by Barbara Waldinger Barrington Stage Company ends its 2024 summer fare with a dynamite production of Eboni Booth’s PRIMARY TRUST, this years’ Pulitzer Prize winner, a perfect vehicle to conclude a varied and exciting season. It is a simple, poignant story, narrated by the main character, Kenneth (Justin Weaks), who…
(Sept. 24) — FUNNY GIRL, the sensational musical comedy revival, is coming to Proctors in Schenectady for a limited one-week engagement from Tuesday, April 1-Sunday, April 6. Tickets are on sale 10 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 26 through the Box Office at Proctors in-person, via phone at (518) 346-6204 Monday-Saturday 10 a.m.-6 p.m. or…
by Barbara Waldinger Shakespeare & Company’s fall play, THREE TALL PERSIAN WOMEN, a world premiere by Awni Abdi-Bahri (who also plays Golnar, the youngest of the women), is about many things: a gathering (the “mehmooni”) of three generations of Iranian women and their friends to pay homage to Golnar’s father…
by Barbara Waldinger Premiering on May 3, 1960 at the compact Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, NYC, THE FANTASTICKS ran there for forty-two years: the longest-running off-Broadway musical in American history. How many Baby Boomers, including this reviewer, remember attending the play with its original cast (including Jerry Orbach…
by Barbara Waldinger Charles Gounod’s FAUST, currently playing at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, is the Berkshire Opera Festival’s first foray (now in its ninth season) into French grand opera. Maestro Brian Garman (Artistic Director, co-Founder and conductor), explains what that entails: “intimate and heartfelt melodies, spirited and rousing choruses,…
by Barbara Waldinger Since the Covid pandemic, theatres have been struggling financially to make up for the huge losses they suffered when they were forced to shut down. Many Berkshire theatres have chosen to produce one or two-person plays to cut expenses. The challenge for new playwrights is to find…
by Barbara Waldinger “Did you know that loneliness is as lethal as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day?” Spoken by a character named Anna in the World Premiere production of Carey Crim’s play THE ISLANDERS, the line epitomizes the feelings of this middle-aged woman who has chosen to live alone on…
by Barbara Waldinger Oxford Languages’ English dictionary defines farce as “a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay, and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations.” For those, like this reviewer, who are not avid fans of slapstick comedians like the Marx brothers, Abbott and Costello, Harold Lloyd, Buster…
