by Paula Kaplan-Reiss Great Barrington Public Theater, noted for producing new works, brings Robin Gerber’s one woman play, The Best Medicine to the stage. Gerber’s first play, The Shot, enjoyed great success at this theater. While that play starred Sharon Lawrence, this production features Caroline Aaron, also an award-winning actress,…
by Paula Kaplan-Reiss Ancram Center For the Arts never disappoints. Where the Mountain Meets the Sea by Jeff Augustin is currently playing, featuring a Haitian father and his grown son telling parallel stories about going cross country, each in different directions, from and to Haiti. Accompanying them on bass, acoustic…
by Paula Kaplan-Reiss The classic, yet dated musical, Guys and Dolls by Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, based on a story and characters by Damon Runyon, is entertaining crowds at the Mac-Haydn Theatre. Brought back to the early 1950s when women were Dolls who wanted to snag men,…
by Paula Kaplan-Reiss How rare it is to attend a brand-new musical by an unknown writer and composer and to feel captured by the very first number. That was my experience seeing The Waiting, A New Musical still in process, produced by Playhouse Stage Company at the Cohoes Music Hall,…
by Paula Kaplan-Reiss Have we made much progress in how we treat ‘the other?’ Do we struggle with learning and accepting the interior of a human while being repulsed by his exterior? Playwright Bernard Pomerance poses these questions in his play The Elephant Man, presented at the Berkshire Theatre Group‘s…
by Paula Kaplan-Reiss Admittedly, I knew nothing about the Civil Wars in Liberia. In fact, I know nothing about Liberia in West Africa. Eclipsed by Danai Gurira, performed by the Black Theatre Troupe of Upstate NY and housed at theRep introduces us to the war-stricken lives of Liberian women captured…
by Paula Kaplan-Reiss Typically, I resist reviewing Shakespeare’s plays. I question my understanding and knowledge of the breadth of the Bard’s work to adequately assess a performance. However, I just finished Jodi Picoult’s latest novel, By Any Other Name, which questions whether Shakespeare was the sole playwright of all his…
by Paula Kaplan-Reiss I was excited to see the revised version of Working, a Musical by Studs Terkel and adapted by Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso at The Ghent Playhouse. I was part of the audition process and heard some excellent voices. I have a vague memory of seeing a…
