Rogovoy Report for July 3, 2015

This weekend is yet another unofficial start to the summer cultural season in our region. All the theaters are open, dance companies are visiting from out of town, musicals and live radio plays are being staged, and the BSO finally arrives in Lenox for the official opening of the Tanglewood season.
Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winner Kyra Sedgwick will make her Williamstown Theatre Festival debut in the world premiere of “Off the Main Road,” a newly discovered play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright William Inge, running through Sunday, July 19. And Eric Bogosian and Jessica Hecht create the lead roles in the world premiere of the new Daniel Goldfarb dramatic comedy, “Legacy,” running on the Nikos Stage, now through Sunday, July 12.

Ira Levin’s Tony Award-nominated comedy thriller “Deathtrap” opens tonight at 8pm and runs through Saturday, July 25 at Berkshire Theatre Group’s Fitzpatrick Theater in Stockbridge. The longest-running comedy thriller on Broadway, Deathtrap is a sidesplitting romp of a play within a play, with an all-star cast including Gregg Edelman, Alison Fraser, Tom Pecinka and Debra Jo Rupp.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra opens its 2015 Tanglewood season with an all-American program featuring works by John Harbison, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland and Duke Ellington tonight at 8:30pm. Actor John Douglas Thompson will narrate excerpts from some of Abraham Lincoln’s greatest speeches, including the Gettysburg Address, as part of the performance of Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait,” replacing opera star Jessye Norman, who had to withdraw from the program due to illness.

Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca will perform their original dance drama, “Antigona,” at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, tonight through Sunday. This adaptation of Sophocles’s “Antigone” merges live music, theatrical spectacle, and dance, bringing the inherent theatricality of Flamenco to this classical tragedy.

Hudson Air Radio Theater returns to the Tent at PS21 in Chatham tonight at 8 and Sunday at 2 with a selection of radio plays by classic American writers including Mark Twain, O. Henry, Dorothy Parker, and Booth Tarkington. The plays will be performed live by a cast of five actors, with piano accompaniment by the renowned Lincoln Mayorga.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, “Oklahoma!” is getting a reboot in an experimental staging in the Fisher Center at Bard College as part of Bard SummerScape, now through July 19. The interactive production in-the-round features new staging, new musical arrangements for a six-piece Americana band, and new choreography by John Heginbotham.

The Brooklyn­based, Obie Award-winning, nomadic and multidisciplinary performance series CATCH comes to Basilica Hudson on Sunday at 6pm. A serious performance framed by a serious party, each CATCH event features an array of artists working across and between disciplines, creating a space for community discovery and exchange.

BEHOLD! New Lebanon, a living museum of contemporary rural American life, kicks off its first full season on Saturday. BEHOLD! is a museum-without-walls, offering a variety of guided tours by Rural Guides, residents of New Lebanon who introduce visitors to today’s rural America. Saturday’s program includes dog training advice and insights; an inside look at Lebanon Valley Speedway; instructions on hand-crafting all-beef sausage; auctioneering; and collaging as art.

Of course James Taylor is at Tanglewood tomorrow, but don’t even think about going there – that concert has long been sold out. And Jacob’s Pillow is up and running, with Dorrance Dance in the Ted Shawn Theater and BodyTraffic in the Doris Duke Theater – check with the Pillow box office, but both shows are nearly if not fully sold out.

Welcome to summer in the Berkshires!