THIS JUST IN!!! Two dozen nominations (full list below) of outstanding actors, directors, designers and ensembles were announced today by The Boston Theater Critics Association (BTCA), with winners to be revealed at the 37th Annual Elliot Norton Awards on Monday, May 20, 2019 at 7 PM, at the Huntington Avenue Theatre. This year’s recipient of [...]
Rounding out the season, I've seen a raft of shows-- here are the ones that floated my boat: Photo/GretjenHelene.com DRAGON MAMA: I was blown away by this one-woman show at Club Oberon part of A.R.T.'s breakout series in Harvard Square, Cambridge. This is a solo memoir and tour de force performance by the extraordinary [...]
Legendary actress FAYE DUNAWAY, winner of an Academy Award, three Golden Globes, a BAFTA, and an Emmy, will be the Guest of Honor at the 37th Annual Elliot Norton Awards presented by the Boston Theater Critics Association on Monday, May 20, 2019 at 7:00 PM at the Huntington Avenue Theatre! As President of the BTCA, I am thrilled that Ms. Dunaway, BU [...]
Our two great regional theater companies have mounted ambitious productions: Huntington Theatre Company's ROMEO AND JULIET charts a tragic end, while American Repertory Theater's ENDLINGS is an interesting beginning. We all know how Romeo and Juliet end up. The challenge is to find a fresh way to envision this tragedy of star-crossed lovers whose feuding [...]
This is the worst time of year for new movies, but theater is alive and kicking on stages around Boston. ONCE is worth seeing again and again, but BIRDY never takes flight. Mackenzie Lesser-Roy & Nile Scott HawverPhoto: Maggie Hall Photography As soon as I knew ONCE was in town, that signature melody [...]
The Lyric Stage company has gone from THE WOLVES to THE LITTLE FOXES, Lillian Hellman's classic about a ravenous pack of southerners hungry for a business deal that would satiate their need for even greater wealth and power. This melodrama set in the antebellum south is brilliantly helmed by Scott Edmiston, staged on a glorious [...]
Women dominate much of what's onstage right now, beginning with George Bernard Shaw's comedy of manners, gender, class, and now-- colonialism and cultural assimilation. PYGMALION has gotten a makeover by New York's brilliant Bedlam theater company by way of Underground Railway Theater at Central Square. It's a crisp, up-to-the minute, vibrant and touching take on a classic. [...]
SO MUCH THEATER OUT THERE NOW! I caught up with five shows while nursing a broken ankle (don't ask) and most of them were worth going the distance. OTHELLO at THE AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER in Cambridge by way of The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is an update on Shakespeare's tragedy about a noble man of [...]
There are two new comedies onstage in Boston right now, both entertaining, and well-executed by superb casts, but it was the scripts that gave me pause. The New England premiere of SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company was a hit off-broadway and absolutely made me laugh-- and that's about it. What we have [...]
Here are four recommendations, the best, the bawdiest, most delightful, and thoroughly musical offerings onstage now: beginning with The Huntington's MAN IN THE RING which is simply a masterpiece and THE BEST PRODUCTION ONSTAGE NOW. This is a profoundly moving, complex, brilliantly performed and conceived bio-drama about fighter Emile Griffiths here played by two actors, [...]
