Hip hop sip and paint near me11/22/2023 ![]() ![]() They recently wrapped up London playwright Kit Brookman’s “The Stones,” a contemporary gothic tale that was staged at the 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. ![]() The theater aims to tell compelling stories with mostly local actors at affordable prices. Great Barrington Public Theater has two stages, the McConnell Theatre and the 99-seat Liebowitz Black Box, located in the Daniel Arts Center on the campus of Bard College at Simon’s Rock. I'm looking forward to “ Tiny Father,” a world premiere by Mike Lew, showing now through July 22. Rodriguez’s Sally Bowles is exciting to watch, but Alysha Umphress as Fritzie/Fräulein Kost is also quite good. The scene where “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” is sung is quite chilling and signals a glaring shift. While the Kit Kat Club patrons lived it up in Berlin, outside its walls, Hitler’s ideas were seeping into the ground and taking root, catching at least some of the characters in the play by surprise. The narrative offers great insight into the insidiousness of hate. Patrons who arrive early for the show get to revel a little with the cast, who prime the crowd in the hallway by the bar. The vivacious ensemble, expertly dressed by Rodrigo Muñoz, regaled the audience with their smooth moves - courtesy of Katie Spelman - onstage and in the aisles. Wilson Chin has created a fittingly dark and moody set for the Kit Kat Club with red velvet curtains, brightened by a looming gold structure and art deco touches. The Broadway actor conjures up the theatricality and darkness reminiscent of Eartha Kitt and mixes it with his own brand of wonder and seedy-club glam. This was my first time seeing “Cabaret,” and I found Alexander’s prowess as the Emcee mesmerizing. ES Nik Alexander as the Emcee in "Cabaret" at Barrington Stage Company. I'm looking forward to Julianne Boyd returning to the director’s chair with Brian Friel’s gripping “Faith Healer” (Aug. Krysta Rodriguez’s Sally Bowles was as good as it gets, particularly her dissonant, tearful rendition of the title song.īoyd’s version is still the gold standard. Alexander is sometimes a little too silly in the first act, though it is a nice contrast to his later metamorphoses. And Paul handles the issue of antisemitism even more powerfully, all backed by a solid sense of stagecraft. Paul flips the switch with the Emcee (Nik Alexander) starting out as a celebrant of the zeitgeist and then, along with the Kit Kat Club ensemble, becoming one of the chief victims of hatred mounted against LGBTQ citizens. The acclaimed Sam Mendes revival revelled a bit too much in its immersive faux naughtiness.īoyd’s version made the Emcee the personification of animalistic but charismatic evil, a reflection of Hitlerian politics. I frankly thought that the movie version - I didn’t see the original on stage - was a mess, with director Bob Fosse, Emcee Joel Grey and star Liza Minnelli (followed by Louis Armstrong’s cover of the title song) not knowing whether to condemn the “Come to the Cabaret” apathetic aesthetic or exult in its hedonism. To me, Boyd was the first person to make sense of the material, and Paul, in his own vigorous way, is the second. His predecessor, Julianne Boyd, really put the company on the map in 1997 with a brilliant take on Kander and Ebb's tuneful exploration of Nazi-era Berlin in a production that transferred to Cambridge, picking up an Elliot Norton Award in the process. You have to hand it to new Barrington Stage Company artistic director Alan Paul, choosing “Cabaret” as his debut musical (through July 8 on the Pittsfield mainstage). Theater Barrington Stage Company The cast of "Cabaret" at Barrington Stage Company. The same goes for inns in the area.Īll in all, though, critics Ed Siegel and Jacquinn Sinclair found the balance of art and nature, including torrential rain, to be as heady a mix as always. New restaurants have opened, old favorites have re-opened and others have sold or gone out of business. Some newish theater companies, like Great Barrington Public Theater, have opened meanwhile, the Williamstown Theatre Festival is not doing full productions, although that has more to do with the fallout from the LA Times exposé of their exploitation of interns who had been working extremely long hours in toxic conditions for little or no pay. Others have had to switch to a new economic model. Some organizations, like Tanglewood, seem to have regained their foothold. The Berkshires, like the rest of the country, reflects the attempt to put the COVID pandemic behind us while simultaneously acknowledging the difficulty in doing that. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |