I just saw the world premiere of FINISH LINE: A Documentary Play About the 2013 Boston Marathon. It runs circles around the movie "Patriot's Day" which managed to somehow reduce this global tragedy even as it ramped up the explosions and Mark Wahlberg's ubiquitous heroics. FINISH LINE has no literal explosions and makes a better point: there were no heroes, that is, no [...]
What can you say about a dead dog that hasn't been said already? That it was stabbed with a pitchfork and discovered by a teenage math wiz with some unusual behavioral problems? "Holy f__k!" the play's opening salvo, is delivered by the dog's owner as she stumbles upon the teenager at the grisly scene center stage, in a shaft of light. So begins "The Curious Incident [...]
Here's three to see beginning with the Lyric Stage Company's smart and funny production of STAGE KISS by Sarah Ruhl ("The Clean House," "In the Next Room or the vibrator play")whose surface lightness illuminates real life in surprising and important ways. In "Stage Kiss" an actress called simply "She"(the consistently marvelous Celeste Oliva who hits the [...]
Amanda Plummer & James Earl Jones/Gretjen Helene Photography/A.R.T. One of the hottest tickets of the season is the American Repertory Theater's production of Tennessee Williams THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA starring James Earl Jones-- but the star of the show is the incandescent AMANDA PLUMMER who cuts loose from most of the rest of the [...]
Marie Mullen as Mag Folan & Aisling O’Sullivan as Maureen Folan Here's an Irish double feature beginning with THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE now on the ArtsEmerson Paramount Mainstage. I had never before seen this Tony Award-winning dark Irish tragi-comedy, the first of a trilogy by Martin McDonough. First performed by Ireland's Druid Theatre Company in Galway in 1996, it [...]
In the middle of the snow, and the rain, and the wind, and the cold, and a million people heading into Boston for the PATRIOTS' victorious rolling rally onto City Hall Plaza (am still in SHOCK and AWE at that miraculous triumph), I found myself practicing evasive maneuvers in order to make my way to WHEELOCK FAMILY THEATRE's school matinee of BILLY [...]
A few bedraggled Kit Kat Chorines milled around onstage as the audience filed in to see the iconic Kander and Ebb musical that had its 1966 pre-broadway premiere right here in Boston. Now, more than a half century later the Boston Opera House welcomes the Roundabout Theatre Company's pivotal Tony Award-winning production of CABARET -- and trust me: this is no walk in the park, old chum, not [...]
There is no balder, fresher medium than theater to communicate personal reality, warm bodies right there on stage conveying flesh and blood experiences. In TRANS SCRIPTS, PART I: THE WOMEN, now having its US premiere on the American Repertory Theater's mainstage, playwright Paul Lucas leads us on an exploration of what it is to be "transgender." The means are simple and [...]
To paraphrase the bard, there's nothing rotten with the state of entertainment in Boston this week! A hit Broadway musical has just launched its national tour right here at the Boston Opera House: SOMETHING ROTTEN! It is, however, overripe--with big production numbers, superb voices, witty songs, exuberant choreography, and copious laughs. In other words, it's a feast for anyone who likes their musicals riotously scrambled or [...]
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" George chants low in the darkness. "I am, George. I am," intones a hollow-eyed Martha in the Lyric Stage's merciless yet moving production of Albee's classic. As the light slowly fades on this bitter couple in the final scene, I felt a chill. The moment is forever seared in my mind, a moment of sheer existential terror and loneliness in a production not to be missed. Edward Albee's three [...]
