by Macey Levin It is 1930 and the Harlem Renaissance, as well as the Depression, is in full bloom. The community is struggling to find a new life and though its inhabitants are reaping the rewards of the time, their finances are precarious. This is the setting of Pearl Cleage’s…
by Roseann Cane We first see Daniel (Andy Lucien), a 30-something event planner for a major bookstore chain, as he bursts into the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) of a leading hospital. In the center of the stage is an isolette (a plastic-encased crib equipped to maintain temperature control and…
by Roseann Cane The Barrington Stage Company has opened their season with a play that’s a mesmerizing punch in the gut. I urge you to experience it. Eddie Jaku, the man at the center of the play, was born Abraham Jakubbowicz in Leipzig, Germany in 1920. As playwright Mark St.…
by Roseann Cane With its world premiere production of All of Me, written by Laura Winters, Barrington Stage Company presents a romantic boy-meets-girl coming-of-age story unlike any play I’ve ever seen, and, I believe, one that’s long overdue. You see, boy uses wheelchair, girl uses scooter, and both use text-to-speech…
by Barbara Waldinger Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, now being staged at Shakespeare & Company’s Tina Packer Playhouse, is known as a “problem play.” Neither tragedy nor comedy, it lives somewhere in between, which is probably why it is rarely produced. But this Lenox company ended up with more problems than…
by Macey Levin One of the first plays of the Theatre of the Absurd was Jean Genet’s “The Maids” in 1947 which was followed by Eugene Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano” in 1950. This is a theatrical form that alludes to the absurdity of existence in a grotesque world by a…
by Roseann Cane To see a well-produced Stephen Sondheim musical is a delight. To see a magnificently crafted Sondheim musical is sublime, especially if that musical is A Little Night Music. In directing her final show as Barrington Stage Company Artistic Director, Julianne Boyd has created a resplendent, mesmerizing event,…
by Roseann Cane “Mark O’Rowe’s play, The Approach, is a riddle….The story is told by what is not being said.” –from the Directors’ Notes by Mark Farrell and Tina Packer Onstage, at a cafe table, before an aptly expressionist backdrop depicting a bustling, shadowy Dublin street, we witness a series…
