Theater
By Helen Epstein After the Revolution by Amy Herzog. Directed by Carolyn Cantor. Staged by the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Williamstown, MA, July 21 through August 1 (closed). Long before the invention of psychotherapy, long before writer William Faulkner wrote “The past is never dead. It is not even past,” the Greeks mined family history for…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb Stephen Sondheim, the greatest genius in the history of musicals, has turned 80 this year, and there have been celebrations of all sorts to mark this milestone. London joined the hoopla by devoting its BBC Prom 19 on July 31 to a full evening drawn from Sondheim’s achievements and presented in the…
Read MoreSee Rock City by Arlene Hutton. The second play in the Nibroc Trilogy. Directed by Jay Stratton. Staged by the Chester Theater Company, Chester, MA, through August 8. Reviewed By Helen Epstein Arlene Hutton’s absorbing Nibroc Trilogy, produced by the Chester Theater Company (CTC), is now in its second phase with See Rock City. Although…
Read MoreBy Helen Epstein If you want a country theater experience, complete with magical valley and stream and a freight train in the distance, go to Chester, MA this month. Chester Theater Company‘s The Nibroc Trilogy is a winner and will culminate on the final two Saturdays of the season (August 14 and 21) with the…
Read MoreThis farcical stage version of the classic Sherlock Holmes novel teems with physical humor and visual gags while retaining the basic storyline of the complex original version. The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Steven Canny and John Nicholson. Directed by Thomas Derrah. Presented by Central Square Theater, at Central Square Theater, Cambridge, MA, through August…
Read MoreActor John Douglas Thompson can captivate, seduce, and thrill any audience in any play, which is exactly what he did, once again, in Shakespeare & Company’s enthralling new production of The Life and Death of King Richard III. The Life and Death of King Richard III by William Shakespeare. Directed by Jonathan Croy. Conceived and…
Read MoreCharm’d magic casements, opening on the Foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. — To a Nightingale, John Keats, 1819 GRIMM: The Brothers’ Tales Remixed & Re-imagined . . . Written by Gregory Maguire, Kristen Greenidge, Melinda Lopez, Marcus Gardley, Lydia R. Diamond, John Kuntz, and John ADEkoje. Directed by Summer L. Williams and…
Read MoreLast 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…
Read More
Arts Commentary: Rich in Creativity — But Nothing Else