel by Elizabeth von Armin, opened on June 3, and where it will run in repertory until early September. Review of Shakespeare and Company's production of "Enchanted April" continued ....
Stockbridge, MA - May 27, 2006 "The Illusion," a play combining 17th century writer Pierre Corneille's script of farcical humor depicting life, love, and relationships, with the biting wit and cutting insight of Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner, could have been a challenging artistic experience. Review of Berkshire Theatre Festival's production of The Illusion continued ....
Pittsfield, MA - May 25, 2006Langley and Homer Collyer descended from a well endowed family. Their father, a gynecologist and their mother a well educated woman with two sons raised the two sons.
Their parents eventually split and the two sons, both in their twenties, remained in their home with their mother. After the death of their mother they stayed on in the once gracious home.Barrington Stage Company review continued...