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 [...]
It's fair to mention that PIPPIN is not my favorite musical. I also happened to be sick as a dog as I sat in the audience on opening night. BUT, that said, I enjoyed this production so much more than I did the A.R.T.'s pre-broadway update of the 1972 Tony-Award winning musical onstage in Cambridge. That adaptation did go on to Broadway and another Tony [...]
AN OCTOROON co-presented by Company One Theatre and Arts Emerson is smart, sassy, devastating "play-within- a-play"making, which begins with a black playwright casually putting on white face, and speaking directly to us through the layers. The central questions-- what it is to be black, to be white, to be any color in between, what those designations have to do with [...]
Mark Rylance, Tony award- winner and recent OSCAR nominee for Spielberg's BRIDGE OF SPIES, has arrived onstage at the American Repertory Theater trailing a list of serious thespian credits among them HAMLET, and THE SEAGULL. He is back at the A. R. T. as playwright and star in a furry, floppy-eared hat, a bemused expression, and a whale of a [...]
Fiddlehead Theatre Company is giving away 5 PAIRS of tickets to the opening night of RENT on Friday, Feb. 5th exclusively through Joyce’s Choices! One lucky winner will also win the chance to meet original RENT cast member Fredi Walker-Browne! The 20th Anniversary Celebration of the iconic musical RENT runs from February 5-21 at the Back Bay Events Center (180 Berkeley Street, [...]
IF you love Stephen Sondheim-- and what self-respecting theater-goer with any taste doesn't--get immediately over to the Lyric Stage and revel in their splendid production of SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM, a treasure trove of Sondheim tunes and tales, delivered by some of our most treasured local musical theater talents. The original production was conceived and directed on Broadway [...]
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 [...]
Absolutely dash up to the Apollinaire Theatre Co. in Chelsea and catch the last weekend of "A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes." It's a wild and horribly funny take on family dynamics as blood sport! A superb and physically fit ensemble of actors literally throw themselves into the action as 4 generations of the Wembly [...]
I've got the music from this show stuck in my head--so my life is now a Disney musical! Such is the irresistible power of this Broadway in Boston production of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST once it gets going-- which is somewhere at the beginning of Act II. The long-running hit musical features a relentlessly catchy score, truly outstanding voices, clever staging, [...]
Though I've just begun writing this review, I am already at a loss for superlatives. NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 has to be one of the most fantastically alive and rapturous theatrical productions I've ever seen. THE 19th century Russian novel has come to dazzling life at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge after premiering off broadway and [...]
