The top 10 Berkshire theater shows of 2024 delivered bold stories and brilliant performances
Jeffrey Borak is The Eagle’s theater critic.
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PITTSFIELD — What follows is my list of what was, for me, the most accomplished work I saw in calendar year 2024 on stages in and around the Berkshires: Pittsfield, Lenox, Williamstown, Stockbridge, Great Barrington, Chester, West Springfield; Chatham, Albany and Catskill in New York; Dorset, Vt. and Hartford, Conn.
If my list is reflective of anything it is the diversity of the work: brand new plays; established plays, often with fresh takes — some of which worked, some of which, for a variety of reasons, didn’t.
THE YEAR’S 10 MOST ACCOMPLISHED PRODUCTIONS
1 “Survival of the Unfit” (Great Barrington Public Theater)
In discussing his approach to Oren Safdie’s trenchant comedy, director Matthew Penn remarked that comedy derives from pain. Pain hid in plain sight in this oh-so-smartly written, exquisitely performed play about an upper middle-class wife and travel consultant who is struggling to hold together a family, a marriage — a life coming apart at the seams. Very much the best work I’ve seen at Great Barrington Public Theater.
2 “True Art” (Dorset Theatre Festival)
Authenticity is key in Jessica Provenz’s witty new play about an ostensible coup in the art world that turns out to be anything but. Smoothly crafted by director Michelle Joyner and a masterly four-member cast led by Jayne Atkinson and Fiona Robberson. Nothing inauthentic here.
3 “The Play That Goes Wrong” (Majestic Theater)
In this sly, madcap comedy by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields of Mischief Theatre Company, everything that can go wrong does on the opening night of an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery performed by the well-intentioned amateur actors of the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society. This production was a masterpiece of direction by Stephen Petit, whose ensemble of Equity and professional non-Equity actors performed with seamless assurance, skill, trust and a keen feel for the play’s stylistic demands and discipline.
4 “Sweat” (theRep)
Playwright Lynn Nottage has packed a great deal in this play that tracks a group of people in a once flourishing midwestern industrial town who have been betrayed by the hopes and promises of the American dream. Director Margaret E. Hall’s richly textured production at theRep (aka Capital Repertory Theatre) treated Nottage’s characters with respect and compassion.
5 “Griswold” (Bridge Street Theatre)
Under M. Burke Walker’s direction, Angela J. Davis’ three-actor play about activist Estelle Griswold and her eventually successful effort to have the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Connecticut’s 1879 “Little Comstock” Act — which, in effect, banned women’s contraception in the Nutmeg State — was a vigorous, lucid exercise in the art of theater and storytelling.
6 “Uncle Vanya” (Bridge Street Theatre)
This signature play by Anton Chekov can be such a draining exercise. Not so here. Its rewards were on impressive display in director John Sowle’s atmospheric, delicately balanced production.
7 “Primary Trust” (Barrington Stage Company)
Fueled chiefly by Justin Weaks’ persuasive leading performance, this finely tuned production of Eboni Booth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play struck a poignant, deeply emotional undercurrent.
8 “The Weir” (Berkshire Theatre Group)
Mood and atmosphere were the mere tip of the iceberg in this atmospheric, subtly crafted production of a compelling play by Irish playwright Conor McPherson that lives just beneath its surface.
9 “Rent” (Mac-Haydn Theatre)
I’ve never been a fan of the late Jonathan Larson’s landmark Pulitzer Prize musical, loosely based on Puccini’s “La Boheme.” But under John Saunders’ direction at Mac-Haydn Theatre, this show found resonant chords in a beautifully performed and staged production.
10 “Something Rotten” (Mac-Haydn Theatre)
This musical by Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick (music and lyrics) and Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell (book) is a dizzyingly witty, audacious send-up of William Shakespeare and particularly of Broadway musicals. Even when the material loses some of its heady first act spirit in the second half, director John Saunders’ production didn’t. He, his cast and his artistic collaborators never missed a trick. What fun!
HONORABLE MENTIONS (in order of being seen):
- 10X10 New Play Festival (Barrington Stage Company)
- “A Tender Thing” (Barrington Stage Company)
- “Unreconciled” (Chester Theatre Company)
- “Galileo’s Daughter” (WAM Theatre)
- “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (Hartford Stage)
- “The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord” (Bridge Street Theatre)