Duncan Sheik Comes to Albany & Great Barrington
Duncan Sheik, the 38-year-old alternative rocker and songwriter, has had a cult following since his days at Brown University. He made Broadway history when Spring Awakening, his musical about adolescent sexuality, opened to rave reviews on Broadway. “A straight shot of eroticism steamed open last night at the Eugene O’Neill Theater under the innocuous name of Spring Awakening, and Broadway, with its often puerile sophistication and its sterile romanticism, may never be the same,“ Charles Isherwood wrote in The New York Times. “Mr. Sheik’s music, spare in its simple orchestrations, lush in the lapping reach of its seductive choruses, embodies the shadowy air of longing that infuses the show, the excitement shading into fear, the joy that comes with a chaser of despair. “
Sheik is touring with some members of Spring Awakening‘s original cast—including Tony winner Lauren Pritchard—for concerts on November 15 at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington and on November 16 at the Egg in Albany. In these belt-tightening times, it’s comforting to think that three Duncan Sheik tickets at either venue cost less than a single ticket to a Broadway show.
Duncan Sheik at The Mahaiwe
Great Barrington, MA; 413.528.0100
November 15 at 8 PM
Duncan Sheik at The Egg
Albany, NY; 518.473.1845
November 16 at 7 PM
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 11/09/08 at 11:53 AM • Permalink
The Murder of Lidice; A Multi-Media Event
With the very air around us still crackling with political energy, the Spencertown Academy will host a live performance of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, “The Murder of Lidice” this Friday night.
On June 10, 1942, the German government announced that it had destroyed the small village of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, killing every man and fifty-two women, then driving the surviving women into concentration camps and the children into so-called educational institutions. Lidice, they proudly proclaimed, was now forever blotted from memory. Their justification: retaliation for an unproved suspicion that the village had sheltered the murderers of Heydrich the Hangman.
Two days after the news of Lidice reached America, the Writers’ War Board, in an effort to keep the name and memory of Lidice alive, pressed Edna St. Vincent Millay to write a poem about it. She answered with a long, dramatic narrative, “The Murder of Lidice,” first published in Life and Harper’s magazines, then days later performed live (as intended by the poet) over NBC radio. The film director Douglas Sirk, who had emigrated from Germany the year before, was given his first chance behind the camera, directing John Carradine (below) in an adaptation of the Millay poem, renamed, Hitler’s Madman. Spencertown Academy will screen the film at the conclusion of the reading.
Meanwhile, at Steepletop, the one-time home of Edna St. Vincent Millay in Austerlitz, now a National Historic Landmark and headquarters of The Millay Society, the current exhibition is “The Murder of Lidice, a Poem and Political Statement.“
Spencertown Academy
Route 203, Spencertown; 518.392.3693
Friday, November 7, at 7 p.m.
Admission: free
Steepletop
East Hill Road, Austerlitz; 518.392.3362
Saturday - Monday 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.; Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday 11 a.m.- 4 p.m.
Closed Thursdays
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 11/04/08 at 03:15 PM • Permalink
Shades of ‘Saturday Night Live’ in Great Barrington on Saturday Night
Contrary to conventional wisdom, you cannot find everything on YouTube. For instance, you can’t find any skits from the early, golden years of Saturday Night Live when “Weekend Update” was co-anchored by Jane Curtin from 1976 - 1980 (while Tina Fey, who co-anchored Weekend Update from 2000 - 2006, was still in elementary school.) You can find some SNL videos on hulu.com, and you can see clearly that if the great, late Gilda Radner was the 1970s Lucille Ball then Jane Curtin was her Vivian Vance. Curtin, of course, has had an enviable and long career, winning two Emmys for Kate & Allie (as well as two Emmy nominations during her SNL days).
Now, Curtin, who lives in northwestern Connecticut, has teamed up with a seemingly unlikely partner, Isaiah Sheffer who hosts NPR’s Selected Shorts, to do satirical political skits and songs in an evening entitled At Last—An Election! at the Mahaiwe after a sold-out run at Symphony Space in New York. “Jane does a number called ‘Cindy McCain in Heaven’ to the tune of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’,“ says Sheffer. “We also do a skit together where she’s Sarah Palin and I’m Henry Kissinger giving her a lesson on geopolitics. There are other numbers like “Between Barack and A Hard Place” and we’ll have Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston sing Paul Anka’s “Having Our Baby”. Our finale is a farewell to George Bush set to the Beatles’ “It’s Been A Hard Day’s Night” with the lyrics, “When he’s gone, everything’s gonna be right.“
So this Saturday night, you can see Jane Curtin do her Sarah Palin live show and be home in plenty of time to watch Tina Fey do her Sarah Palin on SNL one last time before Election Day.
Thalia Follies at the Mahaiwe
14 Castle Street,Great Barrington; 413.528.6415
Saturday, November 1 at 8 PM
Tickets: $40, $35, $25/Mahaiwe members
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 10/30/08 at 01:41 PM • Permalink
Berkshire Theater’s Full Fall Schedule
The theater season in the Berkshires no longer ends on Labor Day weekend. South County’s big three Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, and Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox—are all presenting important plays this fall.
Yes, Kate Maguire, the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s artistic director was thinking about election season last winter when she decided that she’d mount Rhoda Lerman’s one-woman play, Eleanor: Her Secret Journey, about the outspoken wife of president Franklin D. Roosevelt. She found the perfect actress to play the crusading First Lady: Elizabeth Norment, one of the stalwarts of the regional theater scene.
Eleanor: Her Secret Journey
Berkshire Theatre Festival
Stockbridge, MA; 413.298.5576
Through November 9
At Shakespeare & Company’s new Elayne P. Bernstein Theater, the company’s new director in residence, Irina Brook (daughter of avant garde director Peter Brook) is staging a world premiere adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s short story The Canterville Ghost with a cast that includes company favorites Micahel Hammond and Michael Toomey. It is a tale of an old English ghost and the American family he torments. “ I love all the comic moments when the ghost tries to impress us with his horrible and brilliant performances over the centuries, he has all the pathos of a tragic old out of work actor, reminiscing abut his greatest roles,“ Brook has said. “I love how the piece goes from light comedy to something very moving about love and redemption.“
The Canterville Ghost
Shakespeare & Company.
Lenox, MA; 413.637.1199
Through November 9
October 18: Special family day and children’s magic show ($10)
Barrington Stage is presenting To Kill A Mockingbird, a 1991 stage adaptation of the 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning novel and the 1962 Academy Award winning movie starring Gregory Peck. Barrington Stage artistic director Julianne Boyd (see the YouTube clip below) chose the play expressly because she thought story of race and justice would capture the imagination of the residents of Pittsfield. Indeed, the city is in a state of Mockingbird mania: Leslie Ferrin is hosting a Mockingbird inspired show at her gallery; Pittsfield Brew Works is hosting a Mockingbird trivia night featuring “Atticus Finch lager”, and the new independently-owned Chapters bookstore on North Street is hosting weekly discussion groups about book. The frenzy is supported by Cultural Pittsfield, which received an NEA grant for a program called The Big Read that encourages residents of cities and towns to all read the same book at the same time.
To Kill A Mockingbird
Barrington Stage Company
Pittsfield, MA; 413.236.8888
October 8 - 26
(Speclal $15 tickets for previews on October 8 & 9)
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 10/01/08 at 04:29 PM • Permalink
A Choreographer Climbs the Walls at Bard
The Richard B. Fisher Center helped put Bard College on the cultural map, and now the Fisher Center is putting dancers on the roof of the iconic Frank Gehry-designed building. This weekend and next, site-specific Canadian choreographer Noémie Lafrance will premiere a work called Rapture on the brushed stainless-steel exterior of the arts center, which opened in 2003.
Rapture is the kind of highbrow, avant garde world premiere that doesn’t normally take place in a rural setting with sponsorship by Tiffany & Co. (which got involved because it sells gold and silver architectonic jewelry designed by Gehry.) After all, Lafrance’s most famous work, Agora, was staged in an empty, gigantic public swimming pool in trendy Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the gritty, residential neighborhood of choice for emerging artists. Rapture is as much an engineering as aesthetic challenge, and Lafrance is working with master rigger Sean Riley, the star of the National Geographic Channel’s World’s Toughest Fixes, and her dancers will travel across the building via an innovative kinetic-rigging system. The audience will be allowed to circle the building during the performance.
Lafrance hopes Rapture will allow Gehry’s architecture to be appreciated in a new light. “I am interested in the interaction between the places/structures we design, which define our navigation through space and the relations, whether psychological, historical, mythical or physical we might have to them as human beings,“ Lafrance says in her artist’s statement. “The rigging system we have designed for Rapture will allow us to work in close intimacy with the building from multiple angles and dimensions. From there we will develop a new and abstract language that resonate the very unique textures and musicality of the architecture and reflect it in movement.“
Lafrance foresees Rapture as the first in a series of dances performed on Gehry buildings and hopes to choreograph pieces for nine structures, including the Walt Disney Music Hall in Los Angeles and his groundbreaking Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. So if you go to Bard this weekend or next, you’ll be able to say you saw a global phenomenon here first.
Rapture
Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College
Annandale on Hudson, NY
845.758.7900
September 25 - 28 & October 2 - 5
7 PM
$25 adults; $22.50 seniors
This is an outdoor performance. In case of rain, performance will be cancelled. Please contact box office four hours before performance for weather update and to reschedule tickets if necessary.
Special Group Discount
10 tickets for $100
A Group of 10 Tickets may be purchased for $100 by contacting Elena Batt, Fisher Center Box Office Manager, at 845.758.7948
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 09/23/08 at 02:09 PM • Permalink
From Great Barrington to Off Broadway: Here Comes “Castronauts”
“The reputation of the Berkshires’ being a hideout for artists is true,“ says Bobby Houston, an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker (Mighty Times: The Children’s March, 2004), who moved to Great Barrington a few years ago from his longtime home in California. “Castronauts was born in the Berkshires.“
Castronauts (which is debuting in New York City this month as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival) is a zany new musical that Houston dreamed up with an old friend, Patricio Bisso, whom he met during the filming of the Kiss of the Spider Woman more than 20 years ago. It is the story an illegal Havana nightclub populated by drag queens and other night owls, where Fidel Castro is killed and the barflies must flee to Florida in a ‘56 Chevy outfitted as a boat.
While the book writing was a long distance affair because Bisso lives in Buenos Aires, Houston found his composer, Randy Courts, down the road in his new hometown of Great Barrington. “The theater gods intervened,“ says Houston. “I discovered three miles from my home a man my age who dresses like I dress in white shirts and blue jeans and he was available. He wrote 18 songs in twelve weeks, which brings us today,“ says Houston, who is camping out in the city for the the run of the show, which he hopes will move to an Off Broadway theater.
Castronauts is directed by Will Pomerantz, who staged the sold-out production of Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing at Bard this summer. “He is a rising star and this show is way below his level,“ Houston says happily. “When Will started giving our songs Broadway dances, I thought, This is the most fun I’ve had since being a grown up.“
Castronauts (Or How I Killed Fidel)
The Zipper Factory Theater
336 West 37th Street, NYC; 212.352.3101
Through September 28
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 09/18/08 at 03:28 PM • Permalink
Review: “See Rock City” at Barrington Stage is Worth A Detour
Gwen Hollander as a waitress and Benjamin Schrader as the lonely traveller at Barrington Stage; photo by Kevin Sprague
If you’re the type of person who worries about the future of American musical theater in the age of Disney on Broadway. hie yourself to Pittsfield where Barrington Stage Company‘s Musical Theater Lab is staging a thoroughly modern and all-American musical called See Rock City & Other Destinations. You will be reassured that a new generation of artists have the creativity and chops to invigorate the most American of art forms.
See Rock City is not your typical book musical with a narrative and a happy ending. (The book and lyrics are by Adam Mathias and the music is by Brad Alexander.) It’s set up as an episodic travelogue, as if you are seeing the best scenes from six different musicals. The thread that carries through is that each scene is set at a different tourist destination—The Alamo, Coney Island, Niagara Falls—and every character is, of course, on some sort of journey to find his or her true self. There are three sisters who take an Alaskan cruise to scatter their father’s ashes in Glacier Bay as he requested, and they reprise a charming song about snow queens that they sang as children on such wintry cruises. There’s the waitress who’s never been out of state who is whisked off by solo diner to see the wonders of Rock City. There are two privileged Manhattan prep school boys who cut class to go to Coney Island for the day where they discover that they may be more than just best friends.
Every song is a story in itself, the kind of tunes that a certain sort of torch singer might add to his repertoire someday. And the book is sharp and clever. There is never a moment during the 90 minute show when you are not fully captivated. The casting for this show is exceptional. Everyone has a good strong voice (which is crystal clear because they are not amplified) and, more importantly, they all can act through a song—making you laugh and then tugging on your heart strings. For anyone who loves musical theater, See Rock City & Other Destinations is relevant, entertaining, and worth going out of your way to see.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 08/18/08 at 01:16 PM • Permalink
Review: “Waiting for Godot” at Berkshire Theatre Festival
David Adkins and Stephen DeRosa in “Godot,“ photo by Kevin Sprague
There’s a reason why certain plays—the ones you read in high school and college—are part of the theatrical canon: They are timeless dramas that explore universal truths or ponder eternal questions about human nature. By any standard, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is one of the great plays of the 20th century, a drama that has spawned thousands of dissertations. On its Broadway opening night in 1956, The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson wrote “It is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.“ And so it remains today, and probably forever.
Godot is one of those plays that must be done with conviction, a belief that the mystery might reveal itself by the end of the evening though it never does (or does it?). The Godot at Berkshire Theatre Festival is BTF at its very best—precisely staged in the intimate Unicorn Theatre with masterful actors, who are engaging, funny, fierce and poignant. While making the play feel contemporary (and not so rooted to its post-war Europe origins), director Anders Cato excels when his actors have to do slaptick schtick, which is one of the counterintuitive charms of this evening of existentialism.
As Gogo (the role originated on Broadway by Bert Lahr) Stephen DeRosa seems to be channelling Groucho Marx in the most delightful way imaginable. David Adkins as Didi has one of those malleable faces that expresses disappointment in dozens of ways, and you can feel his heart breaking. David Schramm makes the over-the-top Pozzo seem totally believable and his slave, the ironically-named Lucky, is played by Randy Harrison with an extraordinary unselfconscious pathos. And the clever set by Lee Savage turns the arrival of the goatherd played by Cooper Stanton into a surreal moment.
You may not understand Waiting for Godot, but it will engage your mind, rattle your soul and make you feel lucky to live where summer theater is both ambitious and accomplished.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 08/13/08 at 11:12 AM • Permalink
Review: “Of Thee I Sing” at Bard
Photograph by Stephanie Berger
If friends call you this weekend and offer you their extra ticket to Of Thee I Sing, which has been sold out for weeks, say, “Yes!“
The only disappointing thing about this revival of the 1931 Gershwins’ musical comedy at Bard Summerscape is the brevity of its run. Director Will Pomerantz has given the Pulitzer Prize winning show a taut, thrilling production that is both historical and relevant, and the casting is remarkable because the faces look like those you recall from the great Marx Brothers movies. It’s a screwball musical in the tradition of Animal Crackers (and Of Thee I Sing‘s book was in fact written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, who wrote screenplays for the Marx Brothers.) The deconstructed plywood sets give the play an avant-garde look, but otherwise the choreography and costumes transport you to the Great White Way of the Depression era. As if to emphasize the historicism, the actors do not wear body mikes and their voices, while not loud, are clear and fresh as is the timeless Gerswhin music under the confident baton of James Bagwell.
And, of course, the story of a presidential campaign focused on style rather than substance could not be more timely. Bravo to Bard for bringing Of Thee I Sing to us (and shame on Bard for not anticipating its appeal and booking a longer run.)
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 08/08/08 at 07:54 AM • Permalink
Theatre: Why Noël Now?
“Private Lives” at Barrington Stage; photo by Kevin Sprague
Is it coincidence or harmonic convergence that Barrington Stage Company and Berkshire Theatre Festival are both ending their main stage seasons with plays by Noël Coward, the most urbane of playwrights? According to the theater companies’ artistic directors, it was the availability of key players that led them to Coward this August.
Julianne Boyd, the artistic director of Barrington Stage, says that when she learned that two of her favorite actors—Mark H. Dold and Christopher Innvar—were interested in doing Private Lives, she decided she could fulfill her dream of directing what many consider Coward’s masterpiece, a comedy about two divorcées who can’t get enough of each other while on their honeymoons with their new spouses. “I am not doing this as a museum piece,“ says Boyd. “They are not going to have cigarette holders! I am interpreting it for modern times. And I think having a woman director’s perspective changes the play, too.“
Kate Maguire, the artistic director of the Berkshire Theatre Festival, chose to mount Noël Coward in Two Keys because director Vivian Matalon (who directed last year’s Mornings at Seven) suggested it. Matalon brings unique insight to the the pair of one-acts—Come into the Garden, Maud and A Song at Twilight—which were Coward’s last works for the stage. “Vivian directed Coward himself in the plays in 1966,“ notes McGuire.
Both artistic directors say the Coward plays have contemporary resonance for the region’s audiences. “Coward wrote about society and the pitffalls of that life in the most amusing way,“ says McGuire, whose theater is located in what was once the Stockbridge Casino, the hub of Gilded Age social life, which was designed by the great Stanford White. Boyd notes that Coward wrote Private Lives in 1930 (in four days, unbelievably) and that it was an entertaining diversion and balm during very difficult economic times. “It was escapist and gay, in the old sense of the word,“ says Boyd. “Maybe subconsciously that’s why I chose to do it now.“
Private Lives at Barrington Stage Company
Pittsfield, MA; 413.236.8888
August 7 - 24
Noël Coward in Two Keys at Berkshire Theatre Festival
Stockbridge. MA;413.298. 5576
August 12 - 30
