Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, August, 2003 Like millions of young girls, Frances Hodgson Burnett was one of my favorite authors when I was growing up. I confess that I vastly preferred the plucky Sara Crewe of A Little Princess (1905) to the sour Mary Lennox of The Secret Garden (1911) but in my adult years…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, August 2003 Main Street Stage has come up with another powerful show that neatly utilizes their narrow storefront playing area. The Beauty Queen of Leenane takes place in a claustrophobic run-of-the-mill Irish cottage in the small village of Leenane in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland. The play centers…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, August, 2003 It doesn’t really matter what I say in this review because the Theater Barn’s production of Chicago will sell out (if it hasn’t already) anyway. That is because, as Artistic Director Bert Bernardi remarked in his curtain speech, America has Chicago fever. Cleverly timed to open the…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, August, 2003 I just loved this show! Of course, I know every line, lyric, and note of Gilbert & Sullivan’s 1878 operetta H.M.S. Pinafore – of which this 1945 George S. Kaufman opus is a clever parody – so I cannot imagine what entertainment value the show…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, August 2003 As soon as I saw Ragtime announced on the Weston 2003 schedule, I knew it would be wonderful. Weston does just about everything well, but especially big musicals. I have fond memories of the productions of Most Happy Fella and Candide that I saw there, and so I booked…
Commented upon by Gail M. Burns, August 2003 (This is not so much a review as a musing on this play, which has meant a lot to me in my life.) The last time I saw Tom Stoppard’s Travesties (which was also the first time) was at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in…
by Gail M. Burns, August 2003 Phil Soltanoff has been coming to Williamstown every summer since 1993. Pursuing his interest in mixing and blending the arts in new and interesting ways to create new forms of theatre, in 1996 he created an ensemble performance entitled “To Whom It May Concern.”…
Review by Gail M. Burns, July 2003 Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) were bound to meet. Both were celebrated writers who traveled in similar social circles. That they were fated to be friends and lovers is now well-known, and Eileen Atkins 1994 play Vita & Virginia gives us a tantalizing…
