I had my socks knocked off last night by SUFFS a show which hits like a thunderbolt across history re-igniting our own fraught fight for social justice! SUFFS now onstage at THE EMERSON COLONIAL THEATRE is a stirring call to action, enacted by a glorious cast who deliver the history of women's suffrage with fire [...]
I can't stop thinking about GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY a strange and complex amalgam of music and storytelling. The Tony Award-winning musical now onstage at the Emerson Colonial Theatre features 22 songs by Bob Dylan, is set in Dylan's hometown Duluth, Minnesota but appears to have little to do with the Nobel Laureate's life [...]
This week, I witnessed the world premiere, pre-Broadway opening of THE NEIL DIAMOND MUSICAL: A BEAUTIFUL NOISE at the Colonial Theatre and immediately tweeted out:"Holly Holy Sh*t! The new Neil Diamond Musical is a hit!" I don't know if Mr. Diamond would approve of that profane couplet, but it certainly captures my shock and awe [...]
There's a celebration happening on at least two stages in Boston-- The Emerson Colonial and SpeakEasy Stage and it's just what we need in the shadow of the Ukraine, the pandemic, rising sea levels, and assorted other ills this flesh is heir to. But spring has sprung again and these two shows reinforce joy and [...]
Seeing "SUMMER: The Donna Summer Musical" at the Colonial Theatre this week made me long for six more weeks of WINTER. The show which attempts to tell the story of Boston's own LaDonna Adrian Gaines who became the Queen of Disco, is a fiasco from beginning to end. In addition to limp direction and limper choreography, [...]
I HATE LUCY. Not the star of the groundbreaking 1950's TV sitcom starring one of the most gifted comediennes of all time, and whom I grew up watching, but "I LOVE LUCY" LIVE ON STAGE-- which is Dead On Arrival the Colonial Theatre. Why it's onstage is unfathomable. As Lucy's Cuban bandleader husband Ricky Ricardo [...]
MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET--is worth maybe $100,000. Now onstage at the Colonial (the video above features a different cast) the show speculates on what actually happened the night of Dec. 4, 1956 when Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis met at producer Sam Phillips studio and improvised an historic jam session, later dubbed [...]
There are THREE more good shows onstage in Boston RIGHT NOW that you should try to see before they close-- so hurry! MEMPHIS--The 2010 Tony Award-winning musical written by Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan, and which began in Beverly, MA in 2003 at the North Shore Music Theatre, is inspired by the true story of [...]
