We are in the home stretch of the summer cultural season in our region but there are still plenty of things to do and see.
John Guare’s American screwball comedy “His Girl Friday,” an adaptation of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's original play “The Front Page,” is on the mainstage at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield now through Sunday, August 30. This is the kind of zany farce with a dark edge that Barrington State does best.
Last chance this weekend to catch Debra Jo Rupp starring in “Memory House,” a moving story about the complex issues raised by international child adoption, running at the Chester Theatre Company through Sunday.
Berkshire native Adam Michael Rothberg celebrates the release of his third studio album, “Soul of a Man,” at the Guthrie Center in Great Barrington on Saturday at 8pm. The new album features a mix of Rothberg’s signature folk-rock, which blends the eclectic pop melodicism of the Beatles, the intimate confessionalism of James Taylor, and the bluesy rootsiness of Blind Willie Johnson, who penned the title track.
The month-long Chatham Dance Festival at PS21 in Chatham, N.Y., kicks off with Brian Sanders JUNK tonight and Saturday at 8pm. Known for their ingenious use of found objects and clever inventions, this Philadelphia-based company bridges the gap between dance and physical theater.
The Boston Duo - the husband-and wife team of Boston Symphony violinist Tatiana Dimitriades and pianist Jonathan Bass – will kick off the Music & More 2015 season at the historic Meeting House on the Village Green in New Marlboro on Saturday at 4:30pm, with a concert featuring music by Beethoven, Brahms, Martinu, and Faure.
The 26th annual Bard Music Festival – an exploration of “Carlos Chávez and His World” – kicks off tonight at 8pm, with “The Musical Voice of Mexico” in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. The first of the weekend’s five themed concerts – “Chávez and Mexico’s Musical Heritage” offers an introduction to Mexican music since the colonial period of New Spain, culminating with the work of Carlos Chávez and his 20th-century contemporaries.
Pianist Michael Chertock will be featured in “From Rags to Riches,” a program showcasing piano and cello works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, kicking off the High Peaks Music Festival on Sunday, at 7pm at the Carey Institute’s Guggenheim Pavilion in Rensselearville. The theme of this summer’s 10-day festival is “The Gilded Age: Bohemia in the Catskills.” Rachmaninoff, whose visits to the Catskills date to the 1930s, when he was living as a White Russian exile in Hollywood, stands as one of the last links between 19th-century Romanticism and modernism. The program also includes ragtime selections by Zez Confrey and others.
You know him best as guitarist, songwriter, and co-founder of the Black Crowes. But for the past decade, Rich Robinson has been juggling his career as a bandleader and solo artist, with his commitment to roots-rock songwriting always his central focus. That’s the Rich Robinson who will be performing at Club Helsinki Hudson tonight at 9pm, in an intimate, solo acoustic concert, featuring Robinson, his unmistakable voice, and five beautiful guitars.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkshire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com