You MUST see Company One's entertaining and enlightening HOW WE GOT ON! This is a jubilant show directed by Summer L. Williams that not only made me understand rap in a new way-- but made me FEEL it! This show captures the heart, mind, and soul of the art form, and channels the here and [...]
Mark Evans & Christopher John O'Neill It was a bad week for missionaries and mad men in Boston. First, THE BOOK OF MORMON blew into town on the strength of its nine Tony Awards and buzz born of NY Times Ben Brantley's boast that the show was "the best musical of this century." [...]
The Huntington Theatre Company has given us a stirring production of the first play by an African-American woman ever produced on Broadway-- 54 years ago: Lorraine Hansberry's landmark "A Raisin in the Sun." The play tells the story of the African-American Younger family living in a cramped apartment on Chicago's South side in 1959. The [...]
CLYBOURNE PARK won the Tony for Best Play in 2012-- and it's hard to imagine a better production than what's onstage at the SpeakEasy right now! Bruce Norris's Pulitzer-Prize winning drama cracks open the racial divide and an earthquake of moral, ethical, familial and economic dilemmas reverberate through the echo chamber of history. The action [...]
Two shows on stage right now with a cast of two each, are both winners-- so for me it's two for two! LUNGS at the New Rep and STONES IN HIS POCKETS at the Lyric, convey a world of ideas and a world of characters with a simplicity of means. LUNGS begins and ends with [...]
Photo courtesy Michael von Redlich Listen up beautiful people-- The Gold Dust Orphans are back with a bang and this time they have some pretty big shoulders to fill. Joan Crawford did it in 1945 and Varla Jean Merman (Jeffrey Roberson) is doing it onstage right now at Machine: MILDRED FIERCE! To quote [...]
THE LAST WILL is a theatrical bauble-- a shimmering amalgam of wishful dreaming, informed speculation, historical fact, literary sleuthing, and some damn fine acting-- conjured by Robert Brustein, and presented by Commonwealth Shakespeare Company and Suffolk University where Brustein is Distinguished Scholar in Residence. The play, which is having its world premiere, is the last [...]
Tennessee Williams' lyrical soul has come to life onstage at the A.R.T. in a play that can break your heart. THE GLASS MENAGERIE is a poignant masterpiece about a southern family searching for solace in a rough world that has left them shattered and picking up the pieces. The autobiographical work was a Pulitzer Prize-winning [...]
There's an ethnic smorgasbord onstage around town; I'm half Italian-- so let's begin with ArtsEmerson's presentation of Carlo Goldoni's commedia dell' arte classic THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS. A maelstrom of mayhem ensues when a servant hatches a plan to earn twice as much money by serving two masters simultaneously! Warning: A little commedia dell [...]
I love nuns. I love great voices. So there are the two reasons I was able to sit through the absolutely ridiculous Tony-nominated musical SISTER ACT which just opened at The Boston Opera House. Whoopi starred in the film (the pitch meeting:"We'll take a bunch a nuns, dress 'em in sequins and make em sing [...]
