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Something Fresh At The Playhouse

Something Fresh At The Playhouse
Danny Drewes as William Shakespeare in "Something Rotten!" at The Sharon Playhouse. 
Photo by Aly Morrissey / The Sharon Playhouse

Open your program for “Something Rotten!,” the musical comedy currently running at The Sharon Playhouse in Sharon, Conn., and you might spot something unusual — “Wig Design by Kurt Alger.” And what wigs they are — periwigs and flaming Botticelli curls, all part of bringing the colorful farce of Elizabethan London to life on the stage (Although ensemble member Griffin Tomaino’s hair is so good, no wig needed).

This is the first full production from The Playhouse under the leadership of Rod Christensen and Carl Andress, the new managing director and artistic director respectively. Along with returning Associate Artistic Director Michael Kevin Baldwin, they’ve delivered a fresh season opener that bypasses aging audience nostalgia in favor of contemporary Broadway aesthetics — a snarky script, skewering pastiche, and big musical numbers in an effort to have showstopper after showstopper.

Directed by Amy Griffin with choreography from Justin Boccitto, the show follows down-on-their-luck playwrights Nick and Nigel Bottom (Michael Santora and Max Crumm) determined to one-up their famed rival William Shakespeare (played gamely by Danny Drewes by way of George Michael), all leading up to the hammiest possible production of "Hamlet."

Still, for a show set at a time when women couldn’t act on The Globe’s stage, this production belongs to the women. Emily Esposito is a natural comedienne channeling Elaine Benes as Nick Bottom’s distinctly New York wife working odd jobs disguised as a man, while Melissa Goldberg, affecting perfectly daffy doe-eyes and an infectious Muppet trill, continuously finds new notes as a Puritan who undergoes a ribald sexual awakening thanks to her love of spoken verse (really). The performance of opening night, and surely for the rest of its run, however, belongs to Jen Cody who takes on a gender-bent version of soothsayer Nostradamus, played by Brad Oscar in the original Broadway run. A Broadway veteran herself who children of the 2000s will undoubtedly know from her voice acting in Disney’s “The Princess and The Frog,” Cody doesn’t just steal every scene, she’s committing diamond heists. The show is hers. Go see her while you can.

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Kevin Kelly’s After Hours

Kevin Kelly’s After Hours

Kevin Kelly

Photo by Christopher Delarosa
“I was exposed to that cutthroat, ‘Yes, chef’ culture. It’s not for me. I don’t want anyone apologizing for who they are or what they love.”— Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly doesn’t call himself a chef; he prefers “cook.” His business, After Hours, based in Great Barrington, operates as what Kelly calls “a restaurant without a home,” a pop-up dining concept that prioritizes collaboration over competition, flexibility over permanence, and accessibility over exclusivity.

Kelly grew up in Great Barrington and has roots in the Southern Berkshires that go back ten generations. He began working in restaurants at age 14. “I started at Allium and was hooked right off the bat,” he said. He worked across the region from Cantina 229 in New Marlborough to The Old Inn on the Green at Jacob’s Pillow before heading to Babson College in Boston to study business. After a few years in Boston kitchens, he returned home to open a restaurant. But the math didn’t work. “The traditional model just didn’t feel financially sustainable,” he said. “So, I took a step back and asked, ‘If that doesn’t work, then what does?’”

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Books & Blooms’ tenth anniversary

Books & Blooms’ tenth anniversary

Dee Salomon on what makes a garden a garden.

hoto by Ngoc Minh Ngo for Architectural Digest

On June 20 and 21, the Cornwall Library will celebrate its 10th anniversary of Books & Blooms, the two-day celebration of gardens, art, and the rural beauty of Cornwall. This beloved annual benefit features a talk, reception, art exhibit, and self-guided tours of four extraordinary local gardens.

The first Library sponsored garden tour was in June 2010 and featured a talk by Page Dickey, an avid gardener and author. This year’s Books & Blooms will coincide with Ellen Moon’s exhibit “Thinking About Gardens,” a collection of watercolors capturing the quiet spirit of Cornwall’s private gardens. Moon, a weekly storyteller to the first grade at Cornwall Consolidated School and art curator for The Cornwall Library, paints en plein air. Her work investigates what constitutes a garden. In the description of the show, she writes: “there are many sorts...formal, botanical, cottage, vegetable, herb...even a path through the woods is a kind of garden. My current working definition of a garden is a human intervention in the landscape to enhance human appreciation of the landscape.” Also on display are two of her hand-embroidered jackets. One depicts spring’s flowering trees and pollinators. The other, a kimono, was inspired by Yeats’s “The Song of the Wandering Aengus.”

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