MARK AUERBACH
Some Big Summer Season Announcements
It’s looking like the theatre season this summer is going to sizzle. Shakespeare & Company, Barringston Stage Company, and The Williamstown Theatre Festival have announced their 2014 summer rosters. Their websites will have detailed information on subscription and single ticket options.
Barrington Stage
Barrington Stage Company celebrates its 20th Anniversary season, which will be held at its three venues in downtown Pittsfield. Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate”, a musicalization of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of The Shrew”, as told by a group of modern day actors performing the classic, opens the season. (June 11-July 12). “Breaking The Code”, Hugh Whitemore’s biographical drama about the true story of WWII mathematician Alan Turing, a brilliant scientist tormented because he is gay, plays July 17-August 2. Of note: On December 23, 2013, Turing was given a posthumous royal pardon by Queen Elizabeth II, addressing his 1952 conviction for gross indecency following which he was given female hormones to suppress his sexual desires. John Cariani, former StageWest actor who won acclaim as the author of “Almost Maine”, stars in “Dancing Lessons”, a world premiere by Mark St. Germain (August 7-24). For tickets and information: 413-236-8888 or www.barringtonstageco.org.
Laura Klock
Shakespeare and Company
Shakespeare and Company will feature a variety of classics and new works. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with Johnny Lee Davenport (June 21-August 30), “Henry IV, Parts i & II” (August 2-31), “Julius Caesar” (June 27-August 30), “Romeo and Juliet” (July 17-August 23), and “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)” by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield (July 4-August 24) represent the Bard. Christopher Durang’s recently acclaimed Broadway hit “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” will provide ample laughs in its Berkshires premiere (August 7-September 14). For information on these and other performances: www.shakespeare.org
Williiamstown Theatre Festival
Ring Lardner’s and George S. Kaufman’s “June Moon”, the backstage Broadway story about a young lyricist, aiming for Tin Pan Alley stardom, who is distracted by the ladies of Broadway, opens the season (July 2-13), but the fireworks kick off later in the summer. Opera diva Renee Fleming, who just sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl, stars in a new play, Living on Love” (July 16-26). She plays an opera diva in the Joe DiPietro play based on a Garson Kanin work, which will be staged by Broadway musical director. Kathleen Marshall. Chita Rivera, the Broadway legend, stars in “The Visit” (July 31-August 17), a musical by John Kander and red Ebb of “Cabaret” and “Chicago” fame. Controversial Broadway director John Doyle stages this work, the last that Kander and Ebb wrote before Ebb’s death. For information: www.wtfestival.org.
Lynn Klock
Bravo, Klocks!
Laura Klock, Principal French Horn player of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, and Professor of Horn at the UMass/Amherst Department of Music & Dance, is retiring from UMass this Spring, after 40 years of teaching and performing. (My Klock history goes back to 1971, when she and I were in the very first Wolf Trap/American University Academy of the Performing Arts, in Washington, DC).
To celebrate her retirement, she and several colleagues from UMass and The Springfield Symphony will perform her “Final Recital” on Sunday, February 16, at 4 p.m., at Bezanson Recital Hall on the UMass/Amherst campus. Pianist Nadine Shank will join Klock for Richard Strauss’ Concerto Op. 11. Klock’s husband, Lynn Klock (the Principal Saxophone player at the Springfield Symphony and a retiring member of the UMass Music faculty), will join Laura and Doublebass performer Salvatore Macchia (also with UMass and the Springfield Symphony) to perform the premiere of Macchia’s work “Soon”.
Klock says “I’m so glad that Sal agreed to my request to write a final piece for the three of us. “Soon” was written in the fall of 2013 as a companion piece to the first work (En trouvant les tombeaux) written by Macchia for the three of us.”
For tickets: 413 545 2511 or at fac.umass.edu/musicanddance.
Colin Quinn
Keep in Mind…
***Colin Quinn brings his one-man show “Unconstitutional” to the Colonial Theatre, Pittsfield, for one performance on Sunday, February 16. The SNL veteran comic offers his unique commic perspective on merica’s national character from predator drones to the Kardashians, wondering if this is what the founding fathers planned. Tickets: 413-997-4444. or www.berkshiretheatregroup.org.
Mark G. Auerbach studied theatre at American University and the Yale School of Drama. He’s worked for arts organizations and reported on theatre for newspapers and radio.
