Wondering what TO SEE and NOT TO SEE onstage? Here's my take on what I've seen lately: (L to R): Victor Shopov, Aina Adler, Robert Orzalli, Ashley Risteen (Photo by Richard Hall/Silverline Images) FACELESS: SEE it! This New England premiere by young playwright Selina Fillinger and season opener at Zeitgeist Stage Company is [...]
DON'T MISS the Huntington Theatre Company's "RIPCORD" which just opened at the Calderwood Pavilion and has already been extended through July 2! David Lindsay-Abaire's comedy is set in that most hilarious and freewheeling of all environments--an assisted living complex. Hang on, it involves two elderly women who find themselves roommates, but one of them can't stand the other. The sour-pussed Abby (Nancy E. Carroll) [...]
Diane Paulus 2017 Elliot Norton Prize Winner THIS JUST IN! The Boston Theater Critics Association has announced the 35th Anniversary Elliot Norton Awards nominations for outstanding work by Boston area actors, directors, designers, writers! Leading the pack are the Huntington Theatre Company and SpeakEasy Stage Company with 9 nominations each in a field of [...]
Amanda Plummer & James Earl Jones/Gretjen Helene Photography/A.R.T. One of the hottest tickets of the season is the American Repertory Theater's production of Tennessee Williams THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA starring James Earl Jones-- but the star of the show is the incandescent AMANDA PLUMMER who cuts loose from most of the rest of the [...]
Here's a rewarding artistic excursion for the new year-- an erotic crime thriller two ways, one onscreen, the other onstage. Both are based on the devilishly byzantine novel and Mann Booker finalist by Sarah Waters called "FINGERSMITH." (Also a 2005 BBC mini series.) The staged version called FINGERSMITH and adapted by Alexa Junge is now in its final week at [...]
Anna Deavere Smith and Marcus Shelby in "Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education." Photo: Evgenia Eliseeva Marshalling her considerable creative forces and once again singlehandedly conjuring a wildly diverse array of characters, Anna Deavere Smith schools us from the front lines of education vs.race in these not yet United States. NOTES FROM THE FIELD: DOING [...]
Drama Critic Elliot Norton It's "NORTIE" time! The Boston Theater Critics Association (BTCA) of which I am president is pleased to announce its nominations for the 34th Annual Elliot Norton Awards! For one night--Monday May 23, 2016, on one stage--Boston's Citi Shubert Theatre, the greater Boston theater community will celebrate in the name of the late great [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
