Bess Hochstein – Splash Magazines

Shakespeare & Company’s production of “hang” by debbie tucker green

September 27, 2021 Bess Hochstein 0

What’s the difference between justice and vengeance? In debbie tucker green’s searing one-act hang, the two hang in the balance, as a woman who has been severely wronged is asked to determine the fate of […]

Review: Tiny Beautiful Things, produced by Chester Theatre Company

August 27, 2021 Bess Hochstein 0

The small but superb Chester Theatre Company ends its summer residency at Hancock Shaker Village on a high note with a soothing, heartfelt production of Tiny Beautiful Things, an epistolary play by Nia Vardalos, adapted […]

Review: Sister Sorry world premiere at Barrington Stage Company

August 23, 2021 Bess Hochstein 0

Back in 1993, New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson penned a long-form piece of nonfiction, “The Confession,” about a conceptual artist who opened a telephone line for people wanting to apologize for any wrongs they had […]

Review: At Shakespeare & Company, Yamina Reza’s Art paints a portrait of male friendship

August 19, 2021 Bess Hochstein 0

In the 27 years since its debut, Yasmina Reza’s arch play Art has racked up awards on formidable stages across the world. Its premiere production in 1994, at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées in Paris, earned […]

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 […]