Columns
Scene Here: Locked Away
I have only one recurring nightmare. I find myself in prison. Charged with a crime I cannot discern, I’m locked away from family and friends by thick plastic walls. The clear walls are smeared with a thousand fingerprints obscuring my view of the sweet blue sky. Jack...
“Nice Work” is O.K.!
They just don’t make musicals like they used to. Except when they do. Nice Work If You Can Get It, playing at the Bushnell in Hartford through February 8th, is a 1920s musical that premiered on Broadway in 2012. It was whipped up by Joe DiPietro from the skeleton of a...
Sexpert Yana Tallon-Hicks is back: You Found The V-Spot, but What About the G-Spot?
Editor’s Note: Back by popular demand, Yana Tallon-Hicks returns with The V-Spot, the Advocate’s weekly sex and relationship advice column. She received her undergrad in sexuality studies and sex education and worked as a sex educator/sales associate at various sex...
Madame Barfly: Well Booze or the High Road? When you’re young and/or broke it can be tempting to drink the cheapest booze around
We’ve all heard the rumors about the havoc cheap booze can wreak, but is that even true? Can you drink inexpensive alcohol all night without head-pounding, toilet-hugging consequences? The downside to drinking cheap alcohol is considerable: principal among the...StageStruck: Men on the Edge
The Royal National Theatre’s NT Live initiative beams theater performances live (or time zone delayed) via satellite from its London stages, and occasionally from other British theaters, to cinema screens around the world. Now the popular series has hopped the pond to...
Nightcrawler: Reality Bytes
The song may be more than three decades old, but even now, when musicians play a local watering hole, they know there’s a good chance someone will yell out “Freebird” at some point. Plucking even the opening arpeggio of 1971’s “Stairway to Heaven” at any given guitar...
Cinemadope: Beg, Borrow, and Steal; movies and adaption
It’s no secret that, more than just about any other medium, cinema has relied on — and thrived on — adapting material from other art forms. Whether it is as traditional as a new production of an old classic (see any number of period piece dramas) or as unusual as...
The V-Spot: Feeling Menage-a-Trepidatious
Dear Yana, About a year ago my girlfriend told me that she thinks she’s bi and that it was important for her to explore sex with women. So, I know at this point, as a dude, I’m supposed to go all crazy excited about a three-way, but I had a lot of reservations and...Singapore, part 1: The Fringe
I was in Singapore last month when, by happy coincidence, the Singapore Fringe Festival, an annual showcase of alternative theater and visual arts, was underway. Over half of the festival’s 11 productions were homegrown, and I caught four of them. The performances (in...
Nightcrawler: Trash Talkin’
They may call themselves Trailer Trash, but in talking to lead singer Joe Fazio and six-stringer Bob Stanek about the band’s inception, it sure sounds more like a recycling/re-tooling project. “Everyone in this band are friends and we’ve played together in various...
The Beerhunter: Save a Keg. Tap a Cask: Cask beers make a slow, sweet comeback
Nothing screams American mass-market beer like that big silver “Coors” bullet train. TV spots show it rocketing through a winter blizzard, smashing huge glaciers into ice rubble before steaming into town like the Polar Express for the college set. Ahh, refreshing!...
Raise Your Glass: Chewy, Hardy Wine From Sicily
Villa Pozzi Nero D’Avola, Sicily 2013; $8.99 – $11.99 A few years ago, when Sicilian wines were relatively new to New England, I tried a bottle. It was an inexpensive dark red wine made from a grape that I had never heard of, which is not unusual; after all,...
Scene Here: Catching Cold
Wind whips across the ice on the Oxbow in Northampton. Under a bright, cold sun, shadowy figures stand against a stark panorama of frozen river, snow-decked mountains, and frosted gray sky. It’s 25 degrees. Viktor Biley, 17, is rubbing his bare hands together. It’s...
Cinemadope: Cracking the Enigma
As a young and nerdish boy, I was obsessed with words. I collected them the way a lepidopterist might collect moths, catching them on the wing and pinning them down to puzzle out their origins, oddities, and family ties to other words. It all felt like a marvelously...
CinemaDope: Southern Exposure, an immigrant’s dangerous journey
The people who run the show over at Amherst Cinema have never been content with the idea that their venue is a mere movie theater. From the start, the vision of the theater encompassed not just great film, but also community enrichment, education, and more. As the...
Scene Here: Big Easy Brunch
Remember that first wash of Technicolor in The Wizard of Oz? That’s what it’s like to step off the grayscale street and into Chef Wayne’s Big Mamou in Springfield. This little New Orleans-style restaurant is stranded on a run-down industrial block of Liberty Street,...
Nightcrawler: Bawdy by Nature, Berkshire burlesque group; Cantalini performs solo, duo, and with his trio
In the spirit of the performers they honor and emulate, the Berkshire-based Gypsy Lane burlesque troupe takes the show on the road this weekend. The campy cast of cabaret characters makes its debut at Norfolk, Conn.’s storied Infinity Music Hall & Bistro Jan. 22,...
Nightcrawler: Sir Mix-A-Lot
The Crawler knows. You just got through returning all those clunker presents from the office Secret Santas. Now here comes scene stalwart Henning Ohlenbusch, playing sonic Santa. “As physical copies of music are becoming more and more obsolete, we feel this is an...
Raise Your Glass: ‘We’ve Got to Get Our Image Back’
Spellbound Cabernet Sauvignon California, 2013 $11.99 – $15.99 When the weather turns not quite so delightful and temperatures start to drop, a hearty red wine seems an appropriate answer to the sleet-smattered cold and the right choice to accompany winter fare...
Cinemadope: Don’t Mess with Dad
Any career that lasts long enough is sure to have its share of ups, downs, and surprises. Sometimes we come out on top, sometimes we fall flat on our face. Most of us, though, have the blessing of soaring or falling with a bit more privacy than the actors and...
Raise Your Glass: Sparkling Wine Redemption
Mionetto Prosecco Brut Treviso, Italy, $10.95-15.99 Jaume Serra Cristalino, Brut, Cava Penedes, Spain. $6.95-11.99 Before classes began my freshman year of college, an older friend took me out one night to celebrate, and we bought a couple of bottles each of...
Stagestruck: Sunshine and Shadow
As the year has drawn to a close, I’ve been looking back over the hundred-plus shows I’ve seen in 2014. And as the seasons begin to turn from the dark back into the light, I’ve been thinking about some of those theater moments when a dark theme was...Stagestruck: Carving the Pie
Two years ago on this page I looked back at the first annual Valley Gives Day, a 24-hour fundraising event for area nonprofits, organized by the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts. The intention was to provide a common platform for local organizations...
Madam Barfly: A Festival of (Getting) Lit
I, Madame Barfly, am here to help you with all of your booze-loving needs. As a nine-year veteran of the restaurant business, I’ve learned a worthy trick or two. In this monthly column I’ll share trade secrets and scope out what’s shaking at local...
Oh, That’s Better: How to have hotter sex in 2015
Another year goes by, another high-tech sex toy hits the market: remote-controlled vibrators that respond to your moan intonations, masturbation sleeves shaped like your favorite porn star, and whatever else the kinky nerds come up with next. Your i-Brain might have...
Nightcrawler: Taylor Made
J ames Taylor’s brother Livingston need only pull out his self-titled, debut album from 1970 to cover the “something old” requirement. His just released CD Blue Sky fulfills both the “new” and “blue.” Not sure what Livingston Taylor is going to borrow between now and...
Cinemadope: Death Valley
For all its sun, California has never lacked for shadows. Before their books were made into genre-defining films, writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett — authors who essentially invented hard-boiled detective fiction with books like The Big Sleep and The...
Nightcrawler: The Elephant in the Newsroom
How do you start an interview with a 59-year-old actor who is coming off a year that included (literally) anchoring one of television’s most critically acclaimed series and co-starring in a flatulence-laden, sophomoric smash hit box office comedy weeks before his...
Nightcrawler: The Elephant in the Newsroom
How do you start an interview with a 59-year-old actor who is coming off a year that included (literally) anchoring one of television’s most critically acclaimed series and co-starring in a flatulence-laden, sophomoric smash hit box office comedy weeks before...Night Must Fall
I was recently reading a play – Nightfall by the Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith – that reminded me a lot of a play I recently saw – Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance in its current Broadway run. Although one takes place on the other...Wicked and Really Wicked
A few weeks ago I wrote an Advocate column about the scarcity of women playwrights and directors on area stages – four and eight, respectively, in 35 productions last summer, a gender imbalance that reflects the national stats. And I might have added to that...
The 2014 Nightcrawler Notable Awards
In no particular order and assembled for reasons no loftier than your enjoyment plus the Crawler’s pressing need to hurry over to the holiday party before the open bar closes… here are your 2014 Nightcrawler Notable Awards: The You Never Sausage A...Beerhunter: Iron Duke Brewing’s Signature “Baby-Maker” is Born
The new Iron Duke Brewing facility in Ludlow might be a bit of a trek for some Valley beer chasers, but the visit pays off in small pleasures. One of those is sitting at the bar in their busy taproom listening to college kids and grandparents alike shout, “I’ll have a...Starting Off, Catching Up
Hello and welcome to StageStruck, younger brother of StageStruck, my column on the Stage Page of the Advocate’s print and online editions. This offspring was conceived from a pair of incompatible circumstances. The column is no longer weekly, and the...Five Gutsy Women
Women with smarts and guts are at the core of five shows I’ve seen recently. And I’m not just talking about the characters. This gifted handful are all actors who bring intelligence, style and emotional daring to their work, which they exemplify in these...The Unity of Opposites: Exploring difference and acceptance
Two shows on Barrington Stage’s two stages look at dichotomies in the fabric of American life—on the fringes of that fabric, perhaps. In The Chosen, two worldviews clash, mingle and reconcile through the friendship of two Jewish boys in postwar Brooklyn....Last Chances
The summer is barely half over, it seems, and already two Valley theaters are wrapping up their seasons. This weekend sees the year’s final performances at the Ko Festival of Performance in Amherst and New Century Theater in Northampton.NCT’s wide-ranging,...Bodies and Bodings: Two theaters putting bods on seats, or not
The title of Annie Baker’s absorbing play Body Awareness works on several levels. It relates to “Body Awareness Week” at a semi-fictional New England college (Baker grew up in Amherst, so even though the play takes place in “Shirley,...Three for the Pillow: Dance for newbies and connoisseurs alike
When Samuel Murez discovered Shakespeare as a kid, he was entranced by the extravagant language, dashing actors and epic action. As he grew older, he developed a fuller understanding and deeper appreciation of the poet’s genius. But, he says, he’s never...Grace and Courage: Two Berkshire plays feature smart, resourceful women
Ah, those Berkshire “cottages,” the euphemism itself so evocative of the massive wealth that built them and the easy superiority that occupied them—stone mansions nestled in the hills, summer retreats for the New York elite of the Gilded Age, so...Eastward Ho: Plays in Boston and the Cape
Jonathan is dead. His ashes are in an urn on the side table and his wife, Zaida, is packing his things away in boxes. Then the front door opens and a man walks in “wearing his face”—Jonathan’s long-lost twin brother Ernie, too late to say...Minority Report
“It’s so subjective, isn’t it?” wrote a friend recently, sending me a glowing review of a play we’d both seen and both failed to glow over. Most of us critics do try to be objective, putting aside, or at least acknowledging, our...Left-Coast Classics
Left-Coast Classics Dateline Berkeley — Just because it was Christmastime, and we were visiting family and friends on the West Coast, didn’t mean I wasn’t going to see as much theater as I usually do. And I did, starting in holiday style with a...War Horse: On stage and stage-on-screen in Hartford and Amherst
Every year or so, London’s +Royal National Theatre presents an original family-oriented play as a holiday-time entertainment. They’re often adapted from classic children’s or young-adult literature, inventively and often elaborately...The Best Seats in the House
I don’t go to the movies very often. It’s not that I don’t like movies, I just spend so much time seeing plays there’s little time for films. But there’s one cinema I attend regularly—to see plays. For five seasons, +the Amherst...For Pete Seeger, Who Taught Us to Rise Up Singing
I grew up in the theater. From the age of four I attended plays my father was in, and was trotting onstage myself soon afterward. I never wanted to be anything but an actor. Then, when I was 15, everything changed. I spent a summer at an arts camp in Vermont, where...The Bullies of Venice
For the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about *The Merchant of Venice, since I’m directing it for the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School in a production that plays this coming weekend at the Academy of Music in Northampton. If you know...Handspring, Handmade
Having recently experienced War Horse, that British megahit from the National Theatre, I was eager to see the Bristol Old Vic’s production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which stopped at ArtsEmerson in Boston earlier this month on a U.S....Lives of Not-So-Quiet Desperation
Two shows currently playing in Hartford (both through June 22) detail the vicissitudes of love and, even though there’s hardly a moment in either play when anyone is onstage alone, of loneliness. One is an often bittersweet kaleidoscope of 21st-century...
NT Live, Live
Since the NT Live series of satellite broadcasts of performances from London’s National Theatre debuted five seasons ago, I’ve seen almost all of them. The Amherst Cinema is one of hundreds of venues that bring the stage shows to far-flung audiences who wouldn’t...Jacob's Pillow Eclectic
“The Vinegar Works” began with an in-joke for PBS viewers: a recitation of Edward Gorey’s ghoulish alphabet poem “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” (“A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears…”)...Big Apple/Big Easy
Ring Lardner was the master of comic fiction with a cynical edge and George s. Kaufman the master of urbane Broadway farce. When they teamed up in 1929 to adapt a Lardner show-biz story, the result was June Moon, an urbane romantic comedy with an ironic edge that...Take Me Out to the Storm Scene
“Blow winds, and crack your cheeks!” shouts King Lear in Act 3 Scene 1 as he rages in the tragedy’s climactic storm. But on the night I saw the play last week, at the New York Public Theater’s free outdoor Shakespeare in the Park, that line...Shoe Notes
“Tap predates jazz,” explained Michelle Dorrance when introducing an informal showcase of work by her students at Jacob’s Pillow earlier this summer. That is, before the blue note came the shoe note. But Dorrance is no strict preservationist –...The Two Sisters
This could have had the makings of an uncomfortable evening in the theater: a young company in a new play written to order by a friend of theirs, with an opening-night house full of friends and supporters ready to laugh lustily at every suggestion of a joke. Given...The Surprise is No Surprise
Two shows I’ve seen in the past week, at opposite ends of the state but with a common link, have received glowing press and, judging from the nights I was in the house, enthusiastic audiences. Dancing Lessons, at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, is a...Classical Classics
During an intermission feature that’s part of the National Theatre Live broadcast of A Streetcar Named Desire – this one beamed as a kind of guest showcase from a different London theater, the Young Vic – that theater’s artistic director, David...Autumn in the Hills
Theater in the Berkshires used to be a strictly summer affair, but in recent years three of the four major companies (Williamstown being the exception) have extended their hot-weather seasons into the fall and even winter, joined by upstart troupes/companies like WAM...Fearful Symmetry
Darko Tresnjak has a predilection for carefully composed stage pictures and a passion for symmetry. He’s also drawn to the arresting visual concept. In last year’s Twelfth Night, the set itself was a hedge maze, and in 2012’s The Tempest, both the...E-Edition
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