ALL'S WELL (It certainly is.)THAT ENDS WELL (It certainly does.) I'm referring to this summer's FREE offering on Boston Common by Commonwealth Shakespeare Company! Artistic Director Steve Maler has served up one of Shakespeare's most infrequently performed comedies, studded it with some of Boston's brightest theatrical talents, and set it shimmering under the night sky [...]
It's the coolest thing in town right now-- and it's only here until July 24! They call themselves: PSY: MIND BLOWING CIRCUS. You may think the performers doth toot their own horns too much. Methinks you would be wrong. I was mesmerized and tickled and left gasping by this astonishing amalgam of acrobatics, juggling, acting, [...]
It doesn't get any better than Bernstein's jazzy, expressive music and Sondheim's endlessly inventive lyrics. In "West Side Story," a latter day Romeo and Juliet fall in love as Tony and Maria; the Montagues and Capulets have become the Jets and the Sharks-- rival American and Puerto Rican gangs on the streets of New York. [...]
Want to laugh your ass off this weekend? Forgive the frisky opening line, but be careful sitting down after you see the two shows I'm about to recommend--THE DROWSY CHAPERONE over at The SpeakEasy, and The Gold Dust Orphans' PETER PANSY over at the Ramrod Center for the Performing Arts, or Machine! DROWSY is the [...]
SONS OF THE PROPHET is set in Lebanon, Egypt, Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jordan--not too far from the Poconos. That's right--it's Pennsylvania!-- where the playwright grew up, and the mess of characters and circumstances here seem no less tangled and painful than the conundrum in the middle east. Oh, and it's a comedy. Sort of. This [...]
I just saw THE MERCHANT OF VENICE starring F.Murray Abraham and it was remarkable for one reason. It's not that this is a gleaming "Theatre for a New Audience" production directed by Darko Tresnjak with a cast decked out in dark suits and cocktail dresses, clutching their cell phones while syncopating Shakespeare's iambic pentameter. The [...]
9 CIRCLES is having its East Coast premiere at PUBLICK THEATRE. It's not "shocking" or "bitingly funny." What it is, is timely and smart-- about what can happen to raw recruits when you train them to follow orders, kill, and pitch them into battle. The play by Bill Cain refers to nine circles of hell [...]
I remember the 1983 film vividly, with its Oscar-nominated performance by Julie Walters opposite the charismatic Michael Caine. Willy Russell's play now onstage at the Huntington is more concentrated and even more enjoyable: witness two terrific actors squaring off in neatly calibrated performances and dramatically escalating scenes, pitting a lower class hairdresser's insouciance and eagerness [...]
Back from Beijing and caught a breezy three and a half hour production over at Emerson's Paramount Theater about drinking, brawling, random sex....THE CHARLIE SHEEN STORY??? No. Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises." It was brought to us by ELEVATOR REPAIR SERVICE the same wonderful company that gave us last season's splendid GATZ, a verbatim performance [...]
Many people have taken a crack at Henrik Ibsen's A DOLL'S HOUSE over the centuries, but this time instead of an outraged public, or half-cocked critics, it's a playwright herself--Theresa Rebeck (of MAURITIUS and BAD DATES fame)who has set her contemporary sights on Nora and Torvald. In the New Rep Theatre production of DOLLHOUSE they [...]
