We missed this production the first time around a couple of years ago, and we’re really glad that Shakespeare & Co. is reprising “Hamlet.”  We saw it yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it.  The performance is especially interesting because a real mother, son, and step-father have leading roles.  Tina Packer is Gertrude, her son Jason Asprey is a wonderful Hamlet, and Dennis Krausnick husband of Tina Packer, plays the best Polonius we’ve seen.  It will be performed here in Lenox, Massachusetts all summer long, and we’re recommending it to guests of Brook Farm Inn.

Award-winning actors Steve Martin and Martin Sheen will join host Garrison Keillor on a live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion from Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts on Saturday, June 27.

The show’s guests will also include Stuart Duncan, Tim Russell, Sue Scott, Fred Newman, and The Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band.

Keillor will celebrate the radio show’s 35th anniversary on Saturday, July 4 with a free broadcast from Avon, Minnesota.

For more information, visit prairiehome.publicradio.org.

Steve Martin

We attended Barrington Stage Co.’s production of “Carousel” last night, and what a treat!  Music, choreography, costumes, and a timeless script — guess that’s why it’s been a favorite musical since 1945.  The voices of the lead actors were matched by their incredible energy.  It will be performed through July 11 (at prices way below Broadway),  and we think it’s just one more reason to come to the Berkshires.

Glenora Richards  is a miniaturist who painted a sizzling miniature portrait of Edna St. Vincent Millay, which was adapted into a postage stamp.  At Steepletop (Millay’s home in the Berkshires), beginning June 16th you can view  an exhibit which explores the art of this amazing, 100- year old woman.  The exhibit will run through September, and will include some special materials from the Postal Service Archives in addition to the original painting, and recordings of Millay reading her own work.  At Brook Farm Inn in Lenox, we had the pleasure of hosting a reading of Millay’s work by Peter Bergman, Executive Director of the Millay Society.  We can’t wait to see the exhibit.

Peter Bergman reading Millay at Brook Farm Inn

Did we get your attention?  Barrington Stage Co. got our attention with their ad for this play.  It’s the new two-character play by Mark St. Germain, about C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud.  Freud was about to commit suicide to end his battle with oral cancer, and the play is about big ideas, but also is injected with unexpected humor.  It opens officially on Sunday, but previews begin tonight, so you can see it this weekend at preview prices!  It’s among the many theater and music offerings in the Berkshires that we at Brook Farm Inn are recommending to our guests this weekend.

Facebook is to social networking what Google is to searching.  At Brook Farm Inn, we’ve discovered how to find former classmates or friends from the neighborhoods we grew up in, and reconnect with them.  We’re excited that we can now share with you our Brook Farm Inn  fan page. We can keep you up-to-date about happenings in the Berkshires and in our lives. We’d love to hear from our guests — whom we consider our friends! — so  please become a fan of Brook Farm Inn on Facebook, and share your comments! 

Here’s a link to our Facebook page.

At Brook Farm Inn, we’re always interested in literary links to the original Brook Farm, for which the inn was named.  Brook Farm was a utopian farm experiment — the original hippie commune, perhaps — that was founded by the Transcendentalists in the 1840’s.   Hawthorne, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and other famous intellectuals of the era were involved.  Nathaniel Hawthorne immortalized the farm in The Blithedale Romance, a fictionalized account .  (You’ll find a copy in each of our guest rooms.) The photo shows how the site looks today, in what is now West Roxbury.

This summer, The Mount is presenting a series of literary lectures, Mondays at 4 PM.  They all sound fascinating.  The one that connects most to Brook Farm is the lecture  about Eden’s Outcasts, a dual biography of Louisa May Alcott and her father, Bronson Alcott.  Although not involved with Brook Farm, they were part of the Transcendentalist community, and their lives were fascinating.   We recommend the book, and the lecture!