Theater is back up and on its feet on big stages in and around Boston with a couple of crowd-pleasing musical theater classics through this weekend! MAMMA MIA at North Shore Music Theatre shut down on press opening night after IATSE (International Alliance of Theater and Stage Employees) staged a walkout. (I managed [...]
Actors' Shakespeare Project has returned to the stage this fall with a "rebooted" version of Shakespeare's THE MERCHANT OF VENICE which they have kicked into the 21st century under the direction of the audaciously talented Igor Golyak, artistic director of Arlekin Players Theatre and now, Shakespeare's so-called "problem play." What's the problem? Is it a [...]
The movies I'm dying to see this fall are NO TIME TO DIE-- the last Danny Craig James Bond flick set to open in theaters Friday October 8; THE LAST DUEL co-starring Adam Driver and that dynamic Boston duo Matt Damon and Ben Affleck who co-wrote this medieval tale due out October 15; and DUNE [...]
The Sound Inside, the six-time Tony-nominated, Broadway debut play by Adam Rapp takes us back to the theater and inside the intimate confines of SpeakEasy Stage. There, the inner world of two characters unfolds like a hall of mirrors on an almost empty set. THE SOUND INSIDE is a brilliant play, deafening and quiet, a [...]
Get ready for a terrific psychological thriller, a 2019 French film now in theaters: WHO YOU THINK I AM starring iconic French megastar Juliette Binoche. I have no idea who she is in real life, though I have interviewed her several times over several decades and countless films. I think she must be the hardest [...]
She had me at "I have returned and it begins!" The opening salvo of the Huntington production of HURRICANE DIANE couldn't be more spot-on. Not only is it the first production of the Huntington's 40th season, but the first inside any Boston theater since spring 2020 when the world as we knew it shut down. [...]
You gotta love a play whose opening line is "Where's the fennel?" and whose climax turns on a signature dish of scallops. This foodie/theater critic just ate it up. "SEARED" is the Gloucester Stage's third production outdoors at the Windhover Performing Arts Center, a collection of rustic cabins and a stage set under a canopy [...]
What could be more fitting for this summer's FREE annual Commonwealth Shakespeare production on the common, than THE TEMPEST? In a season of storms: climatic, pandemic, and politic, and their cross currents: moral ambiguity, familial friction, and racial strife, the brilliant John Douglas Thompson and company deliver a masterpiece of rough magic and earthy wisdom [...]
I have finally seen THE movie of the summer-- and perhaps the year: SUMMER OF SOUL (... Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). "The Roots" drummer turned filmmaker Questlove has excavated buried treasure and turned it into a divine revelation of a feature documentary. The Harlem Culture Festival took place on 6 nights, [...]
It's as snappy as a bunch of legos, and directed by the guy who gave us THE LEGO MOVIE, Chris McKay, here in his live-action directorial debut. But he hasn't quite figured out the connective tissue that holds human characters together, nor a live-action feature which is its own kind of organism. What we've got [...]
