It's easy to slam the OSCARS as a superficial contest of egos on parade. Not sure what it says about me that I love every gown and gaffe, every windy speech and backfiring joke, every upset, melt-down, frozen-faced loser, and tear-filled acceptance--as well as all the long stretches in between. Every year it's the same but different. A different complexion, a complexion that reflects [...]
THE 2016 OSCARS are upon us and I thought I'd weigh in on a few films I'd been mum on-- in case you were wondering for what and whom to root! ROOM: Nominated for Best Picture, Director, Actress, and Adapted Screenplay is a compactly explosive film about a horrifying situation: a young woman kidnapped, impregnated, and kept prisoner by a sexual predator-- and [...]
It's a quiet time of year for movie releases after the blockbusters of summer and the Oscar contenders of fall. It's the perfect time to think "silents." We can't actually hear them sighing in ecstasy, but it isn't hard to imagine from those shimmering "pictures" what was happening on the "silver screen" back in the early days of film when actual silver was [...]
No one said totalitarianism was a walk in the park. But to the folks on opening night who walked out of the deeply disturbing and horrifying new adaptation of George Orwell's sci-fi cautionary tale 1984-- I don't blame you. The show now onstage at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge adapted and directed by Robert Icke & Duncan Macmillan [...]
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 [...]
I love a good storm--and dazzling heroics float my boat. Disney's THE FINEST HOURS satisfies both cravings in a new film which comes at a time of year that generally finds us in the doldrums of the movie release schedule. But this film is a new year's treat. Not only is it well made, but it tells the true story of the most [...]
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, [...]
