Berkshires
On August 1st a group of dedicated Melvilleans gathered at the author’s Arrowhead home in the morning to commemorate his 191st birthday by hiking to Monument Mountain. This trip is meant to reenact the hike Melville took on August 5, 1850, which led to his meeting Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose short story collection Mosses from an…
Read MoreBy Helen Epstein July 30 featured a Russian warhorse program at Tanglewood: Glinka’s “Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila”; Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, and Prokofiev’s Music from the ballet Romeo and Juliet. These are familiar (some might say over-familiar) works for orchestra, but, of course, there’s a reason they’re still being programmed.…
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 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 MoreBy Helen Epstein It isn’t often that you get to hear the same conductor, same composer, and two different orchestras but that unusual experience was offered at Tanglewood as Michael Tilson Thomas (filling in for James Levine) conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in Mahler’s Second Symphony last week and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra…
Read MoreIn Serenade/The Proposition, the first of Bill T. Jones’ investigations into the myth and legacy of Abraham Lincoln, the choreographer looks at history and history looks back. By Debra Cash Cash was the professional critic on the Judicial Review panel reacting to Bill T. Jones’ Serenade/The Proposition at Jacob’s Pillow, July 21 through 25. She…
Read MoreReviewed 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…
Read MoreBy Helen Epstein When you’re sitting in a traffic jam on the Mass Pike or the Taconic Parkway it’s instructive to reflect that one hundred and fifty years ago, it often took less time to get to the Berkshires from Boston or New York City than it does today. The Berkshires were then a major…
Read MoreBy Helen Epstein No one reviews talks but I’ve just attended two by some highly gifted women that deserve wider notice. Director Anna Brownsted and actress Dana Harrison discussed their work on R.T. Rogers’ provocative play “White People” at Shakespeare & Company last week and author Brenda Wineapple gave a brilliant mini-seminar in American cultural…
Read Moreby Helen Epstein Go here for information about a live-chat, scheduled for August 23rd, with Helen Epstein on “The Art of Narrative Writing.” They were around for most of my lifetime, I thought as I listened to Martin Bookspan, the 83-year-old radio announcer and music commentator and 80-year-old conductor, composer, and jazz artist Andre Previn.
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