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 [...]
Joyce Kulhawik, Cherry Jones, Diane Paulus & Boston Theater Critics Association/Photo: Mikki Ansin If you are a theater lover/goer and were not at the HUNTINGTON THEATRE COMPANY's BU Theater on Monday May 15, 2017, you missed the event of the local theatrical season: The 35th Anniversary Elliot Norton Awards with Guest of Honor [...]
There is no balder, fresher medium than theater to communicate personal reality, warm bodies right there on stage conveying flesh and blood experiences. In TRANS SCRIPTS, PART I: THE WOMEN, now having its US premiere on the American Repertory Theater's mainstage, playwright Paul Lucas leads us on an exploration of what it is to be "transgender." The means are simple and [...]
Tony Award-winning playwright, performer, and activist Eve Ensler's body is her "pre-occupation and her occupation," the focus of her body of work beginning with THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES and most recently her 2013 memoir turned stage adaptation now having its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater. IN THE BODY OF THE WORLD is not for the faint of [...]
There's a pile of new shows onstage in town-- and I will sort through it for you right now! CAPS FOR SALE: The Musical--Take the kids to see this world premiere production based on the classic children's book, whimsically performed by Boston Children's Theatre at the Calderwood Pavilion. This tale of Pezzo the Peddler and his passel of caps burgled by a [...]
Attention foot fetishists and dessert freaks! There are two shows on stage right now that you MUST see: KINKY BOOTS, the 2013 Tony-winning, high-kicking, cross-dressing Best Musical scored by Grammy winner Cyndi Lauper and Tony winner Harvey Fierstein, and WAITRESS the world premiere, Broadway-bound musical composed by Grammy-nominated artist Sara Bareilles and directed by the A.R.T.'s Tony award-winning artistic director Diane Paulus. Start [...]
Jacob Harris,Composer/ Elegy for the Victims of the Boston Marathon Bombing The surviving victims of the Marathon Bombing have had a last chance to speak directly to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in court after he was sentenced to death. The survivors have been sentenced to life in the aftermath of losing life and limb. The son of dear family [...]
Mandy Patinkin and Taylor Mac. Photo by Gretjen Helene/A.R.T. If the end of the world were tomorrow, there's no one I'd rather have shuffle me off to Buffalo and back than Mandy Patinkin (in his A.R.T. debut) and Taylor Mac ("The Lily's Revenge") as a pair of waterlogged vaudevillians who tap their way ashore after a global [...]
You got yer ADD, yer ADHD, yer PTSD, yer OCD and now yer O.P.C. at the A.R. T.! The title stands for "Obsessive Political Correctness," a syndrome that plagues the compulsively sensitive, and finds its expression in a world premiere production by author, activist, & Tony-Award winning playwright of "The Vagina Monologues" Eve Ensler, who [...]
THE SHAPE SHE MAKES-- floored me. I have always known that we are driven by our unconscious desires, hangups, hurts; that we are deeply formed early on by our first experiences within the family dynamic. Yes, I spent years in therapy, but never have I seen this "through-line" as clearly drawn-- dramatically, musically, and choreographically-- [...]
