Review: FIREFLIES at Shakespeare & Company
A Sweet Little Play, So Charming its Disarming.
Shakespeare & Company (S&C) launches the Summer 2026 season with FIRFLIES written by Matthew Barber.
Photo: Nile Scott Studios
FIREFLIES tells the story of retired school teacher Eleanor Bannister who lives alone in tiny Groverdell, Texas, settled into her routines and secure in her standing as the town’s most respected woman. When a hole in her roof brings Abel Brown – a charming, smooth-talking drifter – to her doorstep, he offers to repair the house and quietly begins to upend her carefully ordered life. As an unexpected late-life romance flickers to life, gossip spreads and doubts surface. Can Abel be trusted, or is he not quite who he seems? Either way, the whole town is watching.
The cast includes Gregory Boover, Jeb Brown, Isabel Keating and Annette Miller. Each known by S&C audiences from previous performances is particularly well suited to their characters.
Scenic design is by Marcello Martinez Garcia, costume design by Alicia Austin, lighting design by James McNamara, sound design by Bryn Scharenberg, and Stage Manager is Josh Rodrigues.
Director, Daniela Varon, said of FIREFLIES; “at first read is a charming and gentle comedy, that turns out to be a richly layered play…and one that embraces the fullness of time not just in having “senior”, “mature”, “later-life”, “third act” (or other reductive word to categorize people over 60) protagonists, but also in portraying them as people who still have the rest of their lives ahead of them. What may happen if they dare to open the door to new possibilities, and to risk the issues that coexist with opening one’s self to love?”
FIREFLIES is a delightful little feel-good piece that gives humorous, heartwarming, and character-driven romance. It avoids high-concept sci-fi or intense melodrama in favor of a comfortable, down-to-earth, good ole story. One that is told by some of the area’s well known, admired, extremely competent and capable teams of story tellers.
FIREFLIES continues at Shakespeare & Company’s Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre in Lenox through July 19.
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