There's holiday entertainment still to be had ONLINE this holiday week and here are two that encompass the dynamics and traditions of the season-- which this year feels more fraught than most. Take comfort and joy in the following offerings which dust off the past, dive into the complexities of the present, and emerge with [...]
MUST SEES: Two plays now onstage in Boston: one a gloss on a Shakespearean historical tragedy, the other a clarion call to avert an historical tragedy! Playwright Mike Lew's TEENAGE DICK now onstage at THE HUNTINGTON exploded the pile of preconceptions I was sitting on, confounded my expectations, and expanded my world. THIS [...]
It's the kind of show that doesn't blow the roof off the house; rather it seeps into your soul and reverberates through your psyche, shedding light and grace on what it is to be human in a less than perfect world. HADESTOWN which won 8 Tony Awards in 2019 including Best Musical, is now onstage [...]
In the last two weeks I have seen three productions--the most challenging of which I saw less than 24 hours ago and has left me reeling. BLKS which is making its New England premiere at SpeakEasy Stage has tested the limits of my personal boundaries around what I find funny, and what is just too [...]
Theater is back up and on its feet on big stages in and around Boston with a couple of crowd-pleasing musical theater classics through this weekend! MAMMA MIA at North Shore Music Theatre shut down on press opening night after IATSE (International Alliance of Theater and Stage Employees) staged a walkout. (I managed [...]
Actors' Shakespeare Project has returned to the stage this fall with a "rebooted" version of Shakespeare's THE MERCHANT OF VENICE which they have kicked into the 21st century under the direction of the audaciously talented Igor Golyak, artistic director of Arlekin Players Theatre and now, Shakespeare's so-called "problem play." What's the problem? Is it a [...]
The Sound Inside, the six-time Tony-nominated, Broadway debut play by Adam Rapp takes us back to the theater and inside the intimate confines of SpeakEasy Stage. There, the inner world of two characters unfolds like a hall of mirrors on an almost empty set. THE SOUND INSIDE is a brilliant play, deafening and quiet, a [...]
She had me at "I have returned and it begins!" The opening salvo of the Huntington production of HURRICANE DIANE couldn't be more spot-on. Not only is it the first production of the Huntington's 40th season, but the first inside any Boston theater since spring 2020 when the world as we knew it shut down. [...]
You gotta love a play whose opening line is "Where's the fennel?" and whose climax turns on a signature dish of scallops. This foodie/theater critic just ate it up. "SEARED" is the Gloucester Stage's third production outdoors at the Windhover Performing Arts Center, a collection of rustic cabins and a stage set under a canopy [...]
What could be more fitting for this summer's FREE annual Commonwealth Shakespeare production on the common, than THE TEMPEST? In a season of storms: climatic, pandemic, and politic, and their cross currents: moral ambiguity, familial friction, and racial strife, the brilliant John Douglas Thompson and company deliver a masterpiece of rough magic and earthy wisdom [...]
