The world premiere of I WAS MOST ALIVE WITH YOU is firing on all cylinders and requires we be MOST ALIVE as an audience to every cue-- visual and aural-- as we witness this extraordinary ensemble wrestle with life's random cruelties. It's a potent evening presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the BCA's Calderwood Pavilion [...]
Drama Critic Elliot Norton It's "NORTIE" time! The Boston Theater Critics Association (BTCA) of which I am president is pleased to announce its nominations for the 34th Annual Elliot Norton Awards! For one night--Monday May 23, 2016, on one stage--Boston's Citi Shubert Theatre, the greater Boston theater community will celebrate in the name of the late great [...]
Paying the rent, colonizing a country, and milk like sugar--all cost; but these issues are definitely worth the price of admission as enacted on stages around town over the next few weeks. The 20th Anniversary production of RENT by Fiddlehead Theatre Company which runs only through February 21 at the Back Bay Events Center is a musical about starving artists, drag queens, and AIDS based [...]
The Pulitzer Prize-winning DISGRACED by Ayad Akhtar presented by the Huntington Theatre Company and Long Wharf Theatre is a stellar production of an explosive piece of work. The material cuts to the quick of the racial, ethnic, religious, and social divide--embedded with assumptions, and laced with tribal allegiances; pile on the politically correct reactions triggered, and we've got a powder [...]
It's hard to dramatize language, and that is the nut this show needs to crack. A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES is the latest presentation by the Huntington Theatre Company adapted by Jefferey Hatcher from John Kennedy Toole's posthumously published Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Its title is derived from Jonathan Swift's witty observation about the recognition of genius by way of the witless response to it. But what, on the page, is a rollicking, [...]
© T Charles Erickson Photography The song was SEND IN THE CLOWNS and when I first heard it in 1973, the year Stephen Sondheim's A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC won the Tony--I was never the same. I was absolutely stricken by its painfully exquisite, wryly mournful melody and lyrics, somewhere between a dream of romance and the irony of missed chances. Huntington [...]
Tina Chilip and Zachary Booth Photo: T. Charles Erickson AFTER ALL THE TERRIBLE THINGS I DO-- with whom does that not resonate? Who among us hasn't searched for forgiveness, or at least understanding after all or even one terrible thing we've done? The new play by [...]
Take a deep breath and prepare to be moved. COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA the American classic by William Inge is now onstage in a breathtakingly poignant production that's just been extended by popular demand. This SHEBA is produced by the Huntington Theatre Company and directed by David Cromer who illuminated another classic "OUR TOWN" a few seasons back, and here works [...]
THE COLORED MUSEUM may make you uncomfortable, but you're going to have real good time first! The Huntington Theatre Company's revival of George C. Wolfe's 1986 musical is a whip-cracking, gospel-ringing, minstrel-mashing, high stepping, low-down, soul-searching trip through a museum of black stereotypes, at once a purge and a celebration. At the helm is two-time Tony winner actor, director, [...]
What to see now ONSTAGE? There are a slew of good productions playing, and I am going to give you thumbnail reviews to catch up and let you know where I think your time is best spent beginning with the following DO NOT MISS SHOW: --The miraculous BEDLAM'S ST. JOAN presented by Underground Railway Theater and directed by Eric Tucker [...]
