Halloween is here, daylight savings time is gone, but two productions light up the dark! Check these out before the curtains descend!!

ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE : How Shakespeare Invented The Villain is conjured onstage at the Emerson Paramount Center by Tony and Grammy Award-winning actor Patrick Page to whom evil seems to come easily. He brought the underworld god Hades to Broadway in  HADESTOWN and played THE LION KING’s conniving uncle Scar. Now he’s created and performs this 90-minute round-up of Shakespeare’s theatrical villains– and they are putty in his hands!

Page gives context and shape to the increasingly complicated, psychologically twisted creatures who wreak havoc on their worlds. His Iago is a creepy insinuator who topples the towering Moor Othello. He pulls the rug out from under Hamlet’s murdering uncle Claudius, revealing an uneasy apologist whose shallow remorse succumbs to his deeper lust for power. His Macbeth scared the daylights out of me, perhaps because–as Page points out– Macbeth is a noble man who deliberately chooses evil, running headlong at Birnam Wood and his tragic, inevitable fate.

The production is simply staged– a chair here, desk there, and a mere shaft of light to reveal each villain’s particular slant of wickedness. Page needs nothing more… this supremely facile thespian delivers an experience as informative as it is immersive. I would quibble that if anything, the actor is a bit too facile in delivering his lines which sometimes feel rushed and over-rehearsed. The mushy sound system is also a challenge as we try to hang onto every luscious word of this sublime text.

Nevertheless, Page has done us a great favor in an era when tyrants rule. By providing villainy’s origin story, he’s given us a contemporary roadmap to the outer limits of the inner workings of the worst in us. SEE  ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE: How Shakespeare Invented The Villain presented by The Octopus Theatricals at the Emerson Paramount Center only through November 1!

PLEASE get on out to NORTH SHORE MUSIC THEATRE to see an emotionally sweeping, in the round, gorgeously staged, costumed, and sung PHANTOM!  (TRAILER HERE!) I liked Maury Yestin (music and lyrics) & Arthur Kopit’s (book) haunting musical MUCH more than that other show with the clunky music, crashing chandelier, and creepy masked man living in the opera house basement. WHY IS HE THERE? Well, this version, based on the same novel by Gaston Leroux, is fleshed out so that these characters make sense and I cared! The voices are spectacular. Madison Claire Park’s innocent ingenue Christine Daaé has a floating, pristine soprano and we root for her success at the Opera House where her vain, soon to be nemesis, Carlotta, rules. Victoria Huston-Elem’s performance in the part is much more than that of a strident, one-note diva. We almost feel sorry for her!

And the creature who is pulling the strings beneath the stage at first seems a skittery crank– until he opens his mouth to sing and then all heaven and hell break loose. Sean Seamus Thompson comes into his own as he intones his soul’s agony in song. His voice is both poignant and powerful. A very detailed but necessary back story of abandonment and loneliness explains his ardor for the tender soprano who reminds him of his mother… alas Christine feels for him– but, you know, not in that way.

Look– this is melodrama of the first order and it is designed to sweep you off your feet. It does. While the tunes don’t implant like that other composer’s ear worm of a score, Yestin’s melodies are lyrical and lovely as intoned by this vibrant, believable, pitch perfect cast who will leave you spent and heartbroken — in the way that “heartbreak feels good” in a theater like this….! SEE PHANTOM at NORTH SHORE MUSIC THEATRE only through this weekend NOVEMBER 1!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

Boo.