Review
Stagestruck: Staged Readings — the key to writing “your best play”
In a program note for his play The War and Walt Whipple, now running at the Majestic Theater, author/director Danny Eaton describes the play’s page-to-stage gestation. First, “a few friends” saw a draft and offered comments, leading to a staged reading with audience...
Stagestruck: The War Within
Every couple of years, Danny Eaton premieres a new play of his at the Majestic Theater, which he founded and leads. They range through topics dear to him, often touching on military service and veterans (he’s one himself) and all of them, in one way or another,...
Stagestruck: King Lear on NT Live
I’ll get right to the point. The King Lear I saw last weekend courtesy of NT Live is the most thoughtfully conceived, perceptively acted and richly achieved production of Shakespeare’s great tragedy I’ve ever seen. It stars Ian McKellen, and that in itself more...
Stagestruck: Latin Roots
Two productions in the Valley this weekend and next share Latin American roots, and couldn’t be more dissimilar. One is a colorful musical celebrating a New York barrio, the other a surreal movement-theater piece celebrating two surrealists. The sensational success of...
Stagestruck: Art and Identity — Valley plays confront life-changing issues
Three plays in the Valley this weekend and next tackle provocative questions of art and identity. A woman musician is deprived of a career because of her gender. Two writers tangle in a carnal mix of sex and ambition. And an actor looks at the black experience via...
Stagestruck: Valley Variations — Celebrating words and music, autumn and murder
A demon barber, a cockroach killer, a charitable speller, a balletic frog. This month, up and down the Valley, indoors and out, intimate and expansive, there’s a seasonal bounty of performances to choose from. The Royal Frog Ballet is an “amoeba of...
Stagestruck: Three for the Show
An instant evening of theater cooked up in a single day; a 19th-century musical with 21st-century themes; a multi-disciplinary evocation of “what is left when memory is gone.” This weekend in the Valley, there’s a diverse trio of shows to choose from – or see...
Stagestruck Weekend: Coming Back to Life, in the (413)
In the past, Life in the (413), New Century Theatre’s live-on-stage roast of all things Valley, was aimed at boosting its upcoming summer program. The sixth iteration, at the Academy of Music on Sunday, is aimed at reviving the company after its sudden collapse a year...
Stagestruck: Imaginary Forces
In Shakespeare’s time, actors wore their own clothes with token costume pieces, they performed on a bare platform, and they were all male. Those facts are the springboard of Elizabeth Williamson’s vision for her production of Henry V, which plays at Hartford Stage...
Stagestruck: Two in the Berkshires – Naked & The Glass Menagerie
A desperate young woman, Ersilia Drei, has attempted suicide. From her hospital bed, she spins a heartrending, headline-grabbing story for an opportunistic reporter. His article draws a circle of interested parties into her twisting orbit: The novelist who sees in her...
Stagestruck: Not Your Granddad’s College Theater
“What am I bid for this fine specimen of white manhood?” The swaggering black auctioneer scans the audience of prospective buyers, who quickly bid the price up, until the white man on the auction block goes to the jubilant winner for a fat five-figure sum. This...
Stagestruck: Texas Tough & Tangy
Barack Obama and Ann Richards both sprang to national prominence with sensational speeches at a Democratic National Convention. Richards’ came in 1988, and she used the opportunity to pitch her unique brand of tough-minded common-sense liberalism and kick sand on the...
Stagestruck: Murdering the Play
Even before the houselights dim, The Play That Goes Wrong is going wrong. On the uncurtained stage, a techie is still working on the floorboards and the stage manager is frantically trying to secure a part of the set. She recruits an audience member to help out while...
Stagestruck: “Hir” and Now
Playwright Taylor Mac has described Hir as “a kitchen-sink drama.” Which is fair, as long as you understand that the sink in question is full of filthy dishes and fresh vomit. The genre- and gender-bending play, at Shakespeare & Company through October 7, begins...
Stagestruck: Moonlight and Music
Two moonlit pieces of music theater hit Valley stages this weekend. The Smith College Theatre Department premieres Moonlight on the Miskatonic, a musical based on the creepy tales of H. P. Lovecraft. And Pilgrim Theatre revives Moon Over Dark Street, a cabaret of...
Stagestruck: Eight Shows for the Price of Two
This weekend and next, two theater companies demonstrate, once again, the breadth and variety of Valley stages. In Greenfield, Silverthorne Theater Company opens a two-week run of “six unruly comedies” by America’s cheekiest stage satirist, Christopher Durang. In...
Stagestruck: Hometown Tales & Terrors
Walk down Main Street in any small American town and look around. There are the unassuming shopfronts and placid homes, holding private, ordinary lives. But behind the doors lie extraordinary secrets and dreams. Three plays this weekend in our not-so-ordinary Valley...
Stagestruck: Puppets in the Green Mountains
For two decades, Sandglass Theater, the justly world-renowned puppetry troupe headquartered in Putney, Vermont, has produced an international festival that serves as a gathering and showcase for masters of the form. The tenth biennial “Puppets in the Green Mountains”...
Stagestruck: Women in the Saddle
Hot on the heels of my recent rundown of women’s representation in the area’s summer theaters comes more encouraging evidence from some of the fall season’s first shows. The Majestic Theater is playing a cowboy musical in which the lead is not a boy. WAM Theater,...
Stagestruck: An Extraordinary Ordinary Man
Two years ago I reviewed A Fiery and Still Voice, a living-history performance at the William Cullen Bryant Homestead in Cummington, Mass. The delightfully engaging show by Enchanted Circle Theater is back for four Saturdays this fall – Sept. 8th & 15th and Oct....
Stagestruck: Minority Report — Women and people of color on summer-theater stages
Readers of this column will know my practice of periodically reporting on the progress (or not) in the representation of women and people of color in area theaters. The summer season has recently ended, so I’ve been making a tally of this summer’s shows. The news is...
Stagestruck: Physick and Physics at Shakespeare & Company
A few years ago, when I told my brother I was directing a production of As You Like It, he said, “That’s the one about Beatrice and Benedick, isn’t it?” Well, no, but the confusion is understandable. Several of Shakespeare’s comedies have interchangeable titles: As...
Stagestruck: At Barrington Stage, a revival and a premiere
Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield is ending its impressive summer season with a pair of productions, one celebrating a 50-year-old milestone, the other confronting our troubled present. On the mainstage, a lovingly rendered revival of West Side Story, running...
Stagestruck: End-of-summer shows in the Berkshires — food for fun and thought
When Shakespeare & Company first set up shop in the Berkshires, their mainstage was a greensward before a wooded glade at the Mount, Edith Wharton’s Lenox estate, with the audience seated on folding lawn chairs. That tradition has lately been revived, with outdoor...
Stagestruck: Dancing down Hubbard Street— 40 years young
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is a frequent and popular visitor to the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. This year, celebrating its 40th season, the company presents a quartet of works showcasing its history and its current 16-member troupe, one of the most technically...
Stagestruck: Three in the Hills
A trio of two-character plays now running in the Hilltowns and Berkshires offer a summer-season variety of subjects, styles, and even venues – a black-box theater, a converted town hall, a church sanctuary. Pauline Productions is dedicated to “producing and creating...
Stagestruck Abroad: Shakespeare’s Haunts, Part 2 — Stratford
Nowadays, Stratford-upon-Avon feels not so much like a town as a gift shop. The once-sleepy hamlet where William Shakespeare was born some 450 years ago, which he abandoned for a life on the London stage, has become a mercantile monument to Stratford’s most famous son...
Stagestruck Abroad: Shakespeare’s Haunts, part 1 — The Globe
When I was in England earlier this month, I saw four plays at the two venues most closely associated with William Shakespeare – his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon and the Globe playhouse on London’s South Bank. At the Globe, there was a gender-switching Hamlet and a...
Stagestruck: Compromises and Contradictions in Chester
A poster hanging in the lobby at Chester Theater Company points out common roots and themes connecting Islam, Judaism and Christianity – for example, the Archangel Gabriel figures in all three religions’ core legends. It serves as prelude to the current production,...
Stagestruck: Masters of Melody, Onstage at BTG
What happens when your music goes out of style? – when the teenagers are swooning over Elvis Presley instead of Frank Sinatra? If you’re Irving Berlin, and it’s Christmas Eve 1956, and the song at the top of the Hit Parade isn’t “White Christmas” but “Hound Dog,” you...
Dark and Light: Duality at the Hosmer Gallery
The Forbes Library is a handsome structure abutting the Smith College Campus at 20 West St. in Northampton. It’s stately and grand and at one time it was known as “the castle on the hill.” The grounds are perfectly manicured and the circular drive allows for easy...
Valley Show Girl: Rock Like It’s 1794
For my last column, I wrote about The Stone Church in Vermont, a church renovated into a performance venue. What are the chances I happen to find another one of those without knowing it until I show up? Well, I did. Enter the 1794 Meetinghouse in the center of the...
Stagestruck: At Shakespeare & Company, the Show Must, and Did, Go On
A theater story: For three years in the mid-’70s, Anthony Perkins starred in the long-running Broadway production of Equus, playing the psychiatrist Dr. Dysart (pause for Psycho jokes). Just before one matinee came an announcement: “Anthony Perkins will not be...
Stagestruck: Lessons in Survival
Two plays now running in Hartford are framed by resistance movements against political and economic oppression, and both carry weighty metaphors. At TheaterWorks through June 23, a lesson in global economics is tucked into a torn-from-the-headlines thriller, and at...
Art Review: Martha Armstrong: A Big Deal in a Little Town
Hatfield resident Martha Armstrong is exhibiting at the Oxbow Gallery in Northampton. Her collection of paintings, Friends and Family, is currently on display in the back gallery of the Pleasant Street venue. The back gallery at Oxbow is very small and intimate,...
The Soaring Beauty of Paul Goodnight’s Imagination
Given Paul Goodnight’s international stature, it’s difficult to understand the lack of fanfare and the dearth of coverage he receives when his work is exhibited at Rosemary Tracy Woods’ Art for The Soul Gallery in Springfield. Since 1984, Goodnight’s work has been...
The CDs You Gave Me: ‘Hush Money’ is pure catharsis
Last year, I reviewed psychedelic bluesy rock band, Old Flame, with their debut extended play (EP) “Wolf in the Heather.” Now, a year later the band has released a new six-song EP called “Hush Money” continuing to create political charged art rock that takes an...
Review – Doing Justice: Denise Beaudet’s Roots to Resistance
Going into Denise Beaudet’s exhibit Roots to Resistance at the New England Visionary Artists Museum, requires a bit of preparation. Beaudet, after all, has amassed a master’s course in global female activism. In her bountiful literature, her writings concerning...
Thoughts on Barb Hadden’s Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
Barb Hadden walks about the white walled Oxbow Gallery on Pleasant Street, contemplating the placements in her show at the Northampton artist collective. With two galleries, artist-members have a show in the large front gallery and a show in the back gallery. Hadden’s...
The CDs You Gave Me: Rob Maher’s ‘Man of Many Misses’ hits the mark
Northampton-based singer-songwriter Rob Maher’s debut 10-track album, “A Man of Many Misses,” is a an ode to the underdog and to overcoming life’s pains with a wry sense of humor and unshakable empathy. It’s a record that blends melancholy folk with haunting...
Basemental: Tundrastomper Cleans It Up
Before writing this column, I stopped by Tundrastomper’s band house near the border of Easthampton and Southampton. Bassist Andrew Jones was getting surgical with a vacuum in the suburban home’s awkwardly large bathroom. He then offered me a bowl of black beans, which...
Review: Sally Clegg’s Bundle curious and unique; UMass’ Hampden Gallery could use work
There are so many settings in which you can find art exhibitions: Cafes, restaurants, hospitals, hotels, and of course college campuses. UMass Amherst, as a matter of fact, has four galleries under the auspices of the Fine Arts Center. The Student Union Gallery,...
Lauren L. Anderson is Connecting Moments at Sam’s Pizzeria and Cafe in Northampton
Sam’s Pizzeria and Cafe is nestled in the 200 block on Main Street in downtown Northampton. Like its owner, Sam Harbey, the eatery is down to earth and friendly. “We’ve been here for 11 years in the same spot,” Harbey says sitting in one of the glossy wood benches...
The Face of Children’s Literature: Eighty Years of Caldecott Books
There are three exhibitions on display at the Eric Carle Museum this month, but the one that will tug at the book lover’s heartstrings is Eighty Years of Caldecott Books. It’s a collection of first edition Caldecott medal-winning children’s books that date from 1938...
Poste Nebuleux: Ben Banville’s Life in Art
Bernard “Ben” Banville’s life sounds as if it was an unfettered celebration of creativity. Born in Quebec, for many years Banville made his home in Greenfield. He was a musician, a photographer, and an artist who spent years on the Pioneer Valley artscape...
Blaise’s Bad Movie Guide: “Son of The Pink Panther” falls far from the tree
It may come as a surprise to my faithful readers that I actually own a few classy movies — notably, the well-regarded “Pink Panther” series starring the great Peter Sellers as Detective Inspector Clouseau. After Sellers’ death, the producers unwisely decided to try to...
Color and Heat: Pan American Prints at Smith College Museum of Art
The great mysteries of the southernmost countries of Pan America lie in the enormity of its territory, its rich history, and the shroud of chaos and human suffering. But Nobel-winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz beautifully sums up the artistic heritage of these nations....
Review: Forgotten Girls: Lives In Peril
Walking into the genteel Von Auersperg Gallery, one is reminded that Western Massachusetts is truly a bastion for visual arts venues. One is also reminded of how many choose to host phlegmatic collections of New England landscapes rather than those that may court...
Cannabis Consultant Ezra Parzybok Talks Marijuana as Medicine in New Book
As its medical uses evolve and marijuana becomes legally available for recreation in Massachusetts, an area cannabis consultant is working to fill an information hole he thinks is undermining its use. “In our culture, marijuana is known for all the bad reasons because...
Fat Bradley EP: A Funk Rock Voyage
Northampton-based funk sextet Fat Bradley’s new self-titled five-song extended play (EP) recording is an acid jazz fusion of instrumental kaleidoscopic funky rock that grooves along with frantic energy and a sense of reckless abandon that’s downright entertaining....
Blaise’s Bad Movie Guide: The Demons of Ludlow
As I type this column, it is not yet Halloween, but by the time it sees print the holiday will be over. I’m still in a scary-movie mode, watching such fare as “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.” But maybe I should switch gears and see what’s available now on TV....
Valley Show Girl: A Bloody Good Time
Later this month, Chicopee’s Maximum Capacity will close and open at some point in the future with new ownership. Will there still be shows? If so, will they include metal/rock shows? Only time will tell. But in the meantime, you still have a chance to get to “one...
Review: Terrible Yarn, but Moving Art, “The Scarf” Displays a Noble Struggle
As I wait for Brattleboro artist Joan O’Beirne to arrive at her exhibit “The Scarf,” showing now through Feb. 11 at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, curator Mara Williams brings a museum guest into the showroom. She gestures to the (at least) 12-foot orange...
Blaise’s Bad Movie Guide: The Crawling Eye
I recently had the opportunity to visit the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem and view an exhibit by Kirk Hammett. “Kirk who?” you ask. Why, none other than the lead guitarist for the thrash metal band Metallica. Can’t say I was ever a fan, but Hammett’s collection on...
Your Hot Steaming Guide to Local Mac & Cheese From Springfield to Brattleboro
The weather is getting colder, so it’s time for us New Englanders to look inward for some of that warm toasty comfort — literally. Fill yourself with some happy via one of everyone’s favorite comfort foods, mac ‘n’ cheese (even the dish’s name is nice ‘n’ cozy). At...
Review: Art in the Orchard is a Museum that Breathes
Captivating. Whimsical. An idea at once exotic and comforting. Art in the Orchard is a curatorial triumph striking a perfect balance between art and nature. This was my first visit to Art in the Orchard, which has been hosted by Park Hill Orchard in Easthampton in odd...
Stories From The Stoop a Nuanced Look at Growing Up in 1960s New York
I first met Steve Bernstein when I was working at a small library in Marlborough, New Hampshire, a little more than a decade ago. In the newsletter I put a note in for a writers’ group without knowing if anyone from the little town would show up. Steve was among the...
The Sacred Space in Between: Auferoth Exhibit in Easthampton
The paintings in Susannah Auferoth’s exhibit at the Grubbs Gallery in Easthampton, have one thing in common: They all use the template of three exact lines, two thick, the middle one thin, in colors with cavernous depth. But that’s it. Within this framework Auferoth...
Valley Show Girl: Music That Got Me Through White Supremacy News
The white supremacy horror show that happened earlier this month in Charlottesville really got to me. That Sunday, I barely left my bed. I mainly watched stupid chick flicks to occupy my mind with less meaningful things. After dinner however, I took my 6-year old son...E-Edition
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