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Archive for the ‘Theater’ Category

Families, Gardens, Love in Bloom, the Mac-Hayden Returns to Its Roots with “The Fantasticks” [Berkshire on Stage]

Thursday, May 23rd, 2013

Showing their new-found togetherness is struck by Bellomy (Derrick Jaques), Luisa (Stephanie Granade), Matt (Andrew McMath), and Hucklebee (Gabe Bleyeu) in The Fantasticks. Even as they celebrate newfound happiness, El Gallo (Patrick Heffernan) wonders how long they will stay that way.

Everyone loves The Fantasticks, the tale of interfering fathers, a swashbuckling rogue, charm and comedy which opens May 23, 2013 and plays until June 2 at the Mac-Hayden Theatre in Chatham, New York. The Fantasticks, the world’s longest running musical, opens the 45th anniversary season at The Mac-Haydn Theatre.

“Since the show was part of our very first summer in 1969, it seemed right to put it into an anniversary season”, Artistic Director/Producer Lynne Haydn said about the perennial favorite show, adding “especially since several of our people have performed in the show Off-Broadway: Tom Flagg as the Mute, Jim Charles as the Mute, the Boy and El Gallo and Christine Long as the Girl.”

Mac-Haydn’s newest presentation of the show stars past season favorites Patrick Heffernan as El Gallo, Andrew McMath as the Boy, Gabe Belyeu and Derrick Jaques as the Fathers, and David Beditz and Monk Schane-Lydon as Henry and Mortimer. Newcomers this season, Stephanie Granade will be the Girl, and the Mutes are Lea Nardi and Scott Caron.

Click to read the rest at Berkshire on Stage.

Tags: Berkshire On Stage, Chatham, Larry Murray, The Mac-Haydn Theatre
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Review: “A Strange Disappearance of Bees” Has Critics Buzzing With Excitement [Berkshire on Stage]

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013

(l to r) Jenny Strassburg and Melissa Hurst in “A Strange Disappearance of Bees” at Oldcastle Theaetre Company.

Review by Gail M. Burns and Larry Murray

Gail M. Burns: Without question, “A Strange Disappearance of Bees” has to be one of the best original plays I’ve seen in a long time. By “original” I mean conceived wholly from the mind of the playwright – we see lots of adaptations, translations and historical or biographical plays, but this one is a new creation.

Larry Murray: It’s been years since a new play came out of the blue and knocked my over like a stroke of theatrical lightning.

Gail: For starters, it is clearly plotted and truly moving and engaging. These are good but imperfect people – just like you and me – and through the course of the play we come to care about them and understand why they make the choices they do.

Larry: Elena Hartwell, whom we had the pleasure of meeting – almost by accident – in the lobby before the performance began is the sort of person you just naturally fall into a conversation with. And her play is peopled with uncomplicated characters who you just can’t help liking.

Click to read the rest at Berkshire on Stage.

Tags: Bennington, Berkshire On Stage, Gail Burns, Larry Murray, Oldcastle Theatre Company
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Barrington Stage Offers “Bashir Lazhar,” American Premiere of an Unorthodox Play [Berkshire on Stage]

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

Juri Henley-Cohn plays the teacher, Bashir Lazhar.

Talking with Julie Boyd, we reviewed the Barrington Stage summer slate of shows for 2013. Most were obviously good solid choices, but I just wanted to blurt out that I had my doubts about Bashir Lazhar drawing an audience. After all it’s not exactly On The Town or Much Ado About Nothing (also on their schedule) which people are familiar and comfortable with. It is rather, a Canadian play about a French Algerian political refugee, and not just a little off the beaten track. Everyone knows Boyd doesn’t pick duds. So I asked her to talk about it.

Julie Boyd said simply: “It’s wonderful. Not only as a play but also because Juri Henley-Cohn is such a fabulous actor. It’s a show we did a staged reading of last year, and it is a story I have absolutely fallen in love with. I think the movie Monsieur Lazhar was wonderful, and this is just a different kind of subject for the theatre. I am attracted to people who enter new worlds and how they deal with it. Immigrants like Lazhar are often unprepared for the realities of their new life.

“What makes this interesting is that as they are learning, we are learning, too. It’s a wonderful journey that Bashir Lazhar takes,” explained Boyd. “We’ve also gone ahead and commissioned an original score for this, and with the immensely talented and imaginative Shakina Nayfack at the helm, and the set, lights and production that is planned, it will end up being kind of magical.”

Click to read the rest at Berkshire on Stage.

Tags: Barrington Stage, Berkshire On Stage, Larry Murray, Pittsfield
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Festival Fever: The Lake George.com Elvis Festival, 5/29-6/2/13

Monday, May 20th, 2013

The Lake George.com Elvis Festival, 5/29-6/2/13 Got Elvis?

Oh yeah!

America’s Vacationland is once again gearing up to shake, rattle ‘n’ roll with the tenth annual Lake George festival dedicated to all things Elvis.

This year’s LakeGeorge.com Elvis Festival kicks off at 7pm on Wednesday, May 29 with the free opening ceremonies in beautiful Shepard Park.

According to organizers, Lake George’s Presley party is now the second-largest Elvis Tribute Artist Competition in the world. (Yeah, and please don’t call ‘em Elvis impersonators. They’re tribute artists.)

The festival’s centerpiece is the three-day competition beginning on Friday, May 31 at the Lake George Forum, featuring 50 competitors in professional, non-professional and youth divisions. In the international spirit of Elvis, the festival performers not only come from all over the United States, but also from Canada and England. And this year, there’s even a female tribute artist – Lady E from Florida – in the competition.

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Tags: Elvis Festival, Lake George
Posted in Be Here Now: Previews, Music, Theater | No Comments »

Burns and Murray Give Naches to Jonathan Epstein and New Stage for “The Jewish Jester” [Berkshire on Stage]

Thursday, May 16th, 2013

Robert D. Lohbauer (l) and Jonathan Epstein in “The Jewish Jester: A Fable With Music.”

Review by Gail M. Burns and Larry Murray

Gail Burns: I didn’t know quite what to expect from “The Jewish Jester: A Fable With Music,” but with Jonathan Epstein in the leading role, how can you go wrong…

Larry Murray: He may be the lowly servant of the king in this play, but he’s also its star. Between Epstein and Robert Lohbauer, his co-star, it’s a pretty dynamic duo on stage, making a great evening entertainment out of a bit of a mushy play. Its advance publicity pointed out that it is a combination of Elizabethan English and Yiddish, but that is only the tip of the Word Play iceberg. It’s also puns, physical comedy and role reversals.

Gail: I was confused as the dialogue is sometimes Elizabethan, sometimes modern, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose. I wanted to get my hands on a script to clarify playwright Daniel Klein’s rhyme and reason, but that is one of those perks the press can access that the average ticket-buyer can’t. No one should have waste time in the theater trying to figure out what the playwright is up to structurally.

Larry: As to the play itself, it’s like a sweet tsholnt, a Jewish stew that has been simmering for a long time. Some meshuggener (slightly crazy guy) named Daniel Klein put this concoction together. He’s the guy who wrote (with Thomas Cathcart) “Plato and a Platypus Walked into a Bar.” It takes a creative imagination to come up with a nudnik Jewish Jester and condemned King sharing the same jail cell, yet the whole megillah comes together at the Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge.

Click to read the rest at Berkshire on Stage.

Tags: Berkshire On Stage, Berkshire Theatre Group, Gail Burns, Larry Murray, Stockbridge
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Oldcastle Theatre Presents a Play About Searching: “A Strange Disappearance of Bees” [Berkshire on Stage]

Tuesday, May 14th, 2013

Oldcastle Theatre presents a play about searching: “A Strange Disappearance of Bees”

Bennington, VT: The next offering from Oldcastle Theatre Company, a professional Equity regional theatre newly installed in its renovated, fully accessible theatre space in downtown Bennington, Vermont is “A Strange Disappearance of Bees” by Elena Hartwell on May 17, running through June 2.

“A Strange Disappearance of Bees” is a beautifully written play that began simply. To hear Hartwell tell it: “I first learned about Colony Collapse Disorder at a time when my own life had started to fragment. In the space of a few years I lost my job, my confidence, my significant other, my house, and my longtime canine companion. I began to think about the parallels between human experiences and all the possible causes of CCD. The disappearance of millions of honeybees has been attributed to pesticides, cell phone interference, mites, an HIV-like virus, and the large–and less nutritious–mono-crops of big agro-businesses.

“It struck me that sometimes people disappear too. Cancers from chemicals, isolation through technology, a disconnect from community. Out of those ideas came this play. As my own life got back on track, a new love, four new animals, a new home, a re-imagined career, the drafts became more hopeful at the end. This play, to me, is art representing life, and life representing art.”

Tags: Bennington, Berkshire On Stage, Larry Murray, Oldcastle Theatre
Posted in Be Here Now: Previews, Theater | No Comments »

Review: Burns and Murray on Nunsenations! at Cohoes, NY Music Hall [Berkshire on Stage]

Monday, May 13th, 2013

Nunsenations!

Larry Murray: Between the two of us we have these nuns covered – I’ve lived to tell about eight years at Holy Redeemer School with its sadistic Dominican nuns, and you have seen just about every sequel to Nunsense that has come along. Is that about right or am I having to go to confession and admit I have committed two exaggerations…

Gail M. Burns: I can’t vouch for your tales of Holy Redeemer, but I do know that I have seen barely half of the currently existing shows in the Nunsense fanchise – the original Nunsense, Nuncrackers, Meshuggah-Nuns, and now Nunsensations. There are three more – Nunsense II: The Second Coming, Nunsense III: Sister Amnesia’s Country Western Jamboree, and the new Nunset Boulevard – plus a couple of spin-offs – Sister Robert Anne’s Cabaret Class and Nunsense A-Men (a drag version!)

Larry: And that’s before even mentioning the filmed episodes with Whoopi Goldberg and others having fun with the idea. But down to business. We are talking about Nunsensations in Cohoes, ably directed and choreographed by Tony Rivera, the third Nunsense production they’ve pulled off at the Cohoes Music Hall if I am not mistaken.

Gail: It is. C-R Productions mounted Meshuggah-Nuns in 2005 [Read Review] and Nuncrackers in 2008 [Read Review]. The former featured Katherine Pecevich as Mother Superior, Sister Mary Regina, and the latter Cynthia Thomas as Sister Mary Hubert, Mistress of Novices, both of whom are reprising those roles here.

Click to read the rest at Berkshire on Stage.

Tags: Berkshire On Stage, Cohoes, Gail Burns, Larry Murray
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LIVE: “Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show” @ the Palace Theatre, 5/9/13

Friday, May 10th, 2013

Review by Greg Haymes

“The good news is… I’m not singing tonight.” – Albany Mayor Gerald Jennings, during his introductory remarks

“This is exactly what it was like in the old days – except completely different,” proclaimed Tom Wallek as Dean Martin at the Palace Theatre on Thursday evening. And he was right.

While “Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show” had the veneer of an early ’60s Vegas flashback tribute act, the show was clearly in the here and now, mostly thanks to the constant jokes and jabs from Sandy Hackett, who undeniably stole the show in his role as Joey Bishop, the constant cut-up, the court jester to the Chairman and his board.

While the obvious greatest-hits setlist and snappy tuxedos were clearly vintage, the jokes referenced “Dancing With the Stars,” Sheryl Crow, “Brokeback Mountain” and Justin Beiber, along with multiple jabs at Viagra and Jerry Jenning’s tan. Clearly not the stuff of ’60s Vegas.

No matter, they were freewheelin’ onstage, and a little time/space continuum warpage added just the right touch of surrealism. I admittedly didn’t have high expectations for this show, but I ended up having a pretty good time. We’ve all heard impersonations of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. – at least those of us of a certain age have – and while these guys weren’t great, they did hold their own on stage for a two-hour show – not just a 30-second sound byte.

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