Robert Berg News

Over the last number of years Great Lakes Theater has cobbled together seasons consisting of Shakespearean classics, musicals and mystery plays. The combination has proven to be very successful, with many award winning productions and audience pleasing shows being produced.

The stage of the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square will glow with good spirits and time-honored tradition when Great Lakes Theater (GLT) presents its twenty-eighth annual production of Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol, running November 26 - December 23, 2016.

Great Lakes Theater (GLT) will commence its 2016-17 season at the Hanna Theatre, Playhouse Square with a Fall Repertory that features the Tony Award-winning musical classic, My Fair Lady and Shakespeare's enchanting romantic comedy, Twelfth Night. The productions will be performed in rotating repertory September 23 - October 30, 2016. Victoria Bussert will direct My Fair Lady. Drew Barr will direct Twelfth Night. My Fair Lady (Book and Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner / Music by Frederick Loewe / Adapted from George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion) is presented by arrangement with TAMS-WITMARK MUSIC LIBRARY, INC.

An enchanting romantic comedy, Shakespeare Twelfth Night completes GLT's Fall Repertory pairing. Hope seems lost when a violent shipwreck separates young Viola from her boat and twin brother. However, tragedy quickly turns romantic when she washes ashore in Illyria - an exotic island that is about to be turned topsy-turvy by love. To survive in her strange new world, she disguises herself as a boy messenger and enters the employ of an island inhabitant. Misplaced affections and misunderstood intentions result when she unexpectedly becomes an object of desire to the woman her employer sent her to woo! Time may correct the course of the isle's myriad misguided lovers, but not before the Bard bewitches all in his enchanting comedy.

MY FAIR LADY, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's award winning and universally praised musical, based on George Bernard Shaw's play, PYGMALION, centers on Eliza Doolittle, an uneducated Cockney flower girl who, in an attempt to 'become a proper lady,' takes lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a self-centered egotist.

THE FANTASTICKS, the Tom Jones (book and lyrics) and Harvey Schmidt (music) musical holds the honor of being 'the only Off-Broadway show to have won a Tony.' In addition, the show, which has been playing in New York for 56 years, is also the longest running theatrical production in American theater history.

Great Lakes Theater (GLT), Cleveland's Classic Company, concludes its 2016-17 season with the classic musical, The Fantasticks. The production will be performed in the company's intimate and audience-friendly home at the Hanna Theatre, Playhouse Square, May 13-29, 2016. Victoria Bussert directs the production. The Fantasticks is presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI).

Most often when you go see a play there is a very plain narrative, a beginning, a middle and an end to convey your story. Some plays out there, however, make you work a little harder either with non-linear structure or an existential bent. And then there are some plays that go so far that you walk out of them thinking "What the hell did I just see?" Well Washington Ensemble Theatre's creepy and surreal "The Things Are Against Us", currently playing at 12th Avenue Arts, is firmly footed in that second camp but often dipped its toe into the third which resulted in a show that was creepy and fun but left my theater companion and me with a car ride home filled with statements like, "Well, I think this is what happened."

Robert A. Berg has completed his new book 'Ethical Sports Manual (Emphasis Baseball)': an educational manual that will aid coaches and players in eliminating difficulties that they have faced or that have challenged them as a team.

Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) debuts the newly abridged Short Shakespeare! Twelfth Night , a 75-minute production of William Shakespeare's tale of mistaken identity and unexpected love. In the midst of the 2016 celebration of Shakespeare 400 Chicago, this new adaptation by director Kirsten Kelly makes an outstanding introduction to Shakespeare for audiences of all ages. In addition to public performances each Saturday, this production welcomes 1,000 students each day during its four-week run in the Courtyard Theater, followed by an extensive tour to schools across the Midwest through May 6, 2016. Short Shakespeare! Twelfth Night will be performed for the public Saturdays at 11:00 a.m.-March 5, 12, 19 & 26 and April 2 & 9, 2016.

In Beth Henley's play "Crimes of the Heart", currently playing at Village Theatre, the character of Meg says, "To talk about our lives. It's an important human need." Well an important theatrical need is for the characters in a play to listen to each other and not just wait for their next bit but there was very little listening going on in the show I saw last night and that was just one of the issues that sapped the heart right out the show making this Pulitzer Prize winning play feel more a sitcom.

Broadway-bound new musical, Come From Away, presented by Seattle Repertory Theatre, wins four Gypsys, tying with another new musical, Lizard Boy, also produced by Seattle Repertory Theatreand also with four Gypsys, a company that has been known for years as a powerhouse dramatic straight-play playhouse! 

Seattle Theater Writers critics' circle is pleased to present the nomination slate of the fifth annual Gypsy Rose Lee Awards, theater awards devoted to recognizing excellence across the economic spectrum of professional Seattle theaters in the prior calendar year.

South Camden Theatre Company, a nonprofit professional theatre organization located in Camden, New Jersey opens its 11th season and second decade of theatre in the city with a three week production and regional premier of CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO.  Opening October 16, 2015 at 8p.m. the play is written by Robert Berger, Patrick Daniels and Irving Gregory and directed by Joseph M. Paprzycki. CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO (CVR) is a Drama Desk award-winning theatrical documentary based on verbatim transcripts from six real aviation accidents and emergencies as recorded in each flight's "Black Box" Cockpit Voice Recorders.

How do you come out with an anti-war novel without it becoming preachy or scolding? You let Kurt Vonnegut handle it. His tale of the life of a soldier through his time in war and beyond is so shrouded in other elements that the lessons learned just slide on into your brain along with the rest of the story. And Book-It's presentation of this gripping work is just as seemingly effortless in its message and manages to engage and entertain rather than lecture and scold.

The South Camden Theatre Company, a nonprofit professional theatre organization located in Camden, New Jersey announces its eleventh season for 2015 and 2016 featuring works written by Robert Berger, Patrick Daniels, Irving Gregory, John Guare and Tennessee Williams.

Sound Theatre Company completes its eighth season with '5 By Beckett,' an evening of short plays by Samuel Beckett as part of the Seattle Beckett Festival and presented in conjunction with ACT Theatre's Central Heating Lab.

Sound Theatre Company completes its eighth season with '5 By Beckett,' an evening of short plays by Samuel Beckett as part of the Seattle Beckett Festival and presented in conjunction with ACT Theatre's Central Heating Lab.

'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' a version of which is now on stage at Great Lakes Theatre, is considered by many literary critics to be one of Shakespeare's 'lesser' plays. Not bad, just not up to the dramatic level of the great writer, though its farcical nature is often praised.