Jeffrey Borak

3 weeks ago | berkshireeagle.com | Jeffrey Borak

LENOX — There is a special energy that fuels a play reading, says Tony and Drama Desk nominee Jayne Atkinson. “Amazing things can happen,” she said during a recent Zoom interview, especially, she added, when you have a play as “appealing and good” as Deborah Zoe Laufer’s “Rooted,” a three-character comedy with some serious stuff on its mind. OnstageWhat: “Rooted” by Deborah Zoe Laufer.

3 weeks ago | berkshireeagle.com | Jeffrey Borak

GREAT BARRINGTON — Theater director Clay Hopper freely acknowledges that, for the most part, he is not taken with political plays. “I find them less than interesting,” he said during a recent interview with The Eagle. “They are almost always preaching to the choir.”OnstageWhat: “How to Not Save the World With Mr.

3 weeks ago | berkshireeagle.com | Jeffrey Borak

PITTSFIELD — With his newest music-theater piece, “Rachmaninoff and the Tsar,” 56-year-old pianist-actor-playwright Hershey Felder takes a twist on a formula that has served him extremely well in a career that blossomed in 1999 with his first solo show, "George Gershwin Alone.”In the years since, Felder has built audience-winning solo pieces around the music and lives of Ludwig van Beethoven, Frederic Chopin, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Claude Debussy, Irving Berlin and Leonard Bernstein.

3 weeks ago | berkshireeagle.com | Jeffrey Borak

PITTSFIELD — The setting for playwright Richard Hellesen’s “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground” at Barrington Stage Company's Boyd-Quinson Stage through Sunday, June 8, is the airy enclosed sunroom porch at the Eisenhower farm in Gettysburg, Pa. The space — evocatively designed by Michael Deegan — is dominated by an enormous wall-width and height window that looks out upon nearly 700 acres of farmland adjacent to the Gettysburg battlefield, stretching out to a bank of mountains on the horizons...

3 weeks ago | berkshireeagle.com | Jeffrey Borak

STOCKBRIDGE — The first time we see John Merrick in director Eric Hill’s ably crafted production of “The Elephant Man” at Berkshire Theatre Group’s Unicorn Theatre, he is hiding in plain sight, enveloped from head to toe in a massive blanket. Theater ReviewWhat: “The Elephant Man” by Bernard Pomerance. Directed by Eric Hill With (principals): Michael Wartella, Harry Smith, Laura Shatkus, E.