Bess Hochstein

Review: Playwright Mark St. Germain brings Eleanor Roosevelt back to life

July 27, 2021 Bess Hochstein 0

When Harriet Harris enters as Eleanor Roosevelt in Mark St. Germain’s new play Eleanor, she seems small, especially in the looming darkness of Barrington Stage Company’s Boyd-Quinson Stage. Part of that impression could be that […]

Review: Chester Theatre Company’s searing production of The Niceties

July 20, 2021 Bess Hochstein 0

You’d be hard-pressed to imagine a play more timely than The Niceties, an explosive two-hander in which an accomplished white history professor and an activist black student at an elite East Coast university square off […]

Review- Shakespeare & Company’s production of “King Lear,” starring Christopher Lloyd

July 12, 2021 Bess Hochstein 0

Given the stormy weather we’ve experienced this month in the water-logged Berkshires, combined with the COVID-inspired preponderance of outdoors productions, I was expecting a more Tempest-like atmosphere for Shakespeare & Company’s new staging of King […]

Review – Chester Theatre Company’s production of “Title and Deed” by Will Eno

June 24, 2021 Bess Hochstein 0

It’s a distinct pleasure to emerge from pandemic-related cultural deprivation into the start of a vibrant Berkshires theater season. It’s downright exhilarating when the first play you’ve seen in more than a year is produced […]