Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June 2009 In 2006, when this production of Hamlet, directed by Eleanor Holdridge and starring Jason Asprey with his real-life mother Tina Packer as Gertrude and his real-life step-father Dennis Krausnick as Polonius, was first presented at Shakespeare & Company, I was the only Berkshire area…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, December, 2007 “The death I would prefer would be to break my neck off the back of a good horse at a full gallop on a fine day.” – Fanny Kemble I pick up a pen and write the letter “A.” A serviceable letter that…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July 2004. If you did not see this show during its November/December run last year, I would encourage you to go. It is a delightful play – funny and profound – with excellent central performances by Tina Packer and Diane Prusha. My only warning to you is…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, November 2003. Peter Shaffer’s comedy “Lettice and Lovage” is about a woman whose mother ran a Shakespearean company. Tina Packer is a woman who runs a Shakespearean company. I sat not too far from her son the night I attended, and I thought what a…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July 2002. Dennis Krausnick and a familiar group of actors have teamed once again to bring two tiny gems of Edith Wharton’s writing to the stage. Roman Fever and The Other Two both hold a magnifying glass to social convention. In a world that is all surface and appearance,…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June 2002. Dennis Krausnick, who has adapted two dozen of Edith Wharton’s prose works for the stage, has labored mightily and transformed her 1902 novel The Valley of Decision into two and a half hours of densely philosophical musings that may or may not be a play.…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July 1999 “What may this meanThat thou, dead corse, again in complete steel,Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon,Making night hideous, and we fools of natureSo horridly to shake our dispositionWith thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?” – Hamlet, Act I, scene iv It…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, October, 1998 Shakespeare & Company does many things well, but the two things it must do well to survive are stage Shakespeare and adapt Edith Wharton to the stage. In “Glimpses of the Moon” they have done the latter very well, but Edith Wharton, no…
