Le Vent Du Nord (the North Wind) rocks Quebeçois folk tunes with driving energy and a quick beat of foot percussion. The same stage a week later might see a Brooklyn comedian, or a tribute to Santana or Aretha Franklin. The Colonial Theatre acts as a year-round concert hall and 21st-century performance space, decked in gilt and red velvet out of another century.
The Colonial opened in 1903, and it hosted legendary traveling performances — ballerina Anna Pavlova, composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff. Actors from John and Ethel Barrymore to Sarah Bernhardt played here, and Jazz pianist Eubie Blake — and in 1928, the Ziegfeld Follies with a cast of 100, including the Rockettes.
The theater closed in the Depression and remained quietly sealed for more than 50 years, but in in 2006, with the momentum of a massive community movement, it re-opened. It merged with the long-established Berkshire Theatre Festival to form the Berkshire Theatre Group and become a third stage in their summer theater season, beginning in 2011 with The Who’s Tommy.
