Arts

Arts

"Radio Deluxe" Comes to the Tanglewood Jazz Festival

The New York Times cabaret critic Stephen Holden has flipped his lid for John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey, who host Radio Deluxe, which will tape at Ozawa Hall on Saturday, September 5 as part of the Tanglewood Jazz Festival.  "The wittiest, most musically savvy husband-and-wife team in pop-jazz, they

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Arts

Dan's Diary: "A Streetcar Named Desire" Is A Great Ride

You don't see Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire produced very often because it is almost impossible to cast. (ReadThe New York Times' Ben Brantley on the 2005 New York production with John C. Reilly.) After all these years, it still needs an actor who

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Arts

Dan's Diary: WTF Lights A Fire Under "The Torch-Bearers"

You might consider The Torch-Bearers at Williamstown Theatre Festival theater-for-theater's sake. The play itself—a 1922 chestnut by George Kelly that has been "adapted" by director Dylan Baker—seems like an excuse for artistic director Nicky Martin to fill the Main Stage with a dozen accomplished

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Arts

Dan's Diary: Lightning Strikes Williamstown Theatre Festival

What's going on with the stagehands at Williamstown Theatre Festival? At both True West and What Is the Cause of Thunder?, the stagehands, who are dressed like bellhops at chic boutique hotels, take a bow at the curtain call. The sets, lighting and sound for both productions are

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Arts

Berkshire Fringe Festival Grows Up

Fringe founders Peter Wise, Sara Katzoff & Timothy Ryan Olson The Berkshire Fringe Festival operates in the spirit of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which started in Scotland in 1947, when eight theater troupes turned up uninvited at Edinburgh International Fesitval and had to perform on the outskirts of the city.

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Arts

Dan's Diary: The Best of All Possible Worlds

Every summer, Berkshire Theatre Festival mounts one or two important and historic plays that I have never seen or read, and I am always grateful to BTF for filling in the gaps in my education.  Nowadays, as large-cast musicals become prohibitively expensive to produce, we should rejoice whenever they are

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Arts

Still Some Tickets Left for Ang Lee's "Taking Woodstock" Chatham Premiere

There was a time when lots of small towns across America had an old movie palace like the Crandell, a theater in Chatham that was built in 1926 as a venue for vaudeville and the silent picture show.   Since 1960, the year Psycho was the big hit, the Crandell has

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Arts

Dan's Diary: The Greatest Generation's Favorite Musical?

Though I'd argue with Time Magazine's contention that Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel is the greatest musical of the  20th century, Julianne Boyd, the artistic director of Barrington Stage Company, has given Carousel the kind of stunning production that only a great musical deserves. Boyd&

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Arts

Dan's Diary: Gray Skies Are Gonna Clear Up . . .

If you're a musical theater buff, you know that "Gray skies are gonna clear up/Put on a happy face" is a lyric from Bye Bye Birdie, which was the song in my head as I walked into the soggy parking lot after seeing TriArts'

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Arts

Dan's Diary: You Don't Have To Be Jewish . . .

To paraphrase the old Levy's Rye Bread ad from the 1960s, You Don't Have to Be Jewish To Like Golda's Balcony. You don't need to be a Zionist or a Socialist or a Feminist to appreciate the political and personal struggles of

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Arts

Dan's Diary: A Youthquake at Music Mountain

On Sunday afternoon, two teenage girls with apples-and-cream complexions who looked like they were dressed for their high school prom, opened the 80th season at the Music Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Falls Village. Madalyn Parnas, an 18-year-old violinist, and her sister Cicely, a 16-year-old cellist, who are known as

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Arts

Dan's Diary: Berkshire Playwrights Lab Champions New Drama

Although the Berkshires' four leading theater companies—Barrington Stage, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Shakespeare & Company, and Williamstown Theatre Festival—all produce new plays along with classics and crowd-pleasers, only the Berkshire Playwrights Lab is devoted exclusively to new work by both established and emerging playwrights. To kick off its

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