Stagestruck: Earnest and Chester

Stagestruck: Earnest and Chester

Last week, Barrington Stage Company’s Julianne Boyd greeted the audience for her troupe’s opening production, staged in a socially distanced tent at the edge of Pittsfield, with these long-awaited words: “I want to welcome you to live theater.” This week, introducing the season’s second show, in the company’s downtown mainstage, she added: “… in a real theater!”

Stagestruck: And We’re Back!

Stagestruck: And We’re Back!

Sometimes in the course of the past year I despaired of ever again hearing that mantra of curtain speeches in the cyber-era: “Please silence your cell phones” – or of hearing the words spoken by Julianne Boyd on Barrington Stage Company’s opening night: “I want to welcome you to live theater!” Last week it happened, as two Western Mass companies greeted live audiences with live performances.

Stagestruck: Through the Portal

Stagestruck: Through the Portal

Down a pebbled path flanked by tall grasses in an orchard hung with ripening fruit, we come to an archway fashioned of bent branches: The Portal. There, our Guides invite us to hang a slip of paper on which we’ve written something we wish to leave behind, after the cruel year we’ve just been through. (I write “Zoom.”)

Itching for some theater, music? Here’s some ideas

Itching for some theater, music? Here’s some ideas

It’s been a long year, but how’s this for a bit of uplifting news – shows are coming back, albeit slowly at first. Here is a roundup of some of the in-person and virtual events starting in May. Music Sunday, May 2 Karrin Allyson, Marty Jaffe and Valley Jazz Voices, 4...

Monte Belmonte Wines: Let these dozen rosés meet your desires

Monte Belmonte Wines: Let these dozen rosés meet your desires

Rosé is not a grape. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at a party or restaurant and someone asks me, “Would you like a rosé?” That question is the functional equivalent of “would you like white wine?” The answer to both questions is “yes.” Follow up questions:...

Live at Last

Live at Last

Sheryl Stoodley is standing in the middle of the Workroom, the performance space in the Northampton Community Arts Trust building curated by A.P.E.@Hawley. In time, it will become a fully equipped studio theater, but for now it’s an enormous unfinished cube, more like...

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Stagestruck: Around the World in 80 Minutes

Stagestruck: Around the World in 80 Minutes

The stage version of Jules Verne’s 1873 classic “Around the World in 80 Days,” coming to the Valley this week, hews to the motto Less Is More. The production fields a cast of ten young professionals, with sets and costumes that fit into a tour van, but is given world-spanning scope with multimedia technology.