The summer season winds down with (too) many of the usual crowd-pleasers, enlivened by a couple of world premieres, a re-vamping of an Oscar Wilde warhorse, and an encounter with non-being, courtesy of Edward Albee.

By Bill Marx
The Taster by Joan Ackermann. Directed by Tina Packer. Staged by Shakespeare & Company at the Founders’ Theatre, Lenox, [...]

Underneath the discouraging array of customary exhibitions there are some reassuring productions of the new this month, with a smattering of New England and world premieres.

Culture Vulture thinks that Richard III will be a highlight at Shakespeare & Co; I am also intrigued by Company One drawing on local playwrights to revamp the tales of [...]

Perhaps the inspirational cliches, by-the-numbers storyline, and fan cartoon hijinks are what’s expected in a baseball musical.

Johnny Baseball, Music by Robert Reale, Lyrics by Willie Reale, Book by Richard Dresser. Story by Dresser and Reale. Directed by Diane Paulus. Staged by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge, MA, through July 11. [...]

Artists should “no longer huddle in the confines of a painted box set” but instead join together to “find visible and audible expression for the tempo and psychology of our time” and dramatize “the search of the average American today for knowledge about his country and his world.” – Hallie Flanagan, Federal Theatre Project
Stick Fly [...]

Highlights on stage this month include the world premiere of a drama about evolution by a respected local playwright and an intriguing collection of plays and musicals that bring an unusual perspective to topics ranging from love and music to extinction and dehumanization. And the wait is over: a show featuring singing dinosaurs has arrived.

By [...]

A recent piece in the New York Times provides further proof of the increasingly pernicious stranglehold marketing exerts on the production of new voices in the theater.
By Bill Marx
Let’s face it—the fastest growing segment of non-profit hiring in the arts over the past decade or so, marketing, is now pretty much in the cultural [...]

By Bill Marx
The coming month offers some unusual examples of theater. Finished with “exploding” Shakespeare, the American Repertory Theater has decided to present the American classics unabridged. Produced by the Elevator Repair Service, “Gatz” is an evening of drama that revolves around a complete reading of “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Political point-scoring [...]

By Bill Marx
Somewhere an enterprising graduate student is working on a trenchant study of the correlation between holiday stage entertainment and the American economy. When things were looking bright and profitable the shows became cynical and comic, with mischievous elves placing whoopee cushions under our delusions of good cheer. Now that unemployment is high and [...]