The cultural highlights in our region in coming days include a living legend of Broadway, an early music tribute to Shakespeare, a world premiere musical featuring a Tony Award-winning cast and crew, a new vaudeville show, and a double bill of guitar rock.
Tony Award-winner Donna McKechnie kicks off the 2016 season at Mr. Finn’s Cabaret at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield with “Same Place: Another Time,” on Sunday and Monday at 8pm both nights. The Tony Award-winning star of “A Chorus Line,” Donna McKechnie is regarded internationally as one of Broadway’s foremost dancing and singing leading ladies. She returns to BSC in her new show, a musical déjà vu celebrating the scintillating 1970s in New York City - the heyday of Studio 54.
Also at Barrington Stage, “Presto Change-O,” with book and lyrics by Eric Price and music by Joel Waggoner, receives its world premiere tonight through Saturday, June 11. This exciting new musical, a production of BSC’s Musical Theatre Lab, tells the story of three generations of magicians who find themselves under one roof for the first time in years. When the grandfather causes real magic to happen, they must confront their past mistakes and re-examine what it means to be a family. “Presto Change-O” stars Tony Award-winner Michael Rupert; Tony Award-nominee Jarrod Spector; and Tony Award-nominee Barbara Walsh.
Early music organization Crescendo presents “Elizabethan Music and The Sounds of Hamlet,” a concert featuring madrigals and motets, plus a world premiere by composer Juan Mesa based on three quotes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, at Great Barrington’s First Congregational Church on Saturday at 6pm, and again in Lakeville, Conn., at Trinity Lime Rock, on Sunday at 4pm. Performers are the Crescendo Chorus, soloists, the viola da gamba ensemble Arcadia Viols, and Laurence Wallach on continuo organ. Crescendo artistic director Christine Gevert will conduct.
Long-running upstate power-pop trio The Figgs and satirical hard-rockers The Upper Crust bring their catchy guitar-rock to Club Helsinki Hudson tonight at 9pm. The Figgs’ albums are stuffed with Kinks-inspired power and melodies, vibrant harmonies and sonic experimentation recalling The Beatles, plus the grit and youthfulness akin to the best rock bands from the Who to the Ramones. The Upper Crust is a Boston-based satirical rock band, a fusion of tongue-in-cheek Spinal Tap rock antics as performed by alleged members of the European aristocracy, including singer-guitarist Lord Bendover, the guitarist Duc d’Istortion, bassist Count Bassie, and drummer Jackie Kickassis.
Jack Shainman’s gallery The School in Kinderhook, N.Y., marks its second anniversary with “A Change of Place: Four Solo Exhibitions,” featuring painting, photography, and sculpture by Pierre Dorion, Hayv Kahraman, Richard Mosse, and Garnett Puett, opening with a reception on Sunday from 2 to 6pm.
“Modern Vaudeville,” a variety show based on the James Hurst story “The Scarlet Ibis,” featuring an all-star cast pulled together by Diggy (Elijah) Lessard, a graduating senior at Woodstock Day School, takes place at BSP Kingston on Sunday at 7pm. Among the performers are bassist Stefan Lessard of the Dave Matthews Band; Bobby Tisdale of “Bob’s Burgers;” pianist Marco Benevento; firewalker and burlesque performer Veronica Varlow; “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” magician Albert Cadabra; and singers Amy Helm and Simi Stone.
They’re not chopped liver.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkishire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com