Holiday greetings from all of us at Berkshire on Stage! This is your Webmaster (Webmistress??), Gail M. Burns (and my dog, Sylvie). I asked my excellent team of theatre critics to write a little something about their favorite experiences of 2025. I gave them no instructions as to length or…
After a fulfilling theater season of seeing close to 50 plays, musicals, and staged readings, I have walked away with some impressive highlights which have stayed with me. How fortunate to live in an area rich with gifted playwrights and talented performers, not to mention the able staff and crew…
2025 was an exciting and innovative season—a mix of new plays and classics, chock full of exceptional performances, directors and designers. Barbara Waldinger’s Top Ten Plays For first rate ensemble performances: Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, directed by Robert Egan. Dorset Theatre Festival The Piano Lesson by August…
Once again, the remarkable Berkshires theatre scene was replete with variety, excellence, and creativity. Writing in December, as I look back on a season that stretched from October 2024 to October 2025, there were successes and a few productions that were not yet ready for prime time. However, this reviewer…
100 Saints You Should Know – Schenectady Civic Players This was an early favorite, so much so that I saw it twice. A strong cast of characters grapple with questions of faith, all looking for answers but also comfort, and ultimately finding it in the emotional connections they share. It’s…
Red Like Fruit at Bridge Street Theatre, Catskill, NY, was a mesmerizing, offbeat production of this American premiere. An actor reads to the audience the autobiographical story of a woman who is mostly silent. With a lectern, a platform and a chair, the simplicity and the intensity of this play…
#1 At the Wedding – Harbinger Theater at the Sand Lake Center for the Arts Bryna Turner’s At the Wedding was the rare production that managed to be laugh-out-loud funny and quietly devastating in the same breath. This staging succeeded because it trusted its audience. Never softening the ache at…
10. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee – Sand Lake Center for the Arts Sand Lake Center for the Arts’s fall production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was impossible not to love. The adult cast portrayed the adolescent characters with humor and sincerity. Allison McArdle Avery’s…
