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…
by Macey Levin Neil Simon, now 91 years old, is one of the premier comic playwrights of the American theatre. The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, California Suite, Last of the red Hot Lovers, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, The Sunshine Boys, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, Broadway Bound, and more……
by Gail M. Burns Back in the early 1980’s a couple of musician friends dressed up in mechanics overalls, billed themselves as the Pump Boys, and performed songs they’d written for their characters. This promptly got them fired from their gig playing country tunes in a New York City cowboy…
by Barbara Waldinger Wilted spinach salad with warm bacon dressing; seared wild salmon with a Bengali onion chutney; seared asparagus with olive oil, salt and pepper; gnocchi, pork belly sliders, scallops. . . This is not a restaurant menu but rather a gustatory appreciation of Theresa Rebeck’s Seared at Williamstown…
by Macey Levin There was woman, born to a Jewish father and Catholic mother in Warsaw, Poland, in 1898. In Petrograd Russia, she married a wealthy Polish lawyer who was arrested in the midst of the Russian Revolution in 1917. After he was freed they journeyed with their infant daughter…
It’s late July and the theatre scene is hopping! None of our regular Berkshire On Stage critics was able to fit a trip to the Mac-Haydn to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame into their schedule, but luckily Lisa Jarisch, a longtime subscriber to the Mac, agreed to share her…
