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5.29.11
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5.18.11
Weekend Preview May 19-24
Bob Dylan tributes, Deborah Voigt, Tom Paxton, Bill Kirchen, John Kirk and Trish Miller



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Celebrating Bob Dylan's 70th Birthday in Style
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5.12.11
Deborah Voigt Headlines Mahaiwe Gala
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5.15.11
Famed Spiritual Teacher to Speak on Nonviolence
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5.12.11
Special Effects Wizard to Be Honored by Film Festival
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Weekend Preview May 12-16
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6.4.09
Talk about a small world
Elaine and I grew up together, but only just recently met....



5.8.11
Berkshire Living to Cease Publication
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5.8.11
twiGs Branches Out
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5.8.11
[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.8.11
[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.7.11
[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.7.11
[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy





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[THEATER REVIEW] West Side Story at Barrington Stage

6.21.07
BARRINGTON STAGE COMPANY
West Side Story
By Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Jerome Robbins
Through July 14


Review by SETH ROGOVOY, editor-in-chief and critic-at-large of BERKSHIRE LIVING MAGAZINE

(Pittsfield, Mass., June 17, 2007) -- Not that anyone really needed reminding, but just in case, the last truly great conventional Broadway musical was probably the groundbreaking West Side Story.

Why things had to begin and end there is a question for theater historians. In the meantime, we're left with the joy of seeing a top-notch production of this nearly flawless masterpiece at Barrington Stage over the next few weeks, where the landmark musical stands out in all its naked glory.

It's hard to imagine that the creative team behind the original musical knew what they were achieving when they put the original production together. But this loosely updated retelling of Romeo and Juliet, transplanted to 1950s Hell's Kitchen, New York, boasts great dancing, numerous killer songs, a poignant story, and the opportunity to celebrate all these things in style.

The Barrington Stage production does justice to all these and more. The dancing is spectacular, all the more so given that the dancers are also the actors and the singers. This is an incredibly talented cast from top to bottom. They can dance, they can sing, and they can act. Only two minor complaints, neither directly at the expense of the cast members: unfortunately, we live in an age of American Idol, and most of the singer's voices and stage presence seems more appropriate to that odious crap than to a musical rewrite of Shakespeare. But this aesthetic has apparently become de rigueur, accepted as the way things are done. So there's no sense in banging one's head up against the wall. At least they're all talented; it's just too bad few if any stand out from the pack in a way that might have added some original, unique spice to the cast.

The other complaint is technical and may be related to the first: why the need for the singers to be amplified? This seemed to cause as many problems as it solved: with body thumps being heard louder than anything, with occasional distortion when mics were moved or became loose, with a few odd stagings where someone was singing from down right yet his voice was coming from upper left, and when someone's mic would just go out altogether. The fact is that when that happened you could still hear the singer fine. But today's singers are not trained to project or sing off-mike, so again, I guess we're just stuck with this.

OTHERWISE, Barrington Stage's West Side Story will undoubtedly and justifiably be one of the summer's most popular shows.




Regarding musical theater beginning and ending here with West Side Story, hmmmm.....I'm sure there might be a few out there who would disagree, perhaps even Sondheim himself, who went on to create such groundbreaking musicals as Company, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into The Woods, etc.
6/21/2007


I gave the show a 7 on a scale of 10. As a long time musical theater goer, I have to say I truly enjoyed it. And BTW, the last classic musical was "Ragtime", IMHO.

Lina Morse, Richmond
6/29/2007




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