Stage
by Chris Rohmann | May 31, 2012 | Stage
With the issue of teen bullying now (belatedly) a national subject of concern, it wasn’t quite a surprise to find two plays performed in the area last week dealing with the topic. While The Strength of Stones, at Smith College, and As It Appears, at Easthampton...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 7, 2012 | Stage
I dipped into The American Clock a couple of weeks ago for a column on plays set in the Thirties. Intrigued by the play’s theme and scope, I’ve been digging a little deeper into it. It’s a show I’d previously only heard of, written by one of...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 14, 2012 | Stage
The summer theater season has just begun, and I’ve already seen what I hope will be the most exasperating play of the year. Lungs is the inaugural production in the newly renamed Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Art Center—Barrington Stage Company’s...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 21, 2012 | Stage
“The thing about the First Folio,” says Sheila Siragusa, “is the fact that the text is such a big fucking mess.” But that’s precisely what she loves about it. The first compilation of Shakespeare’s works, published in 1623,...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 28, 2012 | Stage
Circle Mirror Transformation is the name of a theater game in which a sound and motion begun by one participant is mirrored by the whole group, then transformed by someone else into another movement, and so on around the circle. It’s also the title of the play...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 5, 2012 | Stage
Of all the major theaters in the Berkshires, Shakespeare & Company feels the most like a family. Many of the staff and performers live and work there year-round and many of the staff are also performers. Over the years, the company has developed a core ensemble...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 12, 2012 | Stage
With most regular ticket prices at the major Berkshire summer theaters falling in the $50-$60 range and even smaller theaters’ tickets pegged at several times the cost of a movie, the fact that these prices are minuscule by Broadway standards doesn’t cut...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 19, 2012 | Stage
The last production I saw of The Importance of Being Ernest was spoiled by the actors struggling to get their American tongues around Oscar Wilde’s so veddy English epigrams and their bodies into appropriately Victorian attitudes. For theaters on this side of...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 26, 2012 | Stage
“There are three companies in residence here right now,” says Byam Stevens, sitting in his tiny office at the Chester Theatre Company. When I visited recently, the first show of the season, Animals Out of Paper, was nearing the end of its run; the next...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 26, 2012 | Stage
It’s no coincidence that the Berkshire Theatre Group (formerly Berkshire Theatre Festival) is following A Chorus Line, its season opener, with A Class Act, a pastiche musical celebrating the life and songs of Edward Kleban. Kleban wrote the lyrics for the...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 2, 2012 | Stage
“Theaters that program more conservatively to deal with declining audiences are faring poorly,” says Sabrina Hamilton, citing recent national attendance studies, “while the more adventurous ones are actually succeeding.” As artistic director of...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 9, 2012 | Stage
It’s called The Meta/Pina Project: Blind Dreamers. “Pina” for the visionary German choreographer Pina Bausch, whose tanztheater (dance-theater) was fashioned from natural movement, spoken phrases and everyday interactions. “Meta” because...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 9, 2012 | Stage
These days there’s more “company” than Shakespeare at Shakespeare & Company. The season’s eight-play roster of plays includes only two by the troupe’s eponym. Those, however, are twin pillars of the canon: the towering tragedy King...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 16, 2012 | Stage
This is a little embarrassing. I usually see just about everything on our region’s summer theater circuit, but this year I got a late start, missed some of the early shows and am still catching up. So far, I’ve managed to at least sample the seasonal fare...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 23, 2012 | Stage
Three of the four plays I saw last weekend were world premieres, and one was the premiere of a brand-new translation of a classic. In three of them, the safe, comfortable world of a well-to-do woman is upended by an unexpected turn of events, and in the fourth, the...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 30, 2012 | Stage
It’s not as incongruous as you may think that Shakespeare & Company, rooted in the works of that Renaissance genius, is premiering a play about the 20th-century jazzman Louis Armstrong. For one thing, Satchmo at the Waldorf, which opens next week, joins...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 6, 2012 | Stage
I’ve been away. On vacation. This is news only because it’s the first time I’ve left Western Mass. during the summer theater season since, let’s see, oh, yes, ever. I went to the Cape and did nothing but loll and laze, sun and swim. And, okay,...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 13, 2012 | Stage
It’s a playwriting axiom that one of the mainsprings of drama is the notion of concealing and revealing: guilty secrets, bloody ambitions, baffling mysteries, furtive passions. All four of the plays I saw in the last full week of the region’s summer...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 20, 2012 | Stage
“Doing a lot of adult work and with the heavy themes that are sometimes in that work, it’s nice to just relax into a show. We don’t always need to be thinking about something.” That’s Ines Zeller Bass, co-director of Sandglass Theater....
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 20, 2012 | Stage
Of the multiple performers I admired this past summer, four stick in my mind because of their multiplicity. Three of them were in multiple productions, and one brought a contrary pair of personalities together in a single one-man show. Coincidentally, perhaps, all...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 27, 2012 | Stage
Three years ago, Britain’s National Theatre launched an ambitious experiment: high-definition satellite broadcasts of live performances beamed from its home on London’s South Bank to movie screens around the world. One of these was the Amherst Cinema, and...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 4, 2012 | Stage
My review of the Theater Project’s first production of Blood Brothers, back in 1998, has become part of the company’s backstage lore. I didn’t much like the piece, but acknowledged that the rest of the audience absolutely loved it. Since then,...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 11, 2012 | Stage
Two one-person shows at opposite ends of the state, both based on verbatim texts, present opposing takes on the American Dream—one the autobiography of a refugee from the Nazi terror who grabbed the dream, the other reporting from an encampment of refugees...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 18, 2012 | Stage
In September, after the summer theaters wind up, there’s a lull. Then, just as the leaves are turning, comes an explosion of new shows. In the past two weeks, half a dozen productions have opened in the region, and this weekend another half dozen hit the stage....
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 23, 2012 | Stage
For the past few years, Shakespeare & Company has followed up its summer season of hefty fare, both classical and modern, with fall productions of what Jonathan Croy calls “comedic spookies.” These belong to the popular new genre of quick-change...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 23, 2012 | Stage
“For many young people in the computer age, massive multi-player online video games become a home more real than the physical world around them,” says director Dan Morbyrne. In the dark comedy Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, the teenagers in a...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 23, 2012 | Stage
A middle-aged man, dealing badly with his Oklahoma parents’ refusal to attend his recent same-sex marriage, sets off on a cross-country journey in search of vintage Fiestaware. The colorful ceramic dishes, all the rage in the ’30s and ’40s, have now...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 23, 2012 | Stage
To Ben Jonson, “gentle Shakespeare” was “not of an age, but for all time.” And indeed, the Swan of Avon is always in production somewhere, not just in the summertime festivals but on stages year-round. A case in point—three, maybe four...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 30, 2012 | Stage
Kristen van Ginhoven, co-founder of WAM Theatre and director of The Old Mezzo, told me recently, “It’s a big risk, a new play and all. But may as well risk big if one is going to risk!” Indeed, WAM itself is a pretty daring venture. Taking its...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 5, 2012 | Stage
You’ll have to hurry if you’re going to catch either or (I recommend) both of the plays now running in downtown Hartford. One was a sensation on Broadway last season and the other, a brand-new musical, is certainly headed there. Venus in Fur, at...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 5, 2012 | Stage
This year, the UMass Department of Theater celebrates its 40th anniversary. The season is dedicated to one of the department’s founding faculty, Doris Abramson, who taught there from 1973 until her retirement in 1987 (she died in 2008). In her honor, this is a...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 12, 2012 | Stage
One of the world’s most famous images is Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” the drawing of a naked figure, arms and legs extended, fitting perfectly into a square superimposed on a circle. It’s considered the model of ideal human...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 12, 2012 | Stage
It’s not only about the performances, says Linda McInerney, producer of this weekend’s Double Take Fringe Festival in Greenfield. It’s about spinning and knotting threads of community, about arts-based economic revitalization, about reclaiming public...
by Advocate Staff | Nov 19, 2012 | Stage
The Majestic Theater presents Barefoot in the Park, the classic Neil Simon play, directed by Rand Foerster. See www.majestictheater.com for tickets and showtimes. Nov. 22-28, $19-28, Majestic Theater, 131 Elm St., West Springfield, (413) 747-7797.
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 19, 2012 | Stage
In Shakespeare’s Tempest, the magician Prospero conjures up a storm that shipwrecks his enemies on the island where they marooned him years ago. In Kidd Pivot’s Tempest Replica, Prospero carefully folds a paper boat and gives it to his servant spirit,...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 27, 2012 | Stage
A couple of weeks ago in these pages, I wrote about the then-upcoming Double Take Fringe Festival in Greenfield. Held over the weekend of Nov. 9-10, it was a two-day potpourri of short performances staged in a variety of venues all over downtown, showcasing the...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 3, 2012 | Stage
She’s not a real princess, but Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic tale of a little rich girl, thrust into poverty and servitude when her father suddenly dies broke, has all the ingredients of a Cinderella story. Sara Crewe: A Little Princess is the...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 3, 2012 | Stage
D’Lo is a compound of contradictions. And that’s exactly the point—the point of his one-person show Ramble-Ations, and of D’Lo himself. Even the male pronoun is a contested term in the diverse identity of this self-described “queer Tamil...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 3, 2012 | Stage
I’m not an actor. I’m much more comfortable in the director’s chair and the critic’s aisle seat than in the spotlight. When someone asks, “Do you also act?” my answer is, “Not if I can help it.” But every once in a while...
by Tom Sturm | Dec 10, 2012 | Stage
This holiday season the Monson-based Greene Room Productions offers not one but two performances of Arctic intrigue. The first is an adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg’s classic children’s book The Polar Express, in which a doubting boy winds up at...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 17, 2012 | Stage
Working at Macy’s over Christmas made David Sedaris a household name—in NPR households, anyway. The gruesomely funny tale of his temp job as an elf in SantaLand, first broadcast in 1992, has become a seasonal staple on public radio stations. The SantaLand...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 17, 2012 | Stage
East Street Ballet presents the program Holiday Jewels this week in Hadley, featuring ballet and modern works by Claire Maurey, Tai Jimenez and Onalie Arts. Dec. 22-23, 2 p.m., $8/kids under 12, $10/students and seniors, $12/general, East Street Dance Center Studio...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 17, 2012 | Stage
Tom McCabe has a problem with A Christmas Carol. He’s directed two stage versions of the holiday classic, and he says he’s always wondered about old Ebenezer Scrooge’s midnight conversion in the company of the ghostly Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come....
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 21, 2012 | Stage
The headline in the Gazette read “Nonprofits seek giving windfall on 12/12/12,” and the subject lines in my overflowing in-box said things like “Please support our work on 12/12/12—here’s how!” Last Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012, was...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 28, 2012 | Stage
In the curtain speech before a performance of his production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Smith College a few weeks ago, director Daniel Kramer said he considered us, the audience, “part of the cast”—an integral component of the production,...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 7, 2013 | Stage
Playwright Daniel R. Lillford says The Cabbage Patch “is not a big play.” Director Kristen van Ginhoven, too, calls it “a little play.” Little, that is, in the sense that it circles around a single mysterious event and a handful of interlocking...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 7, 2013 | Stage
One-person shows are a familiar landmark in the theatrical landscape. Last year I saw over a dozen of them. But there were also a dozen two-character plays on my itinerary. That’s another popular low-tech form, one that has quite a different feel and focus than...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 15, 2013 | Stage
The National Theatre Live series of high-def satellite broadcasts beams live performances from Britain’s premiere stage to cinema screens around the world, featuring classy British plays and the classiest English stars, from Helen Mirren to Derek Jacobi...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 15, 2013 | Stage
Music may be the food of love, but it’s also fuel for drama. Not even counting opera and musical theater, where it’s the main course, music provides everything from transition interludes to emotional accents to thematic underscores in any number of...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 15, 2013 | Stage
Mother Holle is a Brothers Grimm story, brought to life this week at the Eric Carle Museum by the Harstbrook Marionettes. Jan. 12, 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., free, Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, 125 West Bay Road, Amherst, (413) 658-1100.
by Tom Sturm | Jan 21, 2013 | Stage
Chicopee’s Hu Ke Lau welcomes the sometimes controversial but usually newsworthy 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan for an evening of stand-up comedy. Jan. 18, 7:30 and 11 p.m., $43, Hu Ke Lau, 705 Memorial Drive, Chicopee, (800) 745-3000.
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 29, 2013 | Stage
As Yugoslavia split apart in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the breakaway state of Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered four years of cataclysmic horrors. A conflict over territory claimed by neighboring Serbia became a bloodbath of ethnic...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 4, 2013 | Stage
Ira Levin’s 1978 mystery-thriller Deathtrap is a popular perennial with summer stock and community theaters. That popularity is underscored this month when two separate productions perform back-to-back at nearly neighboring theaters. This week it opens for a...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 4, 2013 | Stage
Think of it as Second City meets Saturday Night Live. Upright Citizens Brigade mixes long- and short-form improv with SNL-flavored sketch comedy. Not surprising, since the company originated in Chicago and has launched the likes of Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Rob Riggle...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 4, 2013 | Stage
As its name suggests, Magnet Theatre seeks to draw people together. In today’s South Africa, that means connecting people of different races, ethnicities, cultures and language groups, as the country continues the still-agonizing process of negotiating a viable...
by James Heflin | Feb 11, 2013 | Stage
This week, the Philip Hayes Dean play Paul Robeson arrives at the Theater Project, and stars local musicians Floyd Patterson II and Marcus Pitts. Though Robeson is often remembered for his remarkable low-end rendition of “Ol’ Man River” in Showboat,...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 18, 2013 | Stage
These days, Kristen van Ginhoven is one busy theater artist. “It’s feast or famine in our field, isn’t it?” she observed to me recently. Right now, the energetic co-founder of WAM Theater is involved in no less than three of the events...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 25, 2013 | Stage
If you don’t already know Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, the company’s name is sufficient clue to its unique approach to dance: eclectic and athletic, infusing a multitude of styles and cultures and drawing from an international cadre of...
by James Heflin | Feb 25, 2013 | Stage
The New England Center for Circus Arts teaches hard-to-come-by skills, things like flying via trapeze. This weekend, the Center offers a major display of those skills as students, instructors and guests present trapeze, aerial silk, partner balancing, juggling, and...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 25, 2013 | Stage
So I’m at A.P.E. Gallery on Northampton’s Main Street a week or so ago, and I run into Sabrina Hamilton. She’s artistic director of Ko Theater Works, a 22-year-old Valley-based company that champions alternative theater. We’re both here to see...
