“Lunar Eclipse” Reveals Hidden Dimensions of the Heart
What could be better than sitting out in a field waiting for a lunar eclipse and watching the stars? How about a matinee of a World Premiere play by a Pulitzer-winning…
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5 Questions with Tyler Cardona
There have been more than a couple of interviews with Brian Sheldon, the playwright and subject of the autobiographical “Custom Cuts,” which is getting its World Premiere…
5 Questions with Kristen van Ginhoven
Kristen van Ginhoven, Founder and Artistic Director of WAM Theatre, is stepping down after 13 years of running this innovative organization, which donates a portion of its…
5 Questions with Evan Jones
Evan Jones is a true believer. He has seen the power and the glory of theater on stage and wants everyone to experience its healing and redemptive mercies. I first met Evan…
Alan H. Green’s “Finally” Closes the Cabaret Season at Mr. Finn’s
Alan H. Green exploded onto the William Finn Cabaret stage with the famous opening Zulu lines from Elton John and Tim Rice’s “Circle of Life,” which roughly translated…
Back to School with “Barbie”
She’s looking good for being 60 years old, and she knows it. In fact, Barbie (Olivia Sargent) greets the audience with that acknowledgment in the first line of her opening…
Fort Salem Theatre Announces 2024 Season
Fort Salem Theater is thrilled to announce its highly anticipated 2024 season, offering an exceptional array of performances that promise to captivate audiences and bring…
Amal Walks Across America with Stops at Ashfield & North Adams
Little Amal, the iconic 12-foot puppet symbolizing a young Syrian refugee girl, will step foot in Ashfield and North Adams on September 10. This is part of her monumental…
Hubbard Hall Teams Up with The Drama League
Tuesday, Hubbard Hall Center for the Arts and Education in Cambridge, NY (Executive & Artistic Director David Andrew Snider) and The Drama League of New York City…
5 Questions with Mary Testa
Barrington Stage Company’s latest smash hit musical revival on the Boyd/Quinson Mainstage is very special indeed. It is “A New Brain” by BSC Associate Artist William Finn…
Harbinger’s 10th Consecutive Capital Region Premiere is a World Premiere by Brian Sheldon,…
Harbinger Theatre will bring their 10th consecutive Capital Region Premiere, “Custom Cuts,” a World Premiere written by Brian Sheldon to Albany Barn in September. It is…
Love Late in Life in “On Cedar Street”
There is much to love in the World Premiere of “On Cedar Street,” playing at the Unicorn Theatre, maybe too much to love, but more on that later. The musical is an adaptation…
All Hail Annette Miller!
Annette Miller finished her second run of “Golda’s Balcony” by William Gibson this weekend at Shakespeare & Company. Her first was its World Premiere in 2002, which was…
Great Actors in “Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson-Apt. 2B”
Kate Hamill, the extremely popular playwright who repackages classic literature and serves it back up onstage in a post-modern sensibility by cutting roles, gender-swapping…
Lillias White Gets a Resounding Yes! from a Spellbound Audience
There is some kind of alchemical magic in the greatest performers, and Lillias White at Mr. Finn’s Cabaret Monday night at Barrington Stage changed the temperature in the…
“Circle Mirror Transformation” is a Late Summer Treasure
Annie Baker is one of the most preeminent playwrights working today. She is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (for “The Flick” in 2014, which was seen last year…
Come and Get Your “Midsummer” Love!
William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is without a doubt one of the most popular comedies ever written. It certainly is one of the most produced and might be the…
“The Plein Air Plays” Offer Breathtaking Vistas
What may have started as a necessity during COVID’s enforced distancing and ready ventilation has turned into an inspired new form of theater for the Ancram Opera House.…
5 Questions with Kelly Sienkiewicz
Kelly Sienkiewicz is a major talent in the Capital Region. She is hard not to notice onstage with her fiery red hair, hysterical comic chops, and powerful belt. She is so…
“Her Name Means Memory” is Indomitable Storytelling
Theater in the Covid era has gone through incredible iterations and efforts to carry on and tell the stories that need to be told. Living Room Theatre, now in its twelfth…
5 Questions with Ingrid Madelayne
In the Capital Region, you can find performances on stages, in parks, in cemeteries, and this weekend on a battlefield.On Saturday and Sunday, August 5th and 6th, the…
Powerful Women Emerge From “The Hidden Territories of the Bacchae”
Double Edge Theatre is like no theater you have ever attended before. It is situated on a farm in Ashfield, MA. It uses the farm and its environs for its extraordinarily…
“Fences” Goes Deep
August Wilson’s Fences is hitting it out of the Packer - that is, the Tina Packer Stage at Shakespeare & Company, where it is playing in a perfectly cast, incisively…
5 Questions with Leigh Berenis
Did you know that Saratoga Children’s Theatre has a sister company called Spa City Theatre, founded in 2019 which has adults and students performing in the Capital Region…
5 Questions with Sandy Boynton
I’ve known Sandy Boynton almost as long as I’ve been performing in the Capital Region. She is an actor, director, educator, costume designer and Shakespeare lover. Our paths…
“Still” Could Use Some Forward Movement
A man and a woman of a certain age sit at a hotel bar finishing off a bottle of wine and banter playfully about how the body’s cells are completely regenerated every four…
5 Questions with Reina Oduro
There are certain indelible performances that stay with you your whole life. If anyone asked me what the most unorthodox or adventurous theater pieces I’ve ever seen, I would…
“Blues for an Alabama Sky” Should Be More Widely Known
Pearl Cleage’s 1995 play “Blues for an Alabama Sky” is set in 1930 as the famed Harlem Renaissance is being eclipsed by The Great Depression. The play opens with the lead…
“Love’s Labor’s Lost” Will Rock Your World
Who would have thought that a story about serious, young students who take a vow of chastity, abstinence, and intermittent fasting would produce such a party? It is…
5 Questions with Aidan White
They call it Smallbany because everybody knows everybody and this weekend Schenectady Civic Players is opening their production of “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?” with four…
5 Questions with Laura Darling
One of the most influential and active members of Capital Region Theater is flexing her muscles this weekend. Laura Darling is directing the World Premiere of her own play…
CTC’s “Guards at the Taj” is a Beauty
The winding Route 20 heading east out of Lee can take you to some exotic places. It ranges past Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, and just a little farther down the road is the…
“Off Peak”: Exes on a Train
As you take your seat in the theater at the Danial Art Center at Bard at Simon’s Rock on a Friday night, you are greeted by a meticulous recreation of a section of a…
Shadowland Stages’ “The 39 Steps” Reaches New Heights
What good is sitting alone in your room? That’s what Richard Hannay (Eric Bryant) is thinking when he heads out to the theater in Patrick Barlow’s hilarious adaptation of…
“The Making of a Great Moment” Has Many
Imagine devoting your life to a profession with 90% unemployment knowing that the chances are you will never own a house, have regular medical insurance, or build a…
5 Questions with Megan Calos
Fort Salem Theatre opened “Footloose” last weekend, and it looks like they have another smash hit on their hands. It is, of course, the stage adaptation of the 1984 Kevin…
“The Contention” is a History Come to Exciting Life
The Contention, playing on the Tina Packer Playhouse stage at Shakespeare & Co., is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2, and a bit of a hard sell. “You’re…
“Misery” Has Plenty of Artistic Pleasures
The charming wood barn theater nestled in the woods down a beautiful country road has a very disturbing tenant for the next couple of weeks. Misery, the thriller about a…
“The Stones” Has Too Much Mystery
As you enter the smaller 100-seat black-box theater in the Daniel Art Center at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where the Great Barrington Public Theatre has a summer…
5 Questions with Vanessa Clay
There is much to celebrate with the current production of “Rent” being presented by Capital District Arts Initiative at Lark Hall, which has five more shows this weekend at…
“Photograph 51” Documents Credit to Trailblazing Woman
“Photograph 51” is a great example of the Great Women of Science play. An underappreciated genius woman sets off on her instinctual path. She is undermined, condescended to,…
5 Questions with David Quiñones Jr.
David Quiñones Jr. has worked throughout the Capital Region in big roles and small and always seems to have a couple of projects going on at any given time while he is also…
Fine Company for “Just Another Day”
Two seeming strangers named Man and Woman encounter one another in a park and begin speaking familiarly quickly after meeting. Their dialogue picks up a rhythm and lines…
HVSF’s “Henry V” Creatively Crowns a New Leader
What does it do to Shakespeare’s rousing patriotic play Henry V play to cast Henry with a woman? Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is asking this summer how does it make us…
Actors Save the Day at “Dear Jack, Dear Louise”
Shakespeare & Company have opened their season with the prize-winning play “Dear Jack, Dear Louise” by America’s most prolific comic playwright, Tony winner Ken Ludwig,…
5 Questions with Aaliyah Al-Fuhaid
“The Nether” by Jennifer Haley is a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize winner about a man being investigated for criminal acts related to a website he has created that encourages…
BST’s Tense “East of Berlin” is a Captivating Thrill
A young man (Orlando Grant) lights a cigarette downstage right and tells us about his birth in Berlin in 1945 and how he has come to live in Paraguay in a little German…
WAM’s “What the Constitution Means to Me” is a Great Deal Indeed
Playwright Heidi Schreck toured the country as a 15-year-old competing in constitutional debates to win prize money to put herself through college which the Broadway actress…
5 Questions with Kathleen Reilly
When I was wondering who I should interview next for my 5 Questions series, I probably had just come from a conversation at work with Kathleen Reilly about what was going on…
5 Questions with Jean-Remy Monnay
One of the greatest demarcations in Capital Region Theater marking the change and growth in our community pre and post-lockdown after the Covid virus stopped the world is the…
“Stranger in the Attic” Compels Attention
Treasure can be found throughout the Capital Region Theater scene and on a beautiful night’s drive from Albany to the Claverack Free Library to see The Two of Us Productions’…
5 Questions with Emily Bryan
Opportunities abound in Capital Region Theater, and this week sees the lovely Emily Bryan making her Schenectady Civic Players debut in Donald Margulies 2000 Pulitzer winner…
5 Questions with Rory Alexa
Schenectady Light Opera Company closes its season with “It Shoulda Been You.” A musical comedy about a wedding that has its complications and comedy. The bride’s Jewish…
“Rude Mechanics” Struts and Frets Funnily in Bridge Street Season Opener
Bridge Street Theatre opened their 2023 Season, which they are calling “A Holiday for Misfits,” with “Rude Mechanics,” a World Premiere comedy by local playwright Eric Hissom…
5 Questions with Theresa Rebeck
Actors and directors in rehearsal spend a great deal of time investigating the meaning of words. Words revealing or hiding character and the words telling the story that…
5 Questions with AJ Halsey
One of the greatest joys of being a theater fan in the Capital Region is the ridiculous amount of opportunities and venues to see and be wowed by the young talent in the…
5 Questions with Kathleen Carey
Kathleen Carey, besides being a leading light on Capital Region stages and the recipient of the Berkshire Theatre Critics Association award for Best Actress in 2021 for her…
5 Questions with Ash Visker
Local actor Ash Visker stormed into my consciousness last year with two vivid, thoroughly committed, galvanizing performances in Will Kempe’s Players The Comedy of Errors and…
5 Questions with Jennifer Van Iderstyne
Jennifer Van Iderstyne is directing this weekend’s Capital Region premiere of Lauren Gunderson’s “The Revolutionists” at Schenectady Civic Players. It’s an interesting choice…
5 Questions with Lauren Letellier
Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill is heading into the month of March with four weekends of solo shows. Every Friday through Sunday for the rest of the month, you will; get…
5 Questions with Peyton VanDerheyden
March is known for many things culturally. Nippertown’s March Madness, The Oscars and Green Beer, but nothing is as momentous or marvelous as the high school musical! The…
5 Questions with Alexander Heck
“Topdog/Underdog” by Suzan-Lori Parks is a towering play of intimate consequence. Two Black brothers, Lincoln and Booth, share a single hotel room and make time hustling each…
“10×10” Chases the Winter Blues Away
Barrington Stage’s 12th edition of “10x10 New Play Festival” is a charmer packed with compelling performances in intriguing situations and never less than entertaining from…
5 Questions with Jae Gayle
Creative Action Unlimited’s artistic director Michael Kennedy encourages their theater makers to contribute their own stories to develop stage and film works centering around…
5 Questions with Peggy Pharr Wilson
Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts is presenting their 12th Annual “10x10 New Play Festival” tand along for the ride is the indomitable Peggy Pharr Wilson…
Sherlock at the Schacht
TROY - Theatre Institute at Sage is presenting Sherlock Holmes to us and to their student groups that are bussed into the Schacht Fine Arts Center Theatre on the Russell Sage…
5 Questions with Eileen Schuyler
Eileen Schuyler is one of the premiere actors of the Capital Region, from her 25 shows at the New York State Theatre Institute, to her great achievements at Capital Repertory…
“Invitation to a March” is a Pleasure to Accept
Arthur Laurents’ 1961 play “Invitation to a March” has a lot going for it. It’s about an impending wedding between two children from wealthy families who have rented a…
“Kunstler” Warms with Righteous Fury
Jeff McCarthy/Photo by Heidi Bohnenkamp, 2016Jeffrey Sweet’s 2017 play “Kunstler” is an engaging portrait of the civil rights activist lawyer William Kunstler, which is…
5 Questions with Meg Dooley
It's a great privilege to write for Nippertown and especially to ask 5 questions of performers who I've seen over the years and have a great interest and curiosity for. Meg…
Five Questions with Amanda Dorman
They say that misery loves company but Curtain Call Theatre has also been proving that audiences and critics love “Misery,” their production of William Goldman’s stage…
5 Questions with Sean Carter
CLIFTON PARK - Capital Region theater 2023 starts tonight with a concert version of the quintessential Broadway show "Guys and Dolls" presented by Not So Common Players at…
BEST OF 2022: Patrick White Reviews the Year in Theater
We saw 240 shows in 2022. My partner, Chris Foster, and I are quite happy with that number. Well, it’s Thursday and we’ve only seen 239 but there are still 3 days left in the…
“‘Twas the Land of the Night Before” Has Charm
Classic Theater Guild has gone for the hand-made, homespun approach to a holiday show this season by reviving the original musical “’Twas the Land of the Night Before,”…
Confetti’s Urgent “Arturo Ui” Aims High and Hits More Often Than it Misses
ALBANY - Confetti Stage has a long history of producing the greatest playwrights of the 20th Century avant-garde from Beckett to Pinter to Ionesco and now the granddady of…
5 Questions with Michael Musial
TROY - Theatre Institute at Sage is presenting Benjamin Franklinstein the Musical! this Nov. 30 - Dec. 11. It’s an original work based on a children’s book which imagines…
Chicago Gangland Meets American Fascism in Bertolt Brecht’s “The Resistible Rise of Arturo…
"The world was almost won by such an ape! The nations put him where his kind belong. But don't rejoice too soon at your escape – The womb he crawled from is still going…
5 Questions with Michael Kennedy
I first met Michael Kennedy when I was cast in her production of Any Addict which played at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in 2014. It was a large collection of…
Bridge Street Theatre’s “Lion in Winter” Sharpens its Knives
Steven Patterson & Leigh Strimbeck/John Sowl
5 Questions with Amy Hausknecht
Amy Hausknecht made a strong impression on me with a pair of performances at Ghent Playhouse in “Our Town” and “A View From the Bridge.” Performances that made me sit up and…
Bridge Street Theatre’s “Sexual Misconduct…” is a Small Miracle
A man is furiously typing away at his laptop as “Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes” opens and he slams the lid down in disgust and extreme agitation. He tells us in…
Four Questions with Karen Christina Jones
Capital Region theater is blessed with many opportunities to see and get involved with all kinds of theater, but it hasn't come close to seeing the full August Wilson 10 play…
Ancram’s “Still Life” Still Challenges and Rewards
ANCRAM - Ancram Opera House, in a co-production with Playhouse Creatures, is presenting a searing revival of “Still Life,” Emily Mann’s 1981 documentary play of three…
Capital Rep’s “Dracula” Scares Up Some Laughs
ALBANY - Capital Repertory Theatre enters spooky season with an intermittently inspired silly spoof called “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors”, co-written by Rep Associate Artist…
BTG’s “Seascape” Offers a Compelling View
STOCKBRIDGE - You enter the treasured Unicorn Theatre and descend the steep incline of stairs a short distance to your seat, and there is a beach vista opened up in front of…
Five Questions with Owen Smith
There have been a number of great challenges Capital Region theater has taken on as the new Fall Season begins, and Playhouse Stage will not be left out of the fun as they…
Five Questions with Judi Merriam
One thing missing in the Capital Region’s thriving theater scene is a cabaret society. A place where all the multi-talented musical theater performers can develop their own…
BSC’s World Premiere “All of Me” is a Winning New Love Story
Lucy and Alfonso meet cute in Laura Winters winning World Premiere of a romantic comedy, “All of Me” playing through 10/9 on the Boyd-Quinson Stage at Barrington Stage…
“Andy” and this Orphan
Early in their first scene together which reunites them at LaGuardia Airport, the estranged siblings, Jacob and Maggie, who are the lead characters of the family comedy I’m…
Five Questions with Gary Hoffman
Gary Hoffman is one of the giants of Capital Region theater and he is opening a production of The Sunshine Boys by Neil Simon at Schenectady Civic Players this Friday,…
ACT’s “How I Learned to Drive” Kicks the Season into High Gear
Albany Civic Theater’s season-opening production of How I Learned to Drive is a dark, challenging, uncompromising, bitter, and mournful work…and an essential piece of theater…
“Shelley’s Shadow” Shines in World Premiere at BST
Shelley’s Shadow, by Brad Fraser is a play commissioned by Bridge Street Theatre making its World Premiere, and it just might be the first in a new genre in theater known as…
“The Lyons” Roar Their Truth Hilariously at SLCA
If, as Tolstoy put it, “All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” The Lyons' unhappiness has the ability to make you roar with…
Ancram Opera House to Become Ancram Center for the Arts
Ancram Opera House introduces The Ancram Center for the Arts as they expand their campus to include a community meeting room, outdoor areas for audience gatherings pre- and…
Bent Broadway is Back at The Wood
The Charles R. Wood Theater will host Bent Broadway on Friday 9/16 and Saturday 9/17: a cabaret featuring 15 local vocalists living out their dream roles! Now an annual…
The 2022-2023 Capital Region Theater Season
We just finished the Summer season with the fantastic productions of Thirst at Dorset and Waiting for Godot at Barrington Stage closing this weekend, when the new calendar…
Creative License Announces “The Flick” Cast
Following the lives of a trio of movie theater employees, Annie Baker’s Pulitzer Prize winning play The Flick makes its Capital Region premiere in November at the historic…
“Xanadu” and “Forever Plaid” Bring Summer to September at the Mac-Haydn…
The electrifying roller-skating tale Xanadu and the deliciously fun 1950s Barbershop revue Forever Plaid will play the Mac-Haydn Theatre in a repertory schedule, running…
BSC’s “Waiting for Godot” Delights and Disturbs
Written shortly after World War II, Samuel Beckett’s towering masterpiece of 20th-century drama “Waiting for Godot” is being given a sterling production by Barrington Stage…
OTC’s “Sheepdog” Powerfully Investigates Love and Fear
Oldcastle Theatre Company opens the most urgent play of the summer just in the nick of time with “Sheepdog” by Kevin Artigue superbly directed by Kirk Jackson with phenomenal…