★★★☆☆ Rock’n’roll is here to stay, though we learn little about the man who made it happen
From Massachusetts: Into a Sondheim Woods and a Fascist America
Two concurrent plays in the Berkshires examine the effect of fairy tales, whether on the body human or the body politic
Yerma: Simmering When It Ought to Boil
★★☆☆☆ Garcia Lorca’s folk tragedy invokes earth, fire, and water, but gets mostly infused with air
The Flamingo Kid: Follow the Pink-and-Blue Road
★★★☆☆ A sprightly, nostalgic musical of the 1960s sacrifices some of the stronger qualities of its cinematic source
We Live in Cairo: An Arab-Spring Awakening
★★★★☆ Two gifted first-timers, the Brothers Lazour, find melody and hope in recent historical events marked as much by defeat as by triumph
Man in the Ring: Forgiven for Killing, Condemned for Love
★★★★☆ Shadow Box author shadow-boxes with charismatic real-life champ, wins on points
Anastasia: Journey to the Musical Past
★★★★☆ Long-Run Lookback: McNally, Ahrens and Flaherty ransack the operetta playbook, with pleasing results
Man of La Mancha: Still True to Its Glorious Quest
★★★★☆ Director Mark Lamos invests a musical theater perennial with novelty and life
The Black Clown: Racial Pride Triumphant in Entertaining Showcase
★★★★★ A classic poem becomes a stunning music theater piece celebrating identity and dignity in the face of oppression
Petrified Forest, Sister Mary Ignatius: Revivals Under the Berkshire Elms
Harriet Harris shines as Chris Durang’s nutty nun, while Robert E. Sherwood’s vintage melodrama just shines, period.