I've seen a heap o' histrionics lately, and despite a few purported hits in town, nothing quite hit a home run for me-- though some came close: THE HUMANS at the Boch Center Shubert Theatre comes trailing a 2016 Tony Award for Stephen Karam's play as well as a slew of critics awards and a [...]
Now that OSCAR has "officially" put last year's movie season to bed, here's what's kept me woke lately on stage: ORLANDO: This attractive, jam-packed production bursts from the compact LYRIC STAGE. Sets and costumes are stripped down, beautiful, and efficient-- allowing for the fleet passage of time! Sara Ruhl's play is adapted from Virginia Woolf's satiric, [...]
Daniel Gerroll, Patricia Kalember, Karen Pittman, and Jim Poulos in The White Card. Photo: Gretjen Helene Photography It is accepted wisdom that "Seeing is believing," and seeing is precisely what THE WHITE CARD requires: seeing what is assumed and unexamined, namely the white card which gives those who have it a hidden pass, [...]
WAITRESS--I saw this show hot out of the oven at its 2015 Broadway-bound world premiere at the A.R.T. Based on a charming, offbeat film and turned into a scrumptious slice of musical theater by Diane Paulus and an all female team, it depends on a key ingredient: a score by Grammy award-winning pop artist Sara [...]
Photo:Gretjen Helene Photography It is an expression of pure, justifiable rage and a call to arms from half a world away: HEAR WORD! Naija Woman Talk True is viscerally alive onstage at the American Repertory Theater and will shake you into action. Based on the testimony of Nigerian women and woven into a [...]
Love is adding up on stages around town-- here are my calculations: BAD DATES: The Huntington Theatre Company has revived one of its most popular shows ever, which had its premiere there 15 years ago: Theresa Rebeck's one-woman show about a woman cataloguing her harrowing and hilarious romantic excursions! BAD DATES was a great date [...]
COMPANY ONE THEATRE is in top form as it opens its 19th season with a thrilling 75 minute world premiere: HYPE MAN at the BCA PLAZA. Playwright Idris Goodwin ("How We Got On") delivers another in his cycle of break beat plays, this one a fresh, bold wholly engrossing musical that uncoils the tensions social, [...]
Here's what to rush out and see now: THE COLOR PURPLE!! WOW. I saw a local production of this several years ago and it left me cold. The production now onstage at the SHUBERT THEATRE is on fire! A jubilant prayer of a musical which won Tonys for best revival of a musical in 2015, [...]
"Pious, pompous, puffed up twits" beware: the Huntington Theatre Company's TARTUFFE is a screamingly funny, jubilant debunking of fakery in all its forms! Moliere's 17th century satire anticipated "the Enlightenment" as reason trumps religious pretense in this tale of a hypocritical holy man Tartuffe (actor/comedian Brett Gelman "Stranger Things") who hoodwinks a gentleman and head of [...]
A fierce and fiery production of "OLEANNA" is now onstage at New Rep Theatre, written by David Mamet and directed by Elaine Vaan Hogue. I remember seeing this explosive kernel of a play in its world premiere in Cambridge in 1992; it starred William H. Macy and Rebecca Pidgeon (Mamet's wife) and was the first [...]
