Actors' Shakespeare Project production of HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE has earned a Boston Theater Critic's Pick and rattled me to my core. This is one of the very best productions I have seen all year. Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize-winning play is brilliantly structured, slowly but surely gathering momentum as it takes us back to [...]
FROZEN melted my heart! I am late to this game. Was not a fan of the Disney movie's animation, and was somewhat mystified at the extent to which little girls were entranced by it. I have seen these little Elsa's and Anna's turning up at my door at Halloween in sparkles and tulle looking just [...]
What's most extraordinary about KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON is not that it was made by the masterful Martin Scorsese who began bringing it into focus pre-pandemic. Nor that it features one of Leonardo DiCaprio's most subtly communicative performances in a career of compelling, wildly varied, and complex roles. Or that it delivers a central [...]
I must say, I'm not crazy about THE ADDAMS FAMILY musical, despite adoring the TV show based on the characters created by cartoonist Charles Addams. I was mad about Carolyn Jones as the slender, pale-faced, black-haired Morticia (I once dressed as Morticia for Hallowe'en) and John Astin as Gomez, her googly-eyed, Romeo of a husband. [...]
SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET kicks off the soft opening of a new performance space in Harvard Square. What used to be the A.R.T.'s second stage Club Oberon is now ARROW STREET ARTS home to Moonbox Productions which delivers a well-sung but awkwardly-mounted production of Stephen Sondheim's Tony Award-winning musical. The cast [...]
FALL drops us into the season for serious movie-going. Most of the best films and performances of the year, many of which will turn up during awards season, are being released now through December. Here are two I can recommend-- with lots more to come in the next few weeks! THE ROAD DANCE [...]
The Huntington in association with Alliance Theatre and Front Porch Arts Collective has kicked off its seventh season at the BCA Calderwood Pavilion with a brilliant production of the wildly funny and wise FAT HAM! This show which has already been extended through October 29, marks yet another chapter in a remarkable and eye-opening collaboration [...]
Theater continues busting out all over Boston and beyond-- here's my take on what I've seen lately: ASSASSINS: Lyric Stage has kicked off its season with a first-rate production of this lesser-known Stephen Sondheim musical, book by John Weidman, about 9 real-life assassins or wanna be's who each tried to or succeeded in killing a [...]
The theater season continues to explode like fireworks on the horizon. The Huntington season opener is a fleet and ferocious production tackling all the tough questions about the relentless scourge of antisemitism in a civilized society, and demands to be seen now. That it does so with equal parts humor and heartbreak is miraculous. PRAYER [...]
The Fall Theater season is off and running and it's all about the ills our generation is heir to. Here's my take on two of the productions which have kicked off the season! Lorraine Victoria Kanyike, Joshua Mckenna, Juanita A. Rodrigues, Valyn Lyric Turner, Damon Singletary, & Jon Vellante/Photo: Ken Yotsukura Photography A [...]
