Thousands in a sold-out shed and on the packed lawn enthusiastically experienced the BSO’s splendid performance of the complete musical score accompanying a sparkling remastered "West Side Story” last night at Tanglewood. No conductor better suited to lead the BSO for the occassion was David Newman, who has scored more than 110 films, worked with the finest orchestras worldwide, and twice before conducted screenings of the 1961 Academy Award-winning film. The event made evid

Without diminishing the captivating premise of THE CHINESE LADY - the American experience through the eyes of first Chinese woman brought to the US in 1834 - the real star of this world premiere at Barrington Stage Company is the set designed by the Junghyun Georgia Lee. A boarded-up, huge, wooden crate labeled CHINA CARGO which fills up the tiny St. Germain Stage is swung around and opened up to reveal like an anthropological diorama the 14-year old Afong Moy, shipped f

A perfect piece of dramatic theatre is happening at the intimate Bernstein space at Shakespeare & Co. -August Strindberg’s CREDITORS, written in 1888. Intricately composed, invisibly directed and superbly acted, this tautly adapted version by Scottish playwright David Greig was first staged at the Donmar Warehouse in London in 2008. Credit to the acumen of artistic director Allyn Burrows for importing it to the Berkshires. Strindberg, like his contemporary Ibsen, was way a

The canon of successful stage musicals that plumbs the soul of the artist is limited, SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE being its exemplar. LEMPICKA, about the Polish-born portrait artist, experiencing an ambitious world premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival doesn’t expand the list. Burdened by an overstuffed book, banal lyrics and a style-less score, the show tracks Tamara de Lempicka beginning with her aspirational marriage to a Russia aristocrat, their escape from

Pure theater transcends space and time, and that’s what happened Saturday night at the Chester Theatre Company with the performance of “White Rabbit Red Rabbit” written in 2010 by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour. With astonishing originality, Soleimanpour’s work - a multi-faceted query of mortality, really - connected the audience in Town Hall in a remote village in western Massachusetts to Tehran (or wherever the playwright is reading his email, which he encourage

Billed as a comedy, James Anthony Tyler’s ARTNEY JACKSON, in its world premiere at Williamstown Theatre Festival, is, on the surface, a heartwarming, unpretentious tale about how ordinary working people deal with what life throws at them. But disarmingly, and without a trace of cynicism, it turns out to be a quiet, yet powerful, antidote to The Age of Trump. The play covers a workweek in the life of Artney Jackson, in the back office of a cable company in Las Vegas. The fi

Film, stage, and television actor, Scottish born-and-bred, Alan Cumming, claimed title as Entertainer Extraordinaire in a bold, smart performance to an enthusiastic, sold-out house at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington Sunday night . Cumming calls his show “Legal Immigrant", both in celebration of his own, relatively new US citizenship and emotional support of immigrants to the US, but it was so much more. The 90-minute show was packed with about a dozen and half songs, thema

Besides a wonderful, quirky, versatile score peppered with pop favorites from the late 60s, the real star of HAIR at Berkshire Theatre Group in Stockbridge is the dynamo Latoya Edwards, sadly underutilized in a supporting role of Dionne in a busy but uneven production on the Unicorn Stage. Ms. Edwards, in chuchchoir soloist mode, grabs the audience with the opening notes of “Aquarius” in a piercing rendition, instantly rendering the pop standard a clarion call for a new a

Rarely do dance, music, poetry and image come together as sublimely as they have in FOUR QUARTETS, which had its world premiere for three performances at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Pam Tanowitz, fulfilling the modern tradition of choreographers Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown, has created a major, transcendent work in perfect unison with T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece, FOUR QUARTETS. Written between 1936 and 1942, Eliot’s poems, a series of four conte

Hudson Valley (and beyond)’s rapidly expanding band of devotees of Jeff Mousseau and Paul Ricciardi's Ancram Opera House packed the old grange hall last night for an exuberant, often outrageous, SRO performance of chanteuse/ comedian/ performance artist Lady Rizo. The crowd showed up still in a July 4 mood, ready to embrace her RED WHITE AND INDIGO patriotism show. Lady Rizo opened with a stunning, brooding interpretation of the Star Spangled Banner, which segued back and for