by Macey Levin The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess is a play for our time that has been brewing for six centuries. The production by Chester Theatre Company at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield is dynamic, unsettling, beautifully acted and directed. It starts as a student conference between college history professor…
by Barbara Waldinger “I never wanted to write anything autobiographical. To put my life and the lives of those around me on stage crossed a boundary of privacy I promised myself I would never do.” So says playwright Mark St. Germain in the Playwright’s Note to his new play, Dad,…
by Barbara Waldinger The Theater Barn is back! How wonderful to return to the theatre after a two-year absence! In the interim, Joan and Abe Phelps named their son Allen the new Producing Artistic Director of the ‘Barn they founded thirty-eight years ago. In a departure from the theatre’s usual…
by Barbara Waldinger Fairy tales never lose their power to affect us, no matter how old we get. Jeffrey Mousseau’s beautiful production of The Snow Queen at Ancram Opera House both moves and delights us as we root for the good guys to triumph over evil. Mousseau, co-director of Ancram…
by Barbara Waldinger In a Study Guide for Barrington Stage Company’s production of American Underground, the playwright, Brent Askari, asserts that he likes telling “genre stories”—in this case, thrillers. Publicity for this World Premiere, winner of a Bonnie and Terry Burman New Play Award, asks: “How do you put a…
by Barbara Waldinger What an impact a director can have on the success of a play! Jason Odell Williams’ Church and State, having been produced last season by Berkshire Theatre Group on the Unicorn’s proscenium stage, is currently running at Circle Theatre Players’ Fuess Performing Space at Sand Lake Center…
by Barbara Waldinger “I live off the suffering of strangers. I build a career on the sorrows of people I don’t know and will never see again. . . I’m such a fraud.” These concerns are expressed by international photojournalist Sarah Goodman in a revealing moment as she recuperates from…
by Barbara Waldinger During the question and answer session that concludes his solo production, George Gershwin Alone, Hershey Felder was asked by an audience member at Berkshire Theatre Group’s Colonial Theatre why he did not choose to be a concert pianist. His response was that in performing his nine distinctive…
