Stage
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 27, 2009 | Stage
This summer at Shakespeare & Company, a season of edgy contemporary works has unfolded in the company's Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre. It's an intimate, rough-hewn space in S&Co's new, $10 million Production and Performing Arts Center, a former...
by Advocate Staff | Nov 12, 2009 | Stage
Putting the "mock" back in democracy, The Capitol Steps invade the Pioneer Valley with their new tour, "Obama Mia," featuring political satire that skewers both sides of the aisle. You'll be singing along to their spoofs of current news issues...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 12, 2009 | Stage
A sweet, pure voice floats over the auditorium of the Academy of Music. The song, from a musical of the '90s, fills the air of Northampton's venerable old palace and bounces off the empty seats.Yes, empty seats. There's only a handful of people in the...
by Michael Cimaomo | Nov 12, 2009 | Stage
When the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia in the '70s, artists became targets. Many perished or fled the country in fear. Among those who fled were the creators of the Angkor Dance Troupe. In 1986, two dance teachers and a handful of dancers (who learned the...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 19, 2009 | Stage
When we think of Boston theater, we're likely to think first of the downtown touring houses—the Wilbur, the Colonial, the Schubert—and the university-connected institutions, the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard and the Huntington at B.U....
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 19, 2009 | Stage
Hartford has seen more than its fair share of sprawling generational dramas this year. We've just had Horton Foote's three-part, nine-hour Orphans' Home Cycle at Hartford Stage, which earlier in the year also produced Foote's Dividing the Estate, a...
by Michael Cimaomo | Dec 1, 2009 | Stage
As part of the Arts at AIC series, the Garret Players perform the multi-faceted play East of the Sun and West of the Moon. This enchanting adaptation of a Norwegian folk tale details the travels of teenage girl, Tove, who meets a mystical bear that leads her away on a...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 3, 2009 | Stage
“We’re trying to recreate some of the excitement, some of the fun, some of the anarchy and sensuality that we have at the Globe.” That’s Dominic Dromgoole, director of Shakespeare’s Love Labour’s Lost, which played in London’s...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 10, 2009 | Stage
Curiosity is a modern take on the age-old Greek myth of Pandora and a mysterious box. Miguel Romero, the creator of the project, traveled to Asia and Europe to work with artisans in crafting emotive masks and antique shadow puppets and to study Japan's bunraku...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 17, 2009 | Stage
Since the moment of its publication in December 1843, A Christmas Carol has epitomized the holiday spirit—a time when goodwill flows like wassail and, as Scrooge's nephew Fred says, "Men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts...
by Stephanie Kraft and Michael Cimaomo | Dec 17, 2009 | Stage
In the throes of financial meltdown, who would have the nerve to take an opera from regional to professional in the semi-rural reaches of Western Massachusetts? Put a 33-year-old company started up by a fellow who ran a hardware store—Richard...
by Jillian Fink | Dec 17, 2009 | Stage
New England Youth Theatre (NEYT) presents a production of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory based on Roald Dahl's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. To promote the show, NEYT is selling Golden Tickets inside of chocolate bars around Brattleboro. The...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 7, 2010 | Stage
The Royal National Theatre of Great Britain played a one-night stand in the Valley last month. It went so well they’re making a return visit this Sunday. The performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet was, of course, the latest in the NT Live...
by Michael Cimaomo | Jan 7, 2010 | Stage
It's that time of year again; time to stuff your "bah-humbugs" in a sack and raise a toast of good cheer to sweet Tiny Tim (no, not the guy with the ukulele). A Christmas Carol returns to the Northampton stage this holiday season, starring Emmy...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 14, 2010 | Stage
Catherine isn’t very nice. She’s snarky, contemptuous, volatile and bitingly sarcastic. She’s not very happy, either. Here she is, on her 25th birthday, drinking alone. Well, not exactly alone. Her father is keeping her company. Her father, a...
by Michael Cimaomo | Jan 14, 2010 | Stage
Just as most New Englanders are settling in for another long winter, a play has arrived that's perfect for a chilly night. John Cariani's Almost Maine takes place under the watchful eyes of the Northern Lights in the fictional community of Almost. The area is...
by Jillian Fink | Jan 22, 2010 | Stage
A musical of biblical proportions, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is presented this January by Amherst Leisure Services. The show, written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, follows the story of Joseph, a father's favorite child whose claim to fame...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 28, 2010 | Stage
I haven’t seen Runt of the Litter, but the premise is intriguing, even for someone, like me, who has zero interest in football. At heart, Bo Eason’s one-man show is that staple of sports fables, the underdog-overcomes-adversity-to-make-good story. The...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 29, 2010 | Stage
As a young gay man, Richard Vaden is interested in what his generation has learned—and hasn't—about "what being gay is supposed to mean." As a student at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, he interviewed 17 young gay men and turned their...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 2, 2010 | Stage
Seven years ago this month, Spalding Gray, who revolutionized the monologue form with Swimming to Cambodia and other intensely personal performance pieces, and who had suffered from depression all his life, stepped off the Staten Island ferry into the waters of New...
by James Heflin | Feb 4, 2010 | Stage
You can have your Squiggles the Clown and Hondo the Magnificent. It takes a clown of bigger aspirations to dub himself Avner the Eccentric. Avner Eisenberg is indeed a clown of eccentric tendencies, offering physical comedy, acts of audacious balancing and a mix of...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 11, 2010 | Stage
Hamlet is dying. Fatally pierced by Laertes' poisoned rapier, the Prince of Denmark draws his breath in pain to speak his immortal last line:"Rosebud."The two other corpses on the stage are twitching with laughter. The line isn't in...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 11, 2010 | Stage
The Vagina Monologues is an international phenomenon. Since its birth in 1998, Eve Ensler's compilation of women's reflections on their most private part has become an annual event, with performances in hundreds of schools, colleges, community venues and...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 18, 2010 | Stage
Imagine this scene: It's 1960, and John F. Kennedy is running for president. In a New York hotel room, he is strategizing with his brother and closest advisor, Robert Kennedy, about courting "the Negro vote." JFK is annoyed that baseball hero Jackie...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 18, 2010 | Stage
Everyman is the archetype of medieval theater. The 15th-century play follows a typical, flawed human in his search for suitable companions to accompany him on his journey toward death. In the end, the moral is that only Good Deeds will see you successfully into the...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 25, 2010 | Stage
"In the spring, a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of …" sex, suicide, masturbation, wet dreams, abortion—and other young men.Frank Wedekind's daring play Spring Awakening was years ahead of its time—so far ahead that it...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 4, 2010 | Stage
The liaisons in Les Liaisons Dangereuses really are dangerous. In Christopher Hampton’s 1980s adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s 1780s epistolary novel of seduction and deceit, “the game” of sexual power and intrigue destroys two lives...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 11, 2010 | Stage
The cross-pollination of global cultures that gave rise to the omnibus genre known as world music has some equivalents in the dance world. This week, two different examples can be seen on area stages. With roots in Indonesia and the Pacific Islands, these visiting...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 18, 2010 | Stage
A Man for All Seasons is a departure from the usual run of contemporary comedies, musicals and heartwarming dramas on the Theater Project’s stage. Robert Bolt’s 1961 play is a period piece, a doublet-and-hose costume drama written in elegant but not...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 18, 2010 | Stage
“The need to have a home and family is gone from most of the world,” mourns the central character in The Trip to Bountiful. She’s Carrie Watts, whose blissful childhood in a Texas farm town (its name deriving from the bounty of its crops) gave way to...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 25, 2010 | Stage
“We live on land long trod. We admire the landscapes the deer ran upon, the natives named and cared for, and our ancestors escaped to. And the landscape allows the dreaming.” Earlier this month, Double Edge Theatre hosted one of its Sunday morning...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 26, 2010 | Stage
During this winter of economic discontent, I’ve been talking with summer theater managers around the region to see how they did last year and, as spring turns toward summer, how they’re approaching the upcoming season. The area’s two Equity companies...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 1, 2010 | Stage
“This is the fourth revision of the 10th draft of my play,” said Julian Olf, drawing an appreciative laugh from his audience. Most of the people who crowded into a Northampton living room on a recent Wednesday evening were playwrights, directors and...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 1, 2010 | Stage
It’s not a theater by any stretch. The low ceiling, whitewashed brick walls, folding chairs and bare-bulb lighting make for a less than salubrious performance experience. But the basement of Thornes Marketplace in Northampton, formerly occupied by Dynamite...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 2, 2010 | Stage
“This goes out to those who don’t get a chanceTo raise their voices ’cause of the problems we have.We’ve been held back, we can’t let that go on.Now it’s time for us to speak outLet them know who we areAnd show them where we...
by James Heflin | Apr 8, 2010 | Stage
No matter the time of day, watch an old Mystery Science Theater 3,000 episode and it feels like the middle of the night. The show was set primarily on the Satellite of Love, an awkward-looking bone of a spaceship, where Joel Robinson (series creator Joel Hodgson) and...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 8, 2010 | Stage
A lot of us conceive of Western Massachusetts in terms of the cozy, college-crammed, latte-happy Valley. But the Real World is nearer than we like to think, and it’s alive and well in the neighboring hilltowns. Or maybe not all that well, judging from Lucy...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 9, 2010 | Stage
Back in the day, before Andrew Lloyd Webber got lush, he and the under-appreciated Tim Rice wrote a tuneful rock opera with the cheeky title Jesus Christ, Superstar. It had all the life-and-death anguish, impassioned arias and massed choristers of grand opera, set to...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 15, 2010 | Stage
One is considered Shakespeare’s most “masculine” play. The other takes place in two largely female domains: feminist academia and the minimum-wage workplace. This weekend, those contradictory worlds clash in two productions on area campuses, both of...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 15, 2010 | Stage
“But suddenly,” says the narrator of Anton Chekhov’s satirical short story “The Death of a Clerk,” about to describe an unexpected, life-changing sneeze. And then he pauses. “This ‘but suddenly’ occurs often in...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 16, 2010 | Stage
There’s a new kid on the cyberblock, a child of mixed parentage and ambivalent identity. The Good Ear Review is an online literary magazine that celebrates the art of the dramatic monologue—short one-character sketches that capture character, place and...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 22, 2010 | Stage
One man is running for his life, and one is running his life into the ground. One of them has the look of a classic vigilante cop from TV and movies, but he’s no knight in dirty armor. The other is the hero of a classic spy thriller who now finds himself in a...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 23, 2010 | Stage
The 10-minute play is a relative newcomer to the contemporary stage, but it has grown like ivy. Numerous festivals, how-to courses and script collections are devoted to the mini-genre, which has also spawned a particularly addictive variant. The format’s...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 29, 2010 | Stage
“There’s a great belief in Amherst that conversation and dialogue can actually produce change,” says Zak Berkman. “The idea that if you can get everyone in the room to talk about something, it can affect the community as a whole.” Berkman...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 29, 2010 | Stage
The Metropolitan Opera was the first to burst the bounds of its own stage to stream high-definition digital transmissions of live performances to cinema screens around the country. Then Britain’s National Theatre started beaming plays from its home on...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 30, 2010 | Stage
DUMBO is one of those New York City revival neighborhoods with acronymic names and nouveau hip reputations. Nestled literally in the twin shadows of the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, DUMBO (for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) boasts gentrified galleries,...
by Chris Rohmann | May 6, 2010 | Stage
“Gould and Stearns have long had at least three sides,” says the Gould half of that duo. They are consummate clowns and committed social activists, as well as having distinct individual careers. This weekend, Peter Gould and Stephen Stearns celebrate 30...
by Chris Rohmann | May 6, 2010 | Stage
If music be the food of love… vo-de-oh-doh! In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, young Viola, shipwrecked on an alien shore, disguises herself as a boy and becomes the go-between for the local duke, Orsino, in his fruitless courtship of the local countess,...
by Matthew Dube | May 7, 2010 | Stage
They say that ignorance is bliss, so I shut my mind off so I could attain Nirvana. I think I shut my mind off for too long because I attained Foo Fighters instead. Local stand-up comedian Sharkee Katz—aka Daniel Linton—didn’t make the cut during his...
by Chris Rohmann | May 13, 2010 | Stage
Even before he graduated high school, Daniel Plimpton was ready to hit the road. In 2008, while still a senior at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts charter school, he auditioned for the national tour of the musical Spring Awakening. Two years and four callbacks...
by Chris Rohmann | May 14, 2010 | Stage
The title itself might raise a couple of eyebrows. And the content of Tricky Wicked Bitch could elevate them a little more—especially because this award-winning play, written by a Smith College junior, has been chosen as the production for graduation weekend,...
by Chris Rohmann | May 20, 2010 | Stage
The title alone should be enough to get your attention: How to Be a Lesbian in 10 Days or Less. It’s one of five short solo works written and performed by women, comprising a two-state festival with an equally whimsical title, O Solo Mama Mia! And for this...
by Chris Rohmann | May 21, 2010 | Stage
Why do you laugh when I’m myself?Not that funny kind of laugh but the hurtful one.Why do I go home feeling hurt every dayuntil pain overcomes my whole bodyand tears through my brain…again and again, until I almost believe your lies. Narelle Thomas, a...
by Chris Rohmann | May 27, 2010 | Stage
When the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School moved from temporary digs in Hadley—a funky, improvised assortment of rented accommodations—into a shiny new purpose-built facility in South Hadley, the students had a saying: “I used to go to...
by Chris Rohmann | May 27, 2010 | Stage
Most of the stage shows I attend are comparatively restrained affairs, with actors sticking to their scripts and the audience sitting attentively. But last Saturday was an altogether different theatrical experience. It was casual, noisy, cheeky, unpredictable and...
by Chris Rohmann | May 28, 2010 | Stage
Their venues are unusual, their aesthetics unorthodox, aimed at upending conventional theater practice. And the shows these two companies open this week and next tell us as much about the theaters themselves as they do about the human dramas they depict. This weekend,...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 3, 2010 | Stage
“Different times, different prohibitions,” says the proprietress of The Well. It’s 1956, and this daughter of a Prohibition-era bootlegger runs a Chicago nightclub catering to lesbians. Vivian is one of the five characters, all women, in Pulp, a...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 3, 2010 | Stage
The Theater Project has generally filled the hot-weather lull between its nine-month seasons with concerts and musical cabarets. This summer adds a full theatrical production, Stones in His Pockets, a two-man play about a couple of locals in rural Ireland...
by Michael Cimaomo | Jun 3, 2010 | Stage
Dance fans longing for a peek at the new generation of ballet artists should get a treat when the Dance Theatre of Harlem Ensemble (celebrating its 40th anniversary) appears as part of Jacob’s Pillow Dance 2010 Festival. Its program, the group’s first...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 3, 2010 | Stage
Zero Mostel was a larger-than-life personality and an outsize talent. Jim Brochu is no featherweight either. As a youth, Brochu idolized that rhinoceros of an entertainer, then grew into a body that rivals Mostel’s impressive physique, and now has created a...
