by Jenny Hansell Cross-dressing, mistaken identity, unrequited love, bawdy humor, and a few heart-stopping moments of darkness and deep emotion: Shakespeare & Company’s hugely talented and appealing company works hard to make every word of Twelfth Night breathe as if freshly written. Sticking with the play pretty much…
by Jenny Hansell Don’t gore my ox, and I won’t gore yours. If I criticize the musical The Fantasticks, you may react with as much hostility as I did when I read the recent takedown of Hamilton in The Nation, in which the writer accused Lin-Manuel Miranda of glossing over…
by Jenny Hansell Love is love, and the heart wants what it wants. But are we really willing to follow those sentiments to their ultimate conclusion? At the start of The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?, Martin and his wife Stevie are milling around their tastefully appointed Manhattan apartment, waiting…
by Jenny Hansell In Silverthorne Theater Company‘s Tales of the Lost Formicans, a cheery group of aliens from the future explore and describe an odd life form, their artifacts, and their environment, a place we know as “the suburbs.” They explain oddities such as chairs and tables, social interactions and…
by Jenny Hansell A wooded glade lined with white pine trees in the Berkshires is a perfect stand-in for the Forest of Arden, the setting for As You Like It, the tale of palace intrigue, battling brothers, pastoral comedy and young love now at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. Duke…
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 Jenny Hansell The Road to Mecca, South African playwright Athol Fugard’s 1984 play about an elderly artist in a remote desert town, is being given a rich, thoughtful production at the Silverthorne Theater in Greenfield. Elsa Barlow, a young school-teacher in Cape Town, has driven 12 hours to the…
