CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD (Berkshire Theatre Group, Stockbridge, MA) If the primary duty of a theater director is to enhance the work of the playwright, Tony- winning director Kenny Leon is giving a master class in a splendid, poetic revitalization - beyond revival - of Mark Medoff’s CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD now at the Berskshire Theatre Group in Stockbridge. Twenty-seven years after its original Broadway run, Leon has elevated the Tony Award-winning play about the conflicted

RAGTIME THEN, RAGTIME NOW The beloved, Tony Award-winning RAGTIME, with a book by Terrence McNally adapted from E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 sprawling historical fiction set in turn-of the-19thC New York, gets a spirited, if not wholly satisfying, presentation at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. RAGTIME ambitiously runs three major plot lines - about a prosperous WASP family, an impoverished Jewish immigrant and daughter, and an unwed Black couple with infant child – lin

FOR THE BIRDS With very positive memories of Barrington Stage Company’s superb production two summers ago of Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s SHINING CITY, I eagerly attended its production of another, lesser-known, McPherson work, THE BIRDS. Anticipation outstripped realization. THE BIRDS, McPherson’s 2009 theatrical adaption of Daphne Du Maurier's 1952 short story (totally different from Hitchcock’s famous film adaptation inspired by same) will never compare to his best w

GOODNESS GRACIOUS, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE at The Unicorn, Berkshire Theatre Group, Stockbridge, MA Right from the lightning opening number, “Blue Suede Shoes”, Berkshire Theatre Group’s joyous production of MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET is nothin’ short of a roof-raisin’, foot-stompin’, guitar-strummin’, bass-pluckin’, hand-clappin’ celebration of American-as-apple-pie Rock n Roll. It's a wonder how The Unicorn can hold all energy and talent on its tiny stage and all the love for R

4000 MILES - Shakespeare & Co. (Lenox MA) Amy Herzog’s superior brand of playwriting is on clear, precise display in Shakespeare & Company's wonderful production of her 2012 Obie-Award winning play, 4000 MILES. Pity more contemporary writers don’t follow Herzog’s playbook: each character is fully realized and something happens in each scene. (I’m not trying to be a wiseass: just think of how INactive so many current plays are). Overall, composition is economic. Conflict i

IT’S IN THE TEXT - MINOR CHARACTER at Sharon Playhouse For something completely different, Sharon Playhouse, under new artistic direction, is presenting MINOR CHARACTER: SIX TRANSLATIONS OF UNCLE VANYA AT THE SAME TIME, an unfailingly interesting and quirky, innovative adaptation of Chekov’s classic. Created by a group of twenty-something dramatists called New Saloon, the production had its premier at the Under the Radar series at The Public Theater last January. Saloon’s f

Divas dominated this Broadway season - Glenn Close reprising her role as Norma Desmond in SUNSET BOPULEVARD and Bette Midler making Dolly Levy her own in the revival of HELLO, DOLLY! But the real double diva treat is WAR PAINT featuring the inimitable Patti LuPone and the beloved Christine Ebersole - with nearly 80 years of musical theatre credentials between them - as cosmetic queens Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden. Never mind that the beauty industry magnates never

Thematically, Hamish Linklater's THE WHIRLIGIG could remind me of Clifford Odet’s AWAKE AND SING , just susbstitute an addicting drug of choice for poverty, to look at the interconnected effects of tragedy on family and community. In Linklater’s new play presented by The New Group at Pershing Square Signature Stage, the family are the divorced parents - unloving mother, “dry “alcoholic father - of 23 year-old Julia who returns “home” to face an early death brought on by the r