Stage
Stagestruck: Lives on the Line
In her “Detroit Trilogy” of plays, Dominique Morisseau looks at black lives in that once-vibrant city through the lens of three distinct eras and groups of people. Paradise Blue takes place in a 1949 jazz club in the city’s historic Black Bottom district, which is...
Stagestruck: Shakespearean Double Act
Think of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead as fan fiction – Tom Stoppard’s contribution to the “greatest-play-ever-written” phenomenon. That is, Hamlet. In fact, though they were written centuries apart (around 1599 and 1966, respectively), the two make a...
Stagestruck: Art as Activism – Creative tactics at KO Festival
The KO Festival of Performance opened last weekend, kicking off a diverse five-week season clustered around the theme “Tactics for Trying Times.” First up was Jimmy & Lorraine, written by Talvin Wilks and developed with Hartford’s HartBeat Ensemble. The playwright...
Stagestruck: The Foreigner Hits Close To Home
There’s a disclaimer of sorts in Jack Neary’s director’s note for The Foreigner, New Century Theatre’s season opener, playing through this weekend in its temporary digs at PVPA, the area’s performing arts high school in South Hadley. In it, Neary acknowledges that...
At Play: All Things Scottish and Great
Get your Scot on at the 24th annual Glasgow Lands Scottish Festival Saturday at Look Park in Northampton. The day-long event is jammed with all things Celtic and “tidy” (that’s Scottish slang for excellent). The day will feature Scottish music, athletic feats of...
Wizard of Oz Performed by Plucky PaintBox Theatre
Do You Represent the Lollipop Guild? After more than 70 years since the film’s release (and more than 100 since the book’s), is there any more magic to be wrung from The Wizard of Oz? PaintBox Theatre has answered this jaded question with a resounding,...
Stagestruck: Stellar Casts Overcome Awkward Plot Points at Chester and Williamstown Theatres
Are we finally breaking through the color bar in American theater? Is the tokenism represented by theaters programming one “diverse” play during Black History Month giving way to broader representation and bolder casting choices? Judging from the area’s summer theater...
Stagestruck: Song & Dance
Two shows now running in the Berkshires are rooted in the past but right up to the minute. Both Tireless, playing this week at Jacob’s Pillow, and Ragtime, at Barrington Stage through July 15, take their inspiration from the music of a bygone era while inviting us,...
Stagestruck: Brother/Sister Act — The New Theresa Rebeck Play Gets World Debut in VT
The publicity for Downstairs, which opened at the Dorset (VT) Theatre Festival last week, gives rather short shrift to the fact that it’s a world premiere by the prolific Theresa Rebeck, whose plays Bad Dates and Mauritius are also being produced in the region this...
Long Live the Staycation! Why Leave Western Mass?
Hanging around the house is something we all do, but usually in an unfocused, squished-between-chores-and-obligations sort of way. But when you stay home for vacation, your dwelling can become a sanctuary, free from the day-to-day grind. If you can’t afford to get out...
Stagestruck: Fowl Play(s)
“Birds of a feather flock together,” as the saying goes, but that’s no excuse for these two avian-themed plays to be running at the same time in this area. They are entirely different species. The Birds, at Barrington Stage Company, is a claustrophobic thriller, while...
Stagestruck: Mayflies and “Mill Girls”
It has been described as “theatrical mayhem” and “controlled madness,” “extreme theater” and “a mayfly” — the latter because it’s here and gone in a day. The popular annual event is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying for the dozens of theater folk who take part...
Stagestruck: “Million Dollar” Duo
As it happens, two different productions of the same show open on area stages on the same day this week. On Wednesday, Million Dollar Quartet premieres in the Berkshire Theatre Group’s Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge, and the Majestic Theater in West Springield...
Stagestruck: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Alive! and Playing in Amherst – Times Two
“We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.” That line, spoken by a traveling player in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, could well be the elevator pitch...
Stagestruck: Radical Notions, ‘Kunstler’ and ‘Heartbreak House’
In my column in last week’s Advocate, a preview of the Valley’s summer-theater season, I reported that many of the area’s upcoming shows reflect, indirectly or explicitly, “the political landscape we are all traversing these days.” Sure enough, the first two summer...
Summer Stage Preview, Part II: Theaters on the Move
Editor’s Note: Here’s the Summer Stage Preview Part I, about the Berkshires. These days, Sam Rush often finds himself using the punning phrase “Home is where the art is.” That’s because his company, New Century Theatre, having lost its longtime home at...
Summer Stage Preview — Part I: The Berkshires
Most theaters in this region have only two seasons: summer and the rest of the year. None of the area’s professional companies are truly year-round. Some focus on intensive summer repertories of multiple shows with two- and three-week runs, while others produce only...
Theater: ‘Shipwrecked!’ You Had Me at Giant Killer Octopus
You Had Me at Giant Killer Octopus Right now, in Trump’s post-truth America, is an excellent time to stage Shipwrecked! The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (as told by himself). The play is based on the grandiose stories of a Victorian huckster who fills in...
Air Sexus Interruptus
In a staggering blow to anyone looking for a weird experience on a Monday evening, tonight’s air sex tournament (think air guitar, but with sex) has been mysteriously cancelled. The event was going to take place at 7 p.m. at the Iron Horse, but a message on the...
That’s Not an Air Guitar: Air Sex Tournament Comes to Northampton (w/vid)
That’s Not an Air Guitar The national Air Sex Tournament is coming to Northampton Monday night and for anyone who thinks they’ve got the pantomime moves to beat the competition, it’s not too late to enter the foray. A fun, and funny, sex-positive show, performers get...
What Will the Hatchery Do Next? Inventive Dance Performance This Weekend
So, You Know They Can Dance An homage to Wes Anderson’s highly stylized films and a self-reflective, choreographed spoken-word piece called “Perception” were among the performances featured in Hatchery’s debut show this winter. The pre-professional dance troupe’s...
Stagestruck: ‘Life in the (413)’ skewers local culture Saturday
Back in the day — way, way back — live radio drama was a staple of the airwaves. As script-toting actors gathered around microphones, their dialogue was peppered with live sound effects, backed by a live band and punctuated with live commercial breaks, often with a...
Piecing together a new Northampton performance space
Shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, April 17, Owen Wormser changed out of his flip-flops and donned work boots. Fitting pieces of stone together in the lot in front of Ghost Bread and across the street from the former Serio’s market, Wormser is polishing off a...
Calling All New Bands!
We’re still a few months out from July’s annual Green River Festival in Greenfield, but we’re right on time to share a special early announcement from producers Signature Sounds. This year, the festival will add a new stage called the Next Wave Stage, which will host...
Stagestruck: The Trump Effect
It seems that lately, every time I go to a play — or a movie, for that matter — it gets me thinking about Donald Trump. Ever since he and his goon squad have taken over in Washington, I’ve noticed that so much of what we see and create seems newly topical and timely....
Stagestruck: Stage on Screen
Movies are not my beat, but I often go to the theater at the Amherst Cinema. The ongoing National Theatre Live series of big-screen, high-def broadcasts from the London stage is a staple of my playgoing schedule. This month and next, the cinema screens encores of five...
Spring Arts Preview: Top Valley Events (April-June 2017)
Tweet Puppets for the People From its founding in New York’s Lower East Side in 1963 to its decades-long residence in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, Bread & Puppet Theater remains one of the country’s most inventive and internationally recognized performing...
On Stage: Where War Meets Food and Music
War and Music Playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes has jumped onto our cultural radar many times over the years — she received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Water by the Spoonful, and she wrote the book for the musical In The Heights alongside future...
Stagestruck: Force of Nature
WAM Theatre exists on two levels: to produce work that foregrounds women playwrights and performers, and to tangibly support, with a portion of ticket sales, organizations that work to better the lives of women and girls. Emilie: La Marquise du Chatelet Defends Her...
Like Guthrie Meets MacGyver: The Suitcase Junket Rocks Out
One-man band plays blues, rock, and folk on improvised instruments Some of us spend our days sitting at computers in nondescript rooms. In the new, handmade music video for his love song “Beta Star,” Matt Lorenz gives that a shot. He wakes up in the morning, washes...
Saturday: Nasty Women Take the Stage
Nasty Jazz The Ladies of Jazz music series is dedicating its Saturday, March 25, concert to all the “nasty” (aka “strong”) women fighting for female and reproductive rights. And all proceeds are going to benefit Planned Parenthood of Northern New England in...
Stan and Ollie, Meet Punch and Judy — Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, with a touch of slapstick
The story goes that Samuel Beckett was walking through a London park with a friend on a glorious spring morning when his companion exclaimed, “Isn’t this just the kind of day that makes you glad to be alive?” To which Beckett replied, “Oh, I don’t think I’d go that...
Dance VIP Raja Feather Kelly Comes to Town
Team Raja “With spidery limbs and a sprawling imagination,” writes Dance Magazine, “Brooklyn-based Raja Feather Kelly brings a vivid boundlessness to all he does. Whether dancing for the likes of Reggie Wilson or cooking up his own darkly entertaining...
Live Thursday: Ladysmith Black Mambazo
Stay Classy, South Africa For over 50 years, South Africa’s male a cappella group Ladysmith Black Mambazo has warmed the hearts of audiences worldwide with their uplifting vocal harmonies, signature dance moves, and charming onstage banter. With a deep respect...
Stagestruck: Shenanigans and the Sexual Revolution
On the first page of Fiona Kyle’s dramaturgical notes for Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9, at Hartford Stage through March 19, is a photo of Margaret Thatcher. The next page features the less- recognizable face of Cecil Rhodes. He was the epitome of 19th-century British...
Stagestruck: Facing the Other — a local premiere examines the roots of violence
Talk about prejudice… Without knowing anything about the play, I walked into a rehearsal of Sweet, Sweet Spirit last week and made some snap judgments that turned out to be quite wrong. The play, which receives its regional premiere next weekend at the Academy of...
Sweet! The SYRUP Festival Returns This Weekend
With the SYRUP Festival, Piti Theatre Company in Shelburne Falls has hit on a tradition that most of us would never have realized we were missing: all-ages live performance, featuring world-class artists, mixed with handcrafted food and sweets from local artisans. Now...
Stagestruck: A.R.T.’s “Night of the Iguana” Revives a Minor Classic
Some of those leaving the American Repertory Theater’s current production must be surprised and baffled, not to mention disappointed. On my way out of the Cambridge theater on opening night, I overheard a man asking, “Why did James Earl Jones have such a small part?”...
A Contortionist’s Journey Around the World — and Back to Brattleboro
The Body Follows: Inside the mind of professional contortionist Ariana Ferber-Carter Many people would bend over backwards to avoid performing stunts in front of an audience. But Ariana Ferber-Carter — a professional contortionist and circus coach — is far more...
On Stage Now: “Painting Churches” at the Majestic Theater
Home is Where the Art Is The sweet and heartfelt family story Painting Churches, winner of the John Gassner Award and Best Off-Broadway Play, is set in a Beacon Hill townhouse owned by Fanny and Gardner Church. As the play opens, the couple is packing, planning to...
Stagestruck: Woman on the Edge
For a 19th-century male, Henrik Ibsen was quite the feminist. His best-known play, A Doll’s House, ends with one of the theater’s most famous sound effects as his protagonist, Nora Helmer, leaves her stifling marriage with the finality of a slamming door. An equally...
Thursday to Saturday: Student Voices on Stage at UMass
Our Voices Our new president has committed to limiting access to legal abortions, and explicitly said on the campaign trail that there “has to be some form of punishment” for woman who seek them illegally. Vice President Mike Pence, who signed a bill in his home state...
Stagestruck: Sitting Targets
Years ago, when I was living in England, one day the doorbell rang and there stood two painfully clean-cut young men in white dress shirts, narrow ties and pearly smiles. “Hello!” one of them grinned, holding up a serious-looking volume. “My name is Elder Smith, this...
Thursday: Hawaiian Dance Celebration at UMass Amherst
Mortal Heroes Michael Pili Pang and the Halau Hula Ka No’eau dance studio returns to the Northeast to showcase traditional Hula. The company commemorates its 30th year producing traditional Hawaiian dance, chants, and art. Audiences can expect to be captivated...
Out of Their Comfort Zones
Two shows this week find performers venturing beyond the usual parameters of their craft. At UMass, students in the music department’s Opera Workshop take on Gilbert and Sullivan, and in Northampton, stage actors meet improvisers in a mashup of scripts and ad libs. On...
Stagestruck: Identity Crises
The two shows now playing at Hartford’s rep theaters couldn’t be more different, but they still share some core themes. They are Shakespeare’s rambunctious, large-cast Comedy of Errors, at Hartford Stage, and Dominique Morisseau’s small, intense contemporary drama...
Feb. 9: Stand-Up Comic Eugene Mirman Plays Turners Falls
Beyond the Burger If you knew only that Eugene Boris Mirman was born in the Soviet Union in the mid 1970s, you might be skeptical of the quality of his stand-up comedy. If you knew Mirman only from the animated FOX show Bob’s Burgers, where he portrays an 11-year-old...
Sunday Performance: Exploded View
Reflective Collective What happens when eight talented women — all of whom are involved in creative communities across Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden counties — meet to make poetry and art together? In the case of Exploded View, they create multimedia exhibits and...
Stagestruck: The Cold Warrior’s Mask
Travels with a Masked Man, John Hadden’s compelling “two-character solo performance,” seems to fall squarely in the by-now-familiar genre of the one-person memoir, in this case exploring a rocky relationship with his father. Except that this one is not at all typical....
Stagestruck: Changing Lives, One Play at a Time
When I was in California last month, I saw two plays by a small, adventurous professional theater company in Berkeley that I’d never heard of. They’re called Shotgun Players, and they’ve gone straight to the top of my Bay Area must-see list. The shows I saw were...
After Orlando: Short Plays Pay Respects on Friday night
Reflecting on a Tragedy The night of June 12, 2016, news of a horrific shooting unfolding in an Orlando gay nightclub sent shockwaves around the world, leaving collective heartbreak in its wake for the 49 lives cut cruelly short that fateful night. The pain cut...
Stagestruck: Defying God … and Trump
Partway through last Friday’s performance at West Springfield’s Majestic Theater, something unscripted, overdue, and quite wonderful happened. The show was Peter Shaffer’s brilliant examination of genius and envy, Amadeus. The title refers to Mozart, but the...
A Mid-winter Night’s Read
This weekend, Shakespeare & Company presents a Winter Studio Festival of Plays, five diverse readings as interpreted by five local directors. Works range from classics by playwrights like Anton Chekhov to established contemporaries like Sam Shepard and emerging...
Saturday Music: Christine Ohlman at NextStage
Blue-eyed Rock ’n’ Soul The higher the hair, the closer to God, honey. So you know Christine Ohlman, the Beehive Queen, is tight with The Man Upstairs — and you can hear it in her soulful rock. Ohlman, whom you may recognize from her years as a vocalist in the...
Halos & Horns: Our 2016 List of Who’s Been Good or Bad… or Worse
How Does This Work? Who on earth do we think we are, doling out judgement left and right? Find out here. The List HALOS // The People of East Longmeadow — For creating a seven-member Town Council in the wake of a coup on the now-defunct three-member Board of...
Cinemadope: Denzel Washington stars in August Wilson’s Fences
Month of August Despite his legendary status in American theater, August Wilson is not a name one hears attached to many film projects. The self-taught dramatist, who dropped out of high school after being falsely accused of plagiarism, left behind an astounding body...
For the Kids: New Year’s Morning Music Party
Sleeping In? That’s So 2016 Get those kids out of bed (it’s not like they stayed awake until midnight, anyway) and let them dive into a new year the fun way: with puppets and breakfast. Hilltown Families and the Flywheel Arts Collective are continuing the beloved...
Kids Stage Pick: The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Rug Rats If that godawful stop-motion Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer movie from 1964 has coursed through your eyeballs a few too many times, consider taking the kids to see CactusHead Puppets, who present The Pied Piper of Hamelin for two days only at the Eric Carle...
Nightcrawler: It’s Not Yuuuge – It’s Jewmongous
Sean Altman was best known as a member of the a capella singing group Rockapella, which had a recurring role on the PBS television show Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego? from 1991 to 1995. Since then, based on Altman’s website, he’s been mugging with former...E-Edition
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