Dave Read

Berkshires theatre reviews

On our sister-site NewBerkshire.com, we’ve begun re-posting reviews of plays going back to 1999, including performances at Berkshire Theatre Festival, Shakespeare and Co., Williamstown Theatre Festival, and Barrington Stage Company.

Review of June 20, 1999 performance As You Like It at Shakespeare and Co.
Review of July 16, 1999 performance Richard III at Shakespeare and Co.
Review of August 4, 1999 performance The Batting Cage at Berkshire Theatre Festival
Review of June 25, 1999 performance The Crucifer of Blood at Berkshire Theatre Festival
Review of August 4, 2000 performance The Einstein Project at Berkshire Theatre Festival
Review of July 5, 2001 performance The Winter’s Tale at Williamstown Theatre Festival
Review of June 19, 2002 performance Macbeth at Shakespeare and Co.
Review of July 18, 2002 performance Loot at Williamstown Theatre Festival
Review of August 15, 2002 performance For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again at Williamstown Theatre Festival
Review of July 27, 2002 performance Shakespeare’s Henry V at Shakespeare and Co.

Women of Will at Shakespeare and Co.

June 10, 2010 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Women of Will, at Shakespeare and Co. is aptly referred to as WOW!!!! by those present at one of the performances. On a bare stage containing one chair and a couple of little black boxes, without costume changes except for one huge red cape and with a couple of hand props, two skilled actors, Tina Packer and Nigel Gore, in less than three hours bring alive in daring performances, nine of Shakespeare’s women, each a woman of will, (depending on the amount and kind of “will” that she could assert given the period in which Shakespeare wrote the play in which she appears.)

During the first act scenes are from early plays such as The Shrew and the marvelously fighting women in the historical plays of the War of the Roses—Margaret who Ms. Packer confesses is one of her favorite characters and Elizabeth who battled the men for her kin to rule England. The act ends with one of the loveliest balcony scenes of Juliet, sans balcony…the chair will do, in which Ms. Packer is the most haunting Juliet I have ever seen and one the most aware of what her words really mean.

In the second act, the duo of actors interweave characters and scenes from two plays—and Rosalind and Orlando slip into Desdemona and Othello and then back into the first two in the Forest of Arden, where Ms. Packer as a swaggering Rosalind in male attire and sporting a Nottingham accent brings her will against that of Orlando. This tour de force Scene interplay is hard to describe but mesmerizing to watch.

It is followed by all the Lady Macbeth/Macbeth scenes from the play of that name. Brilliant and terriying. The act then ends with the maturity of Shakespeare (as author) and the characters using woman’s will to being Pericles’ daughter to the salvation of her father in a scene that brings tears to the eyes. (In the full, three night performance thirty seven plays will be included in the five categories presenting women’s changing use of will, and other daughters in the late plays of Shakespeare, the romances, will also appear).

Some how, even in this brief series of selections from the gradually developing of Shakespeare as author, and the changing of attitudes two women, all this weaves into a beautiful evening, each segment woven into the next by Ms. Packer briefly speaking to the audience, cueing us in to where we are going as she and her partner become just actors for a moment, moving a box for the next scene. Needing only two theatrical assists, wonderful lighting and occasional background music or sounds such as a bird call, this evening is theatre, lecture and a lesson how great acting can fill an empty stage. Ms. Packer’s depth of knowledge of the plays, and her deep passion for her subject, combined with her years of theatre experience combine into a unique whole.

As for the two actors, they are a magnificent duo, capable of great variety in roles and delightfully informal with each other in the setting up of scenes and their brief sallies to the audience.

A coda brings the evening formally to a close with the civil wars behind and Cramer blessing the infant Elizabeth I, the Queen for whom Shakespeare wrote so much. And the lovely final touch—the red robe that sometimes donned one of the characters, is rolled into an oblong blanket, the infant being blessed.

The audience at the performance this reviewer attended felt so blessed by the whole stunning evening that after a moment of stunned silence almost as one rose to standing applause.

2002 Tanglewood Jazz Festival

By Dave Read (Aug. 31, 2002 concert) – In comparison to the Friday and Sunday night concerts, the Saturday afternoon portion of the 2002 Tanglewood Jazz Festival was a disappointment, but not due to any fault of the musicians. A combination of unfortunate scheduling and electronic feedback spoiled one’s enjoyment of the Hammond B-3 Organ Summit in the Tanglewood theatre near the Main Gate and the taping of Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz radio show in Ozawa Hall.

The painful feedback problems began early in blues organist Jimmy McGriff’s set in the Theatre and recurred several times, spoiling the otherwise delightful singing of special guest Lady Ce Ce and guitarist Wayne Boyd.

Preceding McGriff was Joey DeFrancesco, who this year supplanted Jimmy Smith atop the Downbeat critic’s poll as best organist. Legendary saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman was supposed to join DeFrancesco’s trio but didn’t arrive on stage until McGriff’s set was underway.

The 1:30 program culminated in a jam session, giving the organists a chance to challenge each other, and was just getting warmed up when it was time to make the jog across the Tanglewood campus for the 3 PM start of Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz, with guest Sir Roland Hanna.

As things turned out, people were being seated in Ozawa Hall throughout the taping, and it was an unfortunate decision to bolt the very real gig underway in the Theatre for the mere novelty of McPartland’s radio program.

McPartland’s show is wonderful, as edifying as it is entertaining, but there’s no rationale for calling a taping of it a concert. Brilliant in its own medium, it pales on stage, unlike Garrison Keillor’s, which with it’s house band, guest musicians, and cast of actors has plenty of visual appeal.

McPartland’s and Hanna’s solo and duet piano playing was fine, if constrained, but their conversation was not particularly sparkling and some of it even had to be re-hashed for the eventual broadcast. We’re sure we’ll enjoy listening to the broadcast, and it was a pleasure to see these wonderful artists up close.

Mstislav Rostropovich conducts BSO at Tanglewood

August 29, 1999 Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read

The Boston Symphony Orchestra, along with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, gave the swansong of their 1999 Tanglewood season with Mstislav Rostropovich conducting Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Opus 125.

It was fascinating to focus on Maestro Rostropovich, who at times gave the impression of being the single musician on stage, playing a human instrument. It’s no accident that one waxes metaphysical during a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth, and we were all over the idea-map during the concert.

Since Beethoven’s work figures prominently in the soundtrack of the Stanley Kubrick film, “A Clockwork Orange”, it occurred to us that that work of art from the era of the’60s, and the artist conducting the orchestra today, represented opposite responses to the horrors of the Cold War.

There were other incongruous, if more mundane, thoughts as well, such as that the venerable shed stage is so amorphous: now bearing 250 musicians and looking like that was what it was designed to do – but just six days earlier, the same space was occupied by Bonnie Raitt and her four-man band and that looked like a perfect fit, too. I’m sure all Bonnie Raitt concerts are memorable events, but this one seemed extra-special.

Ms. Raitt was so generous with the audience that you almost felt you were attending a workshop; also, she reminisced about the days of the fabled Music Inn, and you believed her when she said she wanted to play longer than the curfew allowed. Her old pal Jackson Browne opened the show and joined her onstage for a nifty set.

photo credit: By RIA Novosti archive, image #438589 / Vladimir Vyatkin / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

2018 Tanglewood schedule

The 2018 Tanglewood schedulefeatures a season-long celebration of the centennial of Leonard’s Bernstein’s birth, culminating in the Aug. 25 Bernstein Centennial Celebration hosted by Audra McDonald, with Maestro Andris Nelsons, four guest conductors and soloists Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, and others.

Hotels near Tanglewood

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Tanglewood tickets and box office information

Tickets for the 2018 Tanglewood season available through Tanglewood’s website, www.tanglewood.org, SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200, and at the Symphony Hall Box Office at 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston MA.

Dave Brubeck at 2002 Tanglewood Jazz Festival

September 1, 2002 performance review by Dave Read

Three tunes into his 2½ hour 2002 Tanglewood Jazz Festival concert, Dave Brubeck said, “I like to introduce new stuff when I play here because the audience is so kind.” Makes you wonder if “here” referred to the seven year old Ozawa Hall where tonight’s gig was, or the Koussevitsky Music Shed, which opened when he was 18 in 1938, or just hereabouts, which would include the site of the fabled Music Barn and the Lenox School of Jazz, where he performed and taught during the 1950s. Regardless, what a treat it was to be in the audience while Dave Brubeck is introducing new material!

That new song was Crescent City Stomp, and it was built around an infectious beat established by drummer Randy Jones, a beat Brubeck said you hear all over New Orleans. Bobby Militello’s saxophone was the featured instrument after the drum intro and Brubeck himself was the most enthused member of the audience for a while, as he would be throughout the evening, whenever his bandmates took their many solos.

Rounding out the quartet, all dressed smartly in dinner jackets and black slacks, was bassist Michael Moore, who plucked and bowed several eloquent passages from his bass, which his languid body fairly enfolded. There were times when you’d think Moore was a ventriloquist for the cleanly enunciated lines he drew from his instrument, but an inartful one because all the while you could see his lips moving! (Read comprehensive bios of the band, from Hedrick Smith’s PBS show “Rediscovering Dave Brubeck.“)

Introducing the evening’s first tune, Brubeck said that for fifty years he started concerts with St. Louis Blues, but tonight would start with the title tune from his current release, “The Crossing.” He told about a trans-Atlantic jazz cruise with about 100 musicians aboard the QE II, which got underway on the Hudson, passed the Verazzano Narrows and into the Atlantic, ” – and we worked up a head of steam, which I hope we do tonight.”

They did.

The tune was some piece of magical mimicry; it was easy to imagine a grand ship honking and chugging away from the pier and soon enough finding its way into rough waters evoked by churning bass notes, then Brubeck took the helm playing long melodious lines, the ship rocking smoothly through eddies and swells.

In telling us that on September 21, he’ll celebrate his 60th wedding anniversary, Brubeck introduced the next tune, All My Love, a translucent ballad that had him hunched over the keyboard, his eyes only inches away from his hands playing so few notes that you could count them.

After The Crossing, came the haunting Elegy, an intimate composition that Ozawa Hall was designed for, where it seems to become part of the ensemble. Continuing in that vein, Brubeck introduced Don’t Forget Me with a few minutes of distant romantic lines that suddenly turned immediate and raucus with another of Militello’s expansive sax solos, and then had Brubeck’s hands flying all over the keyboard before he returned to the lonely little melody that he began with.

This was a very special evening of jazz, a million miles away from being a museum piece, every tune imbued with freshness and vigor. Brubeck’s age was apparent only when he stepped over to the mic, which he did several times to introduce tunes during the first set, which was probably pre-arranged as opposed to the second which I think he made up from the bench as he went along.

It began with Pennies From Heaven, dedicated to the people on the lawn who were being rained upon lightly. Brubeck played out the celestial theme in the next two tunes, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and Sunny Side of the Street, developing each while the band listened to hear where they were going. Militello’s flute solo on – Rainbow was ineffably sublime. Sunny Side – was rollicking, and at one point Brubeck pointed toward Moore and drew a circle in the air, indicating another round of solos for all.

The audience responded to the celestial set with thunderous applause, which the quartet accepted graciously and which Brubeck seemed overwhelmed by, his grin so broad as he looked into the audience and then around to his band to spread out the acclaim. After his fans got quiet again, he mischievously noodled a few lines from Singing in the Rain then broke into the first notes of Take Five, the Paul Desmond composition from “Time Out,” the world’s first million-selling jazz record.

It was a thrilling rendition, featuring Militello’s slow reinterpretation of the theme before returning it to a rambunctiousness that Brubeck brought to a gleeful level which Randy Jones exploded with a virtuoso display of drumming. Brubeck brought the tune back to earth and then Jones laid down the tastiest little drum coda for the ultimate punctuation to this landmark of jazz.

Sustained applause brought these giants back on stage, Brubeck played a few notes of Brahm’s Lullabye to everybody’s amusement before the quartet re-loaded for Take the A Train, which was a rumbling jam session, the sea cruise of two hours earlier long over. It went on until Brubeck, answering a questioning look from Militello, raised his hands from the keyboard, turned them into pistols and fired a volley into the air.

This performance was a slice of jazz for the ages, delivered by the ageless gentleman genius Dave Brubeck and his virtuoso sidemen, each of whom was brilliant tonight.

Chuck Mangione Tanglewood Jazz Festival

August 31, 2001, performance reviewed by Dave Conlin Read

Chuck Mangione dispensed with the formalities and opened his set Friday night with the familiar Land of Make Believe, giving the big crowd at Ozawa Hall what they came for right away. The 60 year old central New York native, who made ‘fluglehorn’ a household word three decades ago, then proceeded to lead his six piece band through a dozen numbers of thoroughly convincing jazz, before closing with the equally familiar Feel So Good (plus the encore Freddie’s Walkin)

Rendered threadbare by the jammed jukebox of pop culture, those huge hits seem incongruous containers for the big, bright, and bold tunes they book-ended. Best known as the maker of those memorable, romantic, melancholy melodies, Mangione tonight showed himself to be a savy leader of a very bluesy jazz band. Chuck Mangione – Amazon page

The solos were done craftily so that the audience didn’t lose the focus of the tune – they coalesced to serve the song, rather than sacrificing the song to serve the solo. Like in the third number, a tune that’s even more familiar than Mangione’s biggies, and one in which Mangione and his outfit accomplished the unbelieveable task of making it sound and feel as fresh as a thunder storm.

They built a boisterous, unabashed blues out of Amazing Grace, a tune that’s included in the new album Everything for Love, and the tune that this auditor will be coming to hear the next time this band comes around.