WAITRESS--I saw this show hot out of the oven at its 2015 Broadway-bound world premiere at the A.R.T. Based on a charming, offbeat film and turned into a scrumptious slice of musical theater by Diane Paulus and an all female team, it depends on a key ingredient: a score by Grammy award-winning pop artist Sara [...]
Two musicals have just descended on the Boston area: one old, one new--each with its ups and downs. Mara Cecilia as PEGGY SAWYER First,"Come and meet those dancing feet/On the avenue I'm taking you to/42ND STREET"--now in Waltham at the REAGLE THEATRE just finishing up its 49th season! This is the final weekend of [...]
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 [...]
I know it's a hard day to talk about a theatrical production that just opened at the Boston Opera House. My heart is filled with outrage, and sorrow, and the need to DO something about the killing of Black Americans and White Police Officers. The show I will write about must go on, and though it's not [...]
I have a new favorite musical and it's called MATILDA THE MUSICAL!!! This literate, darkly funny, empowering, and bizarrely inventive Tony award-winner just hit the Boston Opera House in its first national tour-- and don't you dare miss it! MATILDA THE MUSICAL is based on Roald Dahl's best-selling novel, and captures the writer's strange and shadowy sensibility, as [...]
HAMILTON's coming--in 2017-18!! DATES & ON-SALE TO BE ANNOUNCED LATER. BUT FIRST, here's NEXT Season 2016-2017 Lexus Broadway In Boston Season Direct from Broadway: *The National Tour of SOMETHING ROTTEN! officially launches in Boston *National Theatre production THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME *Lincoln Center Theater production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s THE KING AND I *American [...]
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 [...]
I've got the music from this show stuck in my head--so my life is now a Disney musical! Such is the irresistible power of this Broadway in Boston production of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST once it gets going-- which is somewhere at the beginning of Act II. The long-running hit musical features a relentlessly catchy score, truly outstanding voices, clever staging, [...]
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 [...]
STOP THE PRESSES: NEWSIES is a smash! The voices! The dancing! The sets! If you're looking for some rip-roaring entertainment to add to the fireworks this 4rth of July week, head to Boston's Opera House for a terrific production of the Tony Award-winning Boston premiere of Disney's NEWSIES! It's an industrial strength musical about all-American pluck and ingenuity and [...]
