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 [...]
The 34th Annual Elliot Norton Awards Ceremony is set for Monday May 23 at Boston’s Citi Shubert Theatre and will honor Award-winning actress Mary Louise Wilson! Here's her hilarious acceptance speech after receiving Broadway's 2007 Tony Award as best featured actress in a musical for her performance in "Grey Gardens": The curtain goes up at 7PM and the ceremony will feature [...]
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 [...]
Get right over to SPEAKEASY STAGE for a glimpse into a world you've probably never seen before. You may think you have, but you haven't. Four-time Tony winner Harvey Fierstein has written his first play in 30 years. The Tony- nominated Best Play CASA VALENTINA is a real eye opener, hilarious, heart-wrenching, vibrantly directed by Scott Edmiston, and starring some [...]
© T Charles Erickson Photography The song was SEND IN THE CLOWNS and when I first heard it in 1973, the year Stephen Sondheim's A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC won the Tony--I was never the same. I was absolutely stricken by its painfully exquisite, wryly mournful melody and lyrics, somewhere between a dream of romance and the irony of missed chances. Huntington [...]
THE COLORED MUSEUM may make you uncomfortable, but you're going to have real good time first! The Huntington Theatre Company's revival of George C. Wolfe's 1986 musical is a whip-cracking, gospel-ringing, minstrel-mashing, high stepping, low-down, soul-searching trip through a museum of black stereotypes, at once a purge and a celebration. At the helm is two-time Tony winner actor, director, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
There's a thrilling moment near the beginning of WAR HORSE, where a young colt disappears from the stage, and in its place, suddenly blazing into view, is a magnificent full-sized thoroughbred. I swear it's flesh and blood, heaving its flanks, flashing its tail, breathing. I held my breath too, as the stable boys on either [...]
