Helen Epstein

Theater Review: Catch the Train to Nibroc

July 16, 2010
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Last Train to Nibroc by Arlene Hutton. Staged by the Chester Theater Company, Chester, MA, through July 25. Reviewed By Helen Epstein I drove back to Chester Theater Company(CTC) last night expecting another engrossing evening and got it. I love making the trip to the village (pop. 1000) and the makeshift theater in its small…

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Culture Vulture: High Marks for ‘Sea Marks’

July 11, 2010
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By Helen Epstein Perhaps a director’s most important choice is sifting through the great backlist of dramatic literature and choosing a play whose sensibility she not only wishes to explore and inhabit, but that she can cast and direct well. When the play, the director and design team, the actors, and historical moment all line…

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Culture Vulture: A Theatrical Wonder in the Berkshires

July 2, 2010
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Reviewed By Helen Epstein Molly Sweeney by Brian Friel. Directed by Michael Dowling. Staged by the Chester Theatre Company, Chester, MA, through July 11. This summer Chester Theatre Company (CTC) Artistic Director Byam Stevens is exhorting theatergoers to “free the inner audience” within them. Theatergoers, he says, have become like critics, losing a sense of…

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Culture Vulture: July Highlights in the Berkshires

June 27, 2010
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By Helen Epstein For Stephen Sondheim fans there’s the Barrington Stage Company production of Sweeney Todd that runs till July 17. I’m waiting for Yasmina Reza’s Art , which is directed by Henry Wishcamper and runs from July 22 through August 7.

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Culture Vulture: ‘Richard III’ Director Back at Work

June 7, 2010
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By Helen Epstein Shakespeare & Company’s new director Tony Simotes is in his last week of radiation and chemotherapy for throat cancer in Boston, but he was in the Berkshires this weekend to preside over the first read-through of Richard III.

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Culture Vulture: Tracking the Transcendentalists

May 25, 2010
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There are dozens of excellent books about the Alcotts, Emersons, Thoreau, and Hawthorne but reading them can’t beat actually walking through the places where the people actually lived. By Helen Epstein “We are all going to be made perfect,” wrote ten-year-old Louisa May Alcott in June of 1843, “This day we left Concord in the…

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Theater Review: A Boffo ‘Blithe Spirit’

May 10, 2010
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What makes a comedy a sure-fire hit? Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward. Directed by Spiro Veloudos. Staged by the Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Boston, MA, through June 5. Reviewed By Helen Epstein That was one of the few questions I was taking the trouble to ask myself while giving in to the sheer enjoyment…

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Culture Vulture: Dead Elvis Lives

April 26, 2010
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The Chamber Orchestra of Boston’s final concert of the season reaffirmed the city’s high level of musicianship. Reviewed By Helen Epstein Although it is a popular and engaging staple of the concert hall, the fully staged version of Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat or The Soldier’s Tale is one of the least performed in the…

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Culture Vulture: See ‘The Dwarf’

March 12, 2010
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Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) by Alexander Zemlinsky. Libretto by George Klaren, based on Oscar Wilde’s “The Birthday of the Infanta.” Staged by OperaHub at the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA, through March 13. Free Reviewed by Helen Epstein For a truly worthwhile evening of music drama—free admission no less—get yourselves to the Boston…

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Culture Vulture: The MET at the Mall

February 10, 2010
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Reviewed By Helen Epstein An hour and a half before curtain, operagoers are lining up at the AMC 10 cineplex in Burlington, Massachusetts across the road from the mall. Forty-five minutes later, the only available seats in Theater 3 are in the first two neck-craning rows. It’s 12:15 p.m., a sunny Saturday in February when…

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