Columns
StageStruck: Old Becomes New
Two theater pieces transmute their originals What happens when you take someone else’s work and change it, adapt it, and mold it into something of your own? I’m not talking about plagiarism, but homage – giving new form or context to an admired original. Two new/old...
Cinemadope: Music! Intrigue! Nuts! Documentary film screenings this week
In this political season, there has been a lot of talk about the meaning — good and bad — of dynasties in our national discourse. The truth is that, for a country that prides itself on its history of flipping the bird to royalty all those years ago, we sure do love to...
StageStruck: Waiting for Life to Resume
Two plays at Valley theaters, both running through Saturday, share a common source – the ongoing Middle East catastrophe – and a similar circumstance: two Americans caught up in it, one unwillingly, the other almost compulsively. Both plays are receiving strong...
Stagestruck: Jacob’s Pillow — Tapping into the Essence of Dance
If dance is “the hidden language of the soul,” as Martha Graham put it, tap is its least bashful dialect. For the past few years Jacob’s Pillow, the country’s premier modern dance festival, has featured tap dancing in its eclectic roster of summertime performances....
Down to Earth: Americans have no ‘right-to-roam,’ but we should
Last month, on a Sunday afternoon, I drove down to the Oxbow for an ultimate Frisbee pickup game. Clouds had been gathering all day and it began to rain as I drove, so when I arrived at the athletic fields, no one had turned up to play.I parked my car and decided...
The V-Spot: Husband Seeking Female-Friendly Sex-ed
Hi Yana, My wife is interested in exploring her sexuality a little further — things she might be interested in trying, etc. — but is hoping to do so in a way that is female- and feminist-friendly. Do you have any suggestions for things she can do or read either...
The Pour Man: Graduate to New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc
Nobilo, Sauvignon Blanc, 2015; Marlborough, New Zealand; $13.99 During the last couple of decades, some of the world’s top wine critics have declared that the best Sauvignon Blanc comes from New Zealand, and I would agree with them.However, I also realize, as with...
Stagestruck: Shaking Up Shakespeare
Shakespeare & Company doesn’t only do Shakespeare. This season, only three out of nine productions are by the company’s namesake, though several others play with Shakespearean themes, from a contemporary reflection on war to a political farce that resonates...
Cinemadope: Fallout
Conspiracy Theories “Challenger” will forever be one of those words whose meaning — or at least its history — is immediately known to anyone old enough to have lived through the 1986 space shuttle disaster. That tragic moment, witnessed live by so many American...
Nightcrawler: Root Effect
Musician and artist Wendell Rheinheimer, the owner of Moonlight Designs screenprinting in Easthampton, has been doing a little moonlighting of his own in recent months. The fruits of a new collaborative effort with his partner, organic vegetable farmer Shana Totino,...
Cinemadope: Prince’s Purple Reign
We all have a tendency, as we get on in years, to remember our better days and let the not-so-great times wash away in the river of time. It’s human, and while you might roll your eyes at your great-aunt launching into that same story about sneaking into a Beatles...
StageStruck: Cat and Tat
Here’s one thing the two very different Tennessee Williams plays now running in the Berkshires have in common: The sets have no walls. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, on the Berkshire Theatre Group’s Stockbridge mainstage, four white-and-pastel pillars frame the sparsely...
The V-Spot: Babe Needs to Break Up
Dear Yana,I want to break up with my boyfriend of a few years. As we both near 30 I’m getting clearer that he’s just not the guy for me.But here’s the thing: We live together. We have a lease together. We share a car and a cat and just have so many logistical ties to...
The Pour Man: Champagne Chuck; inexpensive bubbly
Dibon Brut Reserve Cava, of Penedes, Spain; $12.99 I’ve been thinking about sparkling wine lately because it’s well suited for steamy summer nights; just one glass will go a long way to ease the heat. Sparkling wine also came to mind because someone gave me a bottle...
Nightcrawler: Give ‘Em The Slip
Slip-not seeks new skin beater; Splitshift, FNB celebrate sonic milestone Local tribute band Slip-not will be marching to the beat of a different drummer — er, clown? — if they can find the right basher to fill the oversized shoes of departing Joshua Keller....
The Beerhunter: Bright Ideas Brewing in North Adams
Back to the Mill New breweries tend to pop up in unlikely industrial spaces, and Bright Ideas Brewing in North Adams is no different. The small but ambitious operation is a new tenant of MASS MoCA, which means that finding the front door to the brewery involves some...
StageStruck: Power and Value
Two brief plays currently running in the area look at the power and value of art through quite different lenses, but ask similar questions: How does a work of art “speak to us” as individuals? How does its character affect our perception of it? How does its very...
Stagestruck: English Stages, Part One — The National
Three of the four shows I saw at the National Theatre in London last month were star vehicles, and the fourth one’s ensemble cast featured a very well-known face. The first three also, coincidentally, ended in sudden reprieves from ignominious deaths. Another...
O, Cannabis: A Heady Vacation, Traveling With Weed
It’s summer! The season in which most Americans seek to do some deep unwinding by hopping in the car, on a plane, or a ship and getting away from it all. There is one thing millions of people aren’t seeking to leave behind, though, and it’s also headily conducive to a...
Cinemadope: Defiant Requiem showing in Amherst
Notes on WarWhen it comes to war and film, there will never be a shortage of stories. Whether tales of daring or death, on the front or at home, war can bring out the best and worst in us, and create lifelong strength — or leave one with lasting wounds. And while we...
Nightcrawler: The Name Game
SWMRS boasts unique punk pedigree What’s in a name? The members of SWMRS are barely in their 20s and can already claim quite a lot. Reportedly inspired by watching Jack Black and his homage to headbanging — the film School of Rock — together in...
Basemental: Straight to Video, bassist Sam Hadge’s wild concert footage
The magic of live music stems from the intimacy of being in the same room as the performer, but Sam Hadge’s talent is capturing that intimacy for the online world who couldn’t make it to the show.Since I started going to DIY shows with regularity about a year and a...
Blaise’s Bad Movie Guide: That time The Three Stooges went too far … nyuk, nyuk, nyuk
That time The Three Stooges went too far … nyuk, nyuk, nyuk As Kenny Rogers wisely sang, “You gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.” There have been many performers who have ignored this advice, plodding right along with their careers when they...
Cinemadope: Here and Gone
Small films shown quickly, so see them today Showing movies is a tough racket, and the hard truth of the matter is that an opening weekend can make or break a film’s chances at breaking even at the box office. Do decently out of the gate, and you might get a chance at...
The V-Spot: Jealous Over My Flirty Girlfriend
Dear Yana,My girlfriend and I have been polyamorous for three years. We have established boundaries and as far as poly relationships go, it’s been pretty smooth sailing. Usually I’m a very low-jealousy partner.But lately she’s been flirting with this one woman that I...
Stagestruck: Intimate Moments — Berkshires Summer Theatre Preview
Summer theater used to be known as “the straw-hat trail” and “summer stock,” both terms evoking familiar, innocuous entertainments presented for languid hot-weather audiences by (usually) amateur companies in tents, barns, and town halls. From the outset, though,...
Basemental: What’s a Jaume I? New Performing Art Space in Greenfield
Downtown Jam Matt Robidoux is nervous. He is sitting on a patch of grass in downtown Greenfield, adjacent to a municipal parking lot and the Mexican restaurant Mesa Verde. Across the street, a small handful of musicians are shooting the shit and smoking cigarettes,...
Nightcrawler: (Sex) Change-Up
Pocketful of Sexchange reunites scene staples The Pixies’ Frank Black famously referenced them as a “dangerously untethered band specializing in abandon and dementia.” They’ve also shared stages with area upstarts The Unband and Fountains of...
The V-Spot: Why Can’t I Have Sex Without Drinking?
Editor’s Note: Sexual trauma is addressed in this week’s column.Hi Yana,I can’t seem to want to have sex unless I’m drunk.This has always kind of been the case, except for when I was a teenager, and horny all the time (and not drinking). Then when I got to...
Brew Kids on the Block: A new Senate bill would allow beer sales at farmers markets
Have you ever wondered why Massachusetts farmers markets don’t allow the sale of beer, even though vendors are typically welcome to sell hard cider and wine? So have state lawmakers. Early last month, the Senate passed a sweeping agricultural bill...
Cinemadope: Swede Hearts, a celebration of the best Bergmans in film: Ingmar and Ingrid
Hear that a local theater is hosting a Bergman festival, and the first thought that will pop into the heads of most art-house denizens will be that of the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. An icon for the ages, the director’s films — The Seventh Seal, Fanny and...
Down to Earth: Saving Honey Bees, One Person at a Time
I’ve always had a thing for creepy crawlies. I was the kid who caught the wasp stuck in the classroom to let it out the window. And I still crouch to move a worm from the sidewalk into the grass. So, when a colleague of mine, Sara Eddy, started her first beehive, I...
The V-Spot: I’m stuck in a cum-nundrum!
Hi Yana, My partner (cis-male) and I (queer bisexual lady) enjoy getting super hot and bothered with each other, but we’re both frustrated with my seeming inability to orgasm. When we’re fooling around, just warming up, sometimes clitoral stimulation gets...
The Beerhunter: Five O’Clock Everywhere: Western Mass Beer Week June 11-18
The Beerhunter’s ears are always pricked to news of local craft beer happenings, and this month, they’re positively tingling. All that excitement in the air is thanks to the first-ever Western Mass Beer Week, a series of events at breweries, bars and restaurants all...
Nightcrawler: (Holly) Miranda Writes
Carrots enhance the eyesight. Spinach helps you grow big and strong. And cranberries … make you rock?”It’s how I learned to play guitar back when I was 14,” explains the 33-year-old singer-songwriter Holly Miranda. “I was on a...
Stage Struck: True Illusions
Two world-premiere musicals have just opened in the region. One is an unassuming little pocket piece with a nifty hook, the other a glamorous spectacular that assumes it’s going to Broadway. The Musical Theatre Lab at Barrington Stage has developed dozens of new works...
The V-Spot: How Can I Be Poly, With A Heart?
Hi Yana,I’m in my early 30s and have been polyamorous for a couple of years. Not long ago my wife of 13 years and I split. Now I’m kind of going through a dating/poly crisis. I strongly identify as poly despite not really having a primary relationship....
Blaise’s Bad Movie Guide: The First Wet, Hot American Summer was so bad, how did it get a sequel?
The first Wet, Hot American Summer was so bad, how did it get a sequel?I’ll let you in on a little secret: the newsroom once had a library of old VCR tapes we all could share. After VCR tapes went the way of the Walkman there was a purge and I snagged Wet, Hot...
Nightcrawler: Who’s rocking the stage at this weekend’s International Food Fest
By Gary Carra In 2014, Thomas Kielbania Jr. revived Chicopee’s storied Kielbasa Festival after a nearly two-decade hiatus. Now, he’s reinventing it – and renaming it, and relocating it – to West Springfield, for what’s shaping up to be a...
Cinemadope: ‘April and the Extraordinary World’ plays this weekend; Longevity serum, missing scientists, and a talking cat named Darwin
Ask people what they like in art, and you might think that all they want is “the real world” mirrored back at them. We hail the Old Masters — their mastery of light and shadow, their ability to make hard marble seem like supple skin. But where would we story lovers be...
The V-Spot: My ‘Orgasm’
Hello Yana,I’ve been dating my boyfriend for almost a year. We’re in our 20s, and he’s a few years older than me. There have been times when we’re intimate when he doesn’t provide me with oral sex. He’s never close to ejaculating while inside me. He only does so...
O’Cannabis: Snacks ‘n’ Snags – Stoner eats; the march toward marijuana legalization hits a bump
The hungry stoner is a crude cliche. Ravenous, bug-eyed, slovenly, and insatiable is how the type is usually portrayed in pop culture. The truly initiated, however, know that while weed can bring on a powerful case of the munchies, it’s nothing to go all reefer...
The V-Spot: How Do I Tell My Partners I’ve Got Herpes?
Hi Yana,I’m 21 years young, genderqueer, very sexual, and polyamorous! I have a penis; I also have genital herpes. Is there a best time to tell a partner?If I have symptoms or have had them recently it’s not much of a conundrum because there’s no...
Nightcrawler: Noho’s Betsy-Dawn Williams releases international rockabilly record; free, family concerts kick off in West Springfield
By Gary Carra Forget about the unemployment rates and bleak economic forecasts from the usual cast of politicos and pundits. Northampton’s Betsy-Dawn Williams says she has proof positive it’s a bull market out there. “I’ve just been signed for...
Winter Season Wrap-up
I see a lot of plays, and I cover as many as I can. But the feast of performances always overwhelms the column inches, so now, with a new summer theater season on the horizon, I’m taking a final look back at the shows I’ve enjoyed since last summer. Promising...
Down to Earth: Fair pay for natural treasures – Coke calls Northampton’s water fee a ‘burden’ all the way to the bank
It’s one of the things we need most for survival, yet take most for granted. We need it to drink, to cook, to bathe, to brush our teeth.Water.We’re blessed to live in a zone of abundant rainfall, and the Mill and Connecticut Rivers pour through the Valley. But even...
The Beerhunter Abroad: Japan – Land of the Rising Suds
After dark, standing in a 24-hour convenience store in downtown Kyoto, I scanned the rows of canned and bottled beers in a bright refrigerated case. Virtually everything on offer was a product of one of the “big four” Japanese breweries: Sapporo, Suntory, Asahi, and...
Nightcrawler: Vampire Diaries
An interview with Joe Perry, Aerosmith vet and member of the Johnny Depp-led band Hollywood Vampires Gary Carra: Joe – big fan. I’ve been kicking around Western Mass for a quarter-century now, either playing music or writing music, so of course I’ve come across...
Cinemadope: Toot Your Own Horn
It must have been in 1989 or so that I first saw Colors, director Dennis Hopper’s story about police and gang violence in Los Angeles. Set mostly in South Central and East L.A., it starred Sean Penn and Robert Duvall as partnered cops — a rookie and his mentor —...
Basemental: Playing the Game
Northampton self-proclaimed pop-punks Potty Mouth formed at Smith College in 2011. Their self-titled EP came out in August. The EP, produced by John Goodmanson in Seattle (Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill) delivers five tightly-packed, driving songs that are severely...
StageStruck: Seven Devils, Three Witches and a Nun
Halloween is half a year away, but there are devilish doings in the Valley, foreshadowed by witchery in Lenox. A one-woman show at Amherst College this weekend puts a clown face on a 17th-century tale of demonic possession, and last month Shakespeare & Company...
The V-Spot: Seeking Seduction Instruction
Hi Yana,My boyfriend and I have been together for a year. Up until a couple of months ago, I was extremely satisfied with our sex life. He wanted me all the time and would initiate sex at least one to three times daily. Recently, we moved in together and it seems the...
Nightcrawler: ‘Hole’-d Up
Sutherland swaps silver screen for six-string; Gartska jams with guitar gods… briefly He was a “Lost Boy.” A “Young Gun.” One of “A Few Good Men” to enjoy a three decade career on both the silver and small screens alike. But...
StageStruck: Revolting Children
When Matilda the Musical opened in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2010 – quickly moving to the West End, where it still resides – the British press greeted it as an “anarchically joyous, gleefully nasty” antidote to the sugary concoctions of other kid-centered musicals. (That...
Basemental: DIY Music, welcome to Basemental, a new column about the Valley’s underground music scene
As a 24-year-old musician in the Valley, my world centers around Hadley basements and Easthampton community centers — the places where you can catch the best of the area’s DIY music scene. The what scene?Exhausted by the exploitative pay-to-play model often used by...
Nightcrawler: Decade-dence, 90s pop, 80s rock and Guns N bobbleheads
Better call Mr. Peabody and Sherman. Looks like someone’s gotten a hold of the Wayback Machine.First stop: Foxwoods Resort Casino’s Grand Theater this Friday, April 29. Not only will female hip-hop heavyweights Salt-n-Pepa be there, but so will literal heavyweight Biz...
The V-Spot: We Never Talk, But I’d Like To
I know you do sex advice, but I need some relationship advice. My boyfriend and I have been dating for about half a year and he shows zero emotion. I want to bring it up to him, but not in a way that will make him clam up more, ya know? Any advice would be awesome....
O, Cannabis! Pro-pot and Proud, Extravaganja in Northampton
Governor Charlie Baker, Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston, and House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, you’re wasting your time with your anti-marijuana legalization effort, the Campaign for a Safe and Healthy Massachusetts. So far, the campaign, which launched in late April,...
We Can Do It! V-Spot sex advice columnist Yana Tallon-Hicks has made it her mission to get us all to O-Town
Climbing the stairs to V-Spot sex columnist Yana Tallon-Hicks’ apartment, I wasn’t sure what to expect.Would there be a lot of framed Georgia O’Keefes on the wall? A swing hanging in the bedroom? Penis-shaped drinking glasses? I was sort of right.There are no...E-Edition
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