“What defines a great work is that it continues to be generous to people who are making new productions.” – Daniel Fish* Jane Austen is long out of copyright, and so her works have been open to new interpretations for some time now, and their greatness shines through their endless…
by Gail M. Burns She Loves Me is the very definition of the word “charming.” It premiered on Broadway in 1963, in the heyday of Big Book Musicals, and while it sort of fits in that category with a large cast, multiple sets, and a two and a half hour…
by Barbara Waldinger South Africa is the ONLY African country where gay marriage is legal. At the same time, the common South African practice of “corrective rape,”—purportedly intended to turn lesbians straight—goes unprosecuted. This is the background of the taut and powerful drama, Dangerous House by Jen Silverman, the fourth…
by Fred Baumgarten The best way to appreciate Leonard Bernstein’s 1983 opera, A Quiet Place, is through the music. At Tanglewood last week, this infrequently performed work was given a spirited defense by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and Vocal Fellows under the baton of Stefan Asbury, in a 2013 version…
by Macey Levin After establishing her credentials with Body Awareness, Circle Mirror Transformation and The Aliens, Annie Baker won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play The Flick, about employees cleaning a movie theatre. A common thread in her work is the slow unfolding of expository material that…
by Jenny Hansell There was a moment at the beginning of the Barrington Stage Company production of West Side Story where Riff, the leader of the Jets gang, takes two short steps and then sort of lifts off – his bent leg rising to the side, his shoulders in a shrug.…
by Lisa Jarisch As filling as the first slice of wedding cake, and almost twice as sweet, The Wedding Singer literally heads down the aisles of the Mac-Haydn Theatre with all the big hair, big shoulders, and big sounds that made the 1980s as memorable as the New Coke, Reagan’s jelly…
by Barbara Waldinger A middle-aged Englishwoman, identified only as Homebody, tries in vain to remember the name of her anti-depressant: “a portmanteau chemical cocktail word confected by punning psychopharmacologists.” She imagines her “brain floating in a salt bath, frosted with a rime of salt, a pickle-brine brain, pink-beige walnut-wrinkled nutmeat…
