by Barbara Waldinger It has been said that a play is merely a blueprint until it receives a full production. Lady Randy, by Anne Undeland, is a perfect example of how a biographical play about Jennie Jerome, the mother of Winston Churchill, becomes an extraordinary theatrical event. Undeland’s witty and…
by Barbara Waldinger Casse Noisette, French for Nutcracker and subtitled A Fairy Ballet, is Bridge Street Theatre’s current World Premiere offering. Given these clues, audience members may be excused for expecting Balanchine’s ubiquitous holiday ballet, set to the familiar score of Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky, based on Hoffmann’s famous fairy tale. …
by Barbara Waldinger Wendy Wasserstein, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 55, wrote several plays about college-educated women of her generation who struggled to find their own identity in a male-dominated world. One would imagine, given the current socio-political atmosphere, that these works would be ripe for…
by Barbara Waldinger Many twenty-first century theatre audiences, who expect real life behavior onstage, much like reality TV, may not know how to react to the work of Luigi Pirandello, whose play Naked is currently on the boards at Berkshire Theatre Group’s Unicorn Theatre. Pirandello, writing just after the devastation…
by Barbara Waldinger Imagine a play about the poetry of William Blake, one of the most complex writers ever known, written in rhymed couplets (like Blake’s poems), featuring a pair of actors portraying university professors who have been lecturing on this poet for the past fifteen years. Bridge Street Theatre,…
by Barbara Waldinger The title explains it all. Rachel Lynett has written a powerful and controversial attack against white liberals who think they understand Black people but whose marches and protests against racism accomplish nothing beyond making themselves feel better. For a white reviewer like myself to evaluate this work…
by Barbara Waldinger South Africa is the ONLY African country where gay marriage is legal. At the same time, the common South African practice of “corrective rape,”—purportedly intended to turn lesbians straight—goes unprosecuted. This is the background of the taut and powerful drama, Dangerous House by Jen Silverman, the fourth…
by Barbara Waldinger Wilted spinach salad with warm bacon dressing; seared wild salmon with a Bengali onion chutney; seared asparagus with olive oil, salt and pepper; gnocchi, pork belly sliders, scallops. . . This is not a restaurant menu but rather a gustatory appreciation of Theresa Rebeck’s Seared at Williamstown…
