Nick Westrate

Suddenly Last Summer

July 13, 2026

In the hands of avant garde director Daniel Fish, the world premiere of Courtney Bryan’s first opera "Suddenly Last Summer" derived from the one-act play by Tennessee Williams is more a performance piece than anything else. In the libretto created by artistic director Gideon Lester and Fish, only the role of Catherine Holly is sung while all the rest are spoken. Catherine does not have any sustained music until the last 23 minutes of the opera which are almost entirely hers. However, as staged at the LUMA Theater of the Fisher Center at Bard College you are most likely to remember the visual aspect of the production which overpowers the musical portions. [more]

The Wild Duck

September 21, 2025

The latest revival has been directed by Simon Godwin, artistic director of Washington, D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, in a co-production with Theatre for a New Audience. This revival uses the contemporary version by David Eldridge, first seen at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2005 which combines some of the minor characters, shortening the cast list. While the text is clear, the uneven acting and interpretation of the characters undermines the play’s powerful and tragic resolution. [more]

Bernhardt/Hamlet

October 3, 2018

"Bernhardt/Hamlet" is structured as a backstage comedy. Sarah rehearses with French stage star Constant Coquelin playing both The Ghost and Polonius, worries that she is losing 29-year-old lover, playwright Rostand to his wife – or to his new play "Cyrano de Bergerac," and frets over her son Maurice, at 29 years old still a college student who in need of money. Added to her troubles her illustrator Alphonse Mucha whose posters of her productions have added to her fame and glory is unable to make a sketch of her as Hamlet which suits them both. Worse still all the men in her life – including the Parisian critical establishment – plus the women of Paris are saying that it is not appropriate for her to play Hamlet in breeches as it is a man’s domain. Although the new play is not entirely about women in a man’s world, Rebeck does give this theme major importance. Ultimately, Sarah receives a visit from Rostand’s clever wife Rosamund which leads to the play’s denouement. [more]

A Delicate Ship

September 7, 2015

Anna Ziegler’s "A Delicate Ship" is an intelligent, intensely absorbing play that treats its three thirty-something characters like chess pieces moving warily about Reid Thompson’s raised platform apartment set, floating amidst a rock garden which becomes a life-sized game board. [more]

Casa Valentina

May 12, 2014

Harvey Fierstein's Casa Valentina is absorbing theater both as a revealing look into a world unknown to most theatergoers as well as a suspenseful new story. If the play has a flaw, it is that its message is a little bit obscure [more]