There’s SO much to see out there right now! Here are 4 excellent productions, and this week I talked about them on THE CULTURE SHOW (airing daily at 2pm on GBH 89.7) with host JARED BOWEN! To hear our conversation, click HERE and scroll to April 15, 2025. The segment begins at 34:20 seconds in!
Listen in and below are the shows discussed, with a recap and links to info about locations and tickets!
CROWNS— Put on your Easter bonnet and go to church at Moonbox Productions’ presentation of CROWNS! They even pass out a hymnal at this soul-stirring gospel musical about a young woman from Brooklyn who suffers a family tragedy and visits her aunt in the south. There her eyes are opened to the tradition and ritual of Black southern women wearing hats and what that means! The stories tumble out fast and fierce, funny and tragic, from fashion and etiquette to the struggle for civil rights, the history of slavery, and ultimately identity and tradition. The voices are vibrant and rousing — I was on my feet and clapping in this revival of faith, family, and spirit! At Arrow Street Arts in Cambridge Through MAY 4!
SHUCKED–– This show is fresh-popped corn: the corniest jokes, puns, names, places and a podiatrist whose specialty is, well, corns! Based on that corny TV show HEE HAW, this Tony Award-winning show is billed as a farm to fable musical prompted by a failing corn crop in Cob County, and girl named Maizy who sets out to be her own woman and find the solution to the town’s corn problem. Fabulous voices, big musical numbers, liven up the classic boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl formula, with a lot to say about empathy when a small town leaves itself open to change. Even the con man discovers there’s more to life than money–corny but true. Presented by Broadway In Boston at the Citizens Opera House through this Sunday April 20!
DON’T EAT THE MANGOS— This is a Boston Theater Critics Association “Critics’ Pick” featuring an outstanding ensemble, a terrific set, and based on the playwright’s own family stories about a dark secret. Set in Puerto Rico, three sisters, their elderly ailing father, and long-suffering mother deal with a hidden family horror. This is tough stuff, but so confidently written, acted, and directed that the tone moves, miraculously, from light to dark and back again. This is laugh out loud funny, and deeply tragic. But the audience is held very lovingly in a healing space where we can be with these daughters and this family as they cope and move forward. Presented by The Huntington at THE BCA’s CALDERWOOD PAVILION through April 27!
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM–This is among the funniest productions of Shakespeare’s comedy I’ve ever seen. The production mounted by Actors’ Shakespeare Project at The Mosesian Center for the Arts in Watertown finds the bard having fun at the expense of a quartet of lovesick mortals who get lost in the woods, fall in love with those who don’t fall for them, the fairies who fool them, and the country bumpkins who are just trying to put on a show while literally and figuratively becoming jackasses themselves! Here the woods are a disco fever dream, Puck is a break dancer, and a wrestling match breaks out onstage as these lovers fight for their right to love with all their might! Excellent direction of a raucous ensemble. At The Mosesian Center for the Arts through May 4!
