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 [...]
What's most remarkable about BLACK PANTHER about the latest Marvel superhero to leap to the big screen is not that it had the biggest pre-sale of any superhero movie in history, not that it features a predominantly black cast and writer/director, is well made, acted, scripted, designed, and directed (it is all of those things) [...]
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, [...]
In one of the more entertaining Oscar nomination ceremonies in recent memory, Andy Serkis and Tiffany Haddish announced the nominations for the 90th Annual OSCARS this morning from California. THE SHAPE OF WATER lead with 13 nominations. By my calculation, there were a few flubs, snubs, & surprises: --Spielberg was snubbed as Best Director for [...]
If only PHANTOM THREAD had been based on real life couture god Charles James. At least the clothes would have been beautiful. Here Daniel Day-Lewis as designer Reynolds Woodcock spends the entire movie needling his seamstresses as they sweat over what look like aproned doilies and lumpy Halloween costumes. OK. A few of [...]
They didn't make my Five Fave Films of 2017 so far, nor are they all the Boston area Film Critics choices, but here’s another batch of films, like cookies for the holidays-- yummy & crummy; some to be savored, some to be consumed guiltily in the dark, and some cookies, well, should be tossed. [...]
It's been another tough year for me at the movies. The swamp of desperately-plotted comedy and superhero sequels clogged with action sludge-- pulled me down, but not out. I hung on until late fall, when the cinematic floodgates opened to release a wave of excellent movies I'm still riding. I have not yet seen PHANTOM [...]
