By Mark G. Auerbach
New Season Announcements
AUDRA McDONALD
Williamstown Theatre Festival has announced its 2020 summer season, the 66th season for the Tony Award-winning theatre company, which includes four world premiere plays, a world premiere musical, and new productions of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire with Audra McDonald, Carla Gugino and Bobby Cannavale, and Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51. Trip Cullman directs the world premiere of Cult of Love, starring Kate Burton on the Main Stage. The final play of the Main Stage season will be Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler (directed by five-time Tony, Olivier, and Drama Desk Award winner Susan Stroman (The Producers).The Nikos Stage hosts the world premiere of Wish You Were Here, followed by the world premiere of Chonburi International Hotell and Butterfly Club, starring Berkshires favorite Annie Golden. A new musical, Row follows. The Nikos season ends with another world premiere, Animals. For details: www.wtfestival.org.
Shakespeare and Company’s season will include several works by the Bard, including King Lear with Allyn Burrows and Christopher Lloyd; The Comedy of Errors, and Much Ado About Nothing performed outdoors in the Roman Garden Theatre, and a special workshop production of Measure For Measure. Contemporary plays include The Lifespan of A Fact, the recent Broadway hit that’s currently at TheaterWorks; Melissa James Gibson’s new play, What Rhymes with America; Jessica Dickey’s Row After Row, staged by Tina Packer; and a revival of Harold Pinter’s landmark Betrayal, starring Elizabeth Aspenleider. A special reading of Susan Miller’s My Left Breast is on the schedule as well. For details: www.shakespeare.org.
CHRIS NOTH
Berkshire Theatre Group’s 2020 season includes some popular titles, Peter Pan, They’re Playing Our Song for musicals, and Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, world premieres of Letters to A President and B.R.O.K.E.N.Code B.I.R.D. Switching; a new production, Telling Stories: Two Solo Performers; and C.P. Taylor’s And A Nightengale Sang. Returning talent includes directors Eric Hill, David Auburn, and Gregg Edelman, and actors David Adkins, Harriet Harris, Rebecca Brooksher, and they’re joined by “Mr. Big,” Chris Noth. For details: www.berkshiretheatrewgroup.org.
Chester Theatre Company’s 2020 season includes four plays by women authors, the New England premiere of Switzerland by Joanna Murray-Smith, staged by James Barry; the world premiere of Darcy Parker Bruce’s The Life of The World To Come, staged by Keira Naughton; The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess, and Tiny Beautiful Things by Nia Vardalos, directed by CTC’s Daniel Elihu Kramer and starring Tara Franklin. Franklin and Barry will also host two evenings of cabaret. Chester Theatre commissioned The Life of The World to Come. For details: www.chestertheatre.org.
Review: The 10×10 New Play Festival at Barrington Stage
Peggy Pharr Wilson and Kenneth Tigar in Stay ,Please by Kessica Provenz at Barrington Stage Company’s 10×10 New Play Festival.
Barrington Stage’s 10×10 New Play Festival, now in its 9th year, provides a unique program to area audiences: 10 new plays, each no more than 10 minutes in length, performed by a sextet of versatile actors, and staged by two directors. Any way you add it up, the 10×10 New Play Festival has become one of the winter’s most eagerly awaited theatre offerings. On a simple set designed by Brian Prather, directors Julianne Boyd and Matthew Penn, a duo quite adept at staging new works,work wonders with this boutique collection of comedies and dramas. The costumes and lighting by Trinity Melissa Koch and Lukas Pawelski are deceptively simple, and Alexander Sovronsky weaves the plays together with a thoughtful sound design.
From the first playlet, Five Seconds by Connie Schindewolf, which pokes fun of a short plays festival, to the hilarious Oy Vey Maria by Mark Harvey Levine, which focuses on the Virgin Mary’s parents who come to meet their new grandchild, each playlet has its moment. In Jessica Provenz’s very funny Stay, Please, a Boca widow chases down an eligible bachelor with her homemade lasagna and another trick up her sleeve. Some of the more dramatic playlets deal with a world where people try to overcome their addiction to social media and unplug; where an estranged motyher and her lesbian daughter try to reconnect, or a world, where women control men’s right to choose.
Kenneth Tigar, Peggy Pharr Wilson, Maya Loren Jackson, Peter Macklin, Keri Safran, Doug Harris in Oy Vey Maria by Mark Harvey Levine at Barrington Stage Company’s 10×10 New Play Festival.
The cast, Doug Harris, Maya Loren Jackson, Peter Macklin, Keri Safran, Kenneth Tigar, and Peggy Pfarr Wilson. perform 35 different roles in 100 minutes. Each are individually good, but Peggy Pfarr Wilson, a regular at Barrington Stage, and Kenneth Tigar, who makes frequent appearances at Chester Theatre and the North Hall Festival in Huntington, were a joy. I also appreciated Keri Safran as a robotic substitute for a wife; Maya Loren Jackson, as a teacher with a conscience and a fretful bungee jumper, and Doug Harris and Peter Macklin, as Shakespearean actors asking the Bard for rewrites.
The 10×10 New Play Festival only runs until March 8. It’s nice to know that good theatre exists in the Berkshires during the “off season”.
Barrington Stage presents the 10×10 New Play Festival. Plays and playwrights listed at https://barringtonstageco.org/10×10-new-play-festival-2020/. Directed by Julianne Boyd and Matthew Penn. Scenic design by Brian Prather. Costumes designed by Trinity Melissa Koch. Lighting design by.Lukas Pawelski. Sound design by Alexander Sovronsky. Cast: Doug Harris, Maya Loren Jackson, Peter Macklin, Keri Safran, Kenneth Tigar, Peggy Pfarr Wilson. Through March 8. St. Germain Theatre, Barrington Stage, Pittsfield, MA. For details: www.barringtonstageco.org.
Keep in Mind…
The Big Broadcast! returns to South Hadley’s Chapin Auditorium on March 7. Tyhis 15th annual edition of a live 1940s radio broadcast, is created and directed by Mark Gionfriddo with the Jazz Ensembles of Mount Holyoke College. Brian Lapis starsa as emcee “Fred Kelley”.Mount Holyoke alum Caitlin Jaene Mercer, a founding member of the Jazz Ensembles, and now a chanteuse and bass player with her band Blue Hippopotomous, is guest artist. The music includes swing and pop standards made famous during the golden age of radio Benny Goodman’s “All The Cats Join In”; “It’s Been A Long, Long Time” by June Christy and Stan Kenton; the Glenn Miller classic “A String of Pearls”; Peggy Lee’s “Black Coffee”, and a rare radio rendition of “On The Atchison, Topeka, and The Santa Fe” by the Andrews Sisters, which was never officially released.including. For details: www.fineartscenter.com. (Author’s note: The Big Broadcast! is one of my clients).
The UMass Department of Music and Dance presents the 3rd Bezanson Legacy Concert on February 25, in Bezanson Recital Hall on the Umass/Amherst campus. The program features music by Umass composers, including Blow Out the Candles of Your Cake by professor emeritus and former Fine Arts Center director Frederick Tillis. For details: www.fineartscenter.com.
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. Mark produces and hosts ArtsBeat Radio for 89.5fm/WSKB and is a contributor to Pioneer Valley Radio.
