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…
by Jess Hoffman Harbinger Theatre has made a name for themselves in the New York Capital Region as a small volunteer theater company bringing lesser-known, hard-hitting plays by up-and-coming playwrights to the area. Their latest production of Swing State by Rebecca Gilman is currently playing at Sand Lake Center for…
by Paula Kaplan-Reiss The late great William Finn wrote the music and lyrics for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, originally workshopped at Barrington Stage Company in 2004 and premiered on Broadway in 2005. A winner of two Tony awards, this sweet, endearing and hilarious musical depicts the competitors…
by Sierra Pasquale In this smart, self-aware, and sharp-edged production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at Albany Civic Theater, the audience is treated to an evening that is as thought-provoking as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Anchored by two outstanding lead performances and brought to life with inventive…
by Jess Hoffman Sand Lake Center for the Arts is continuing its eclectic season with a play by Capital District native Brendan Mack about a murder trial and barnyard animals–a play that combines the wonder of children’s classic Charlotte’s Web with the gritty real world of mental illness and criminal…
by Jess Hoffman The premise of Classic Theater Guild’s current production, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, is a simple but very intriguing one: an absurdist comedy about a chance encounter between a young Albert Einstein and a young Pablo Picasso at a French nightclub in 1904. If this absurdist piece…
by Jess Hoffman Albany Civic Theater–a theater with a special place in my heart that has been central to my love of theater–is currently the space for Harbinger Theatre’s production of The Motherf**ker with the Hat. The Motherf**ker with the Hat is a gritty, no-holds-barred examination of life and love.…
by Gail M. Burns “Theresa Rebeck is a fierce defender of the right to bear witness, an organizer, a galvanizer always willing to take big risks for the good of the theater. She is a powerhouse and a star of the first magnitude, and everybody knows it.” – Paula Vogel…
