photo credit: Evan Witek
Totem, Cirque du Soleil, Marine Industrial Park, 6/10/12-7/15/12, http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/totem/default.aspx.
(Boston, MA) It’s not logical or, frankly, believable that a circus featuring so many acrobats in body stockings could be capable of such grace. In performance, style, and message, though, Cirque du Soleil’s Totem is enthralling. I found the show unique and lovely among Boston’s other attractions this month. Continue reading
photo credit: Ministry of Theater
Roller Disco: The Musical, book by Sam Forman and Jen Wineman, lyrics by Sam Forman, music by Eli Bolin, Ministry of Theater and Club Oberon, 5/30/12-8/30/12, http://www.rollerdiscothemusical.com/Home.html.
Reviewed by Craig Idlebrook
(Cambridge, MA) Sometimes, you come across a play that works so effortlessly on so many levels that it skates circles around your standard theatrical fare. Club Oberon’s Roller Disco, glittery, vacant, hyper and hysterical, draws the audience into a disco-soaked world from the theme song’s opening strands. We have no choice but to harken back to striped tube socks, gritty skating rinks and cheesy eighties movies. Heck, we never even put up a fight. Continue reading
“Hello, Dolly!” Jacquelyn Piro Donovan (Dolly Gallagher Levi) and the ensemble of North Shore Music Theatre’s production of HELLO, DOLLY! Photo by Paul Lyden
Hello Dolly!, book by Michael Stewart, music by Jerry Herman, North Shore Music Theatre, 6/12/12-6/24/12, http://www.nsmt.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=969.
Reviewed by Craig Idlebrook
Since Elizabethan times, some plays have been built around the concept of a character as a force of nature. As a playwright, it’s often a good strategy that allows a great actor to cover plotline foibles with a powerful performance. But such a strategy also can backfire, because when your lead can’t will the play to life, a weak plot is exposed all the more. Continue reading
photo by Jeremy Daniel from Playbill
Godspell, music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, book by John-Michael Tebelak, Circle In The Square Theatre (Broadway), 10/13/11-6/24/12, http://www.godspell.com/. DON’T MISS THIS BRILLIANT & EXCITING SHOW!! (Directed by Huntington’s God of Carnage director, Daniel Goldstein)
(source: http://www.godspellblog.com/the-godspell-update-we-built-a-beautiful-city)
Ken Davenport, the lead producer of Godspell, wrote this note on his blog:
“I just left the Circle in the Square Theatre moments ago, where with a very heavy heart I told the cast and crew that Godspell will play its final performance on Sunday, June 24th. While we certainly had hoped our show would run for years and years, we’re all very proud of the beautiful city we built.
Over the last nine months, our sensational cast has spread the joy of Godspell to over 153,000 people (and blasted them with over 1,000 pounds of confetti). And while this production of Godspell may not be at Circle in the Square past the 24th of June, it will be in our hearts and the hearts of everyone who saw it forever.
The American Plan by Richard Greenberg, Happy Medium Theatre Company, Factory Theatre, 6/8/12-6/16/12, http://www.happymediumtheatre.com/.
Feature by Gillian Daniels
Happy Medium Theatre’s The American Plan starts off light.
Set during an early-1960’s summer, a young couple meet cute and begin a hesitant courtship near a resort in the Catskill Mountains. The first act sets up initially simple obstacles, mysterious pasts and disapproving parents. By the second act, the play finally bears its teeth, revealing far more bile for the age than its nostalgic exterior would suggest. Continue reading
Bianca Amato and James Waterston in Noël Coward’s PRIVATE LIVES. May 25 – June 24, 2012 at the BU Theatre. huntingtontheatre.org. Photo: Paul Marotta
Private Lives by Noel Coward, Huntington Theatre, Boston University Theatre, 5/25/12-6/24/12, http://www.huntingtontheatre.org/season/2011-2012/private-lives/.
Reviewed by Craig Idlebrook
Sometimes, the mark of a good play is how close it comes to the bone. If you are secure in your romantic relationship, you will laugh heartily at Noel Coward’s Private Lives, playing at the Huntington. If you aren’t secure, you will laugh nervously. If you are single, you will laugh derisively. Either way, you will laugh at this mashup of the foibles of all passionate lovers everywhere. Continue reading
McCaela Donovan and Ryan Overberg, Photo: Craig Bailey/Perspective Photo
Xanadu, book by Douglas Carter Beane, music and lyrics by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar, Speakeasy Stage Company, Roberts Studio Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts, 5/11/12-6/9/12, http://www.speakeasystage.com/doc.php?section=showpage&page=xanadu.
Reviewed by Gillian Daniels
Xanadu, the 1980 film featuring Olivia Newton John and music by the Electric Light Orchestra, is well known for being a critical flop. The chief crime of this cinematic musical, however, is in creating entertainment that doesn’t connect with its audience. After all, it’s a movie about disco released a year after the genre died a largely un-mourned death. I’m hard pressed to find a better image of disconnection than that.
In being brought to the stage, Xanadu has finally found its correct medium. The show not only finds its audience but winks at it furiously throughout the course of the story. Continue reading
photo credit: Whistler in the Dark
Trojan Women by Euripides,
Whistler in the Dark,
The Factory Theatre,
5/18/12-6/2/12, http://www.whistlerinthedark.com/productions/trojanwomenprod.html.
Reviewed by Anthony Geehan
(Boston, MA) The end of war is something that is looked on as a celebratory event. Images of servicemen returning home, country’s flags being raised, and a collective sigh of relief from the population are the usual symbols that are associated with victory. There is however always a losing side in a war who must deal with a devastated homeland, a shamed or exterminated army, and the loss of everything their civilization was or could ever be. Continue reading
Episode 7: Geeks, Nerds & Artists Podcast: Danny Bryck, local actor and dialect coach
No Room For Wishing–one man documentary play by Danny Bryck
READING: May 27 @ 2pm at Wall Street to Main Street Festival, BRIK Gallery, 473 Main St, Catskill, NY
http://www.facebook.com/events/311862005560920/
READING (Excerpts): June 20 @ 7pm at Hall Space, 950 Dorchester Avenue, Boston, MA
MORE TO COME IN THE SUMMER & FALL, http://dannybryck.com/noroomforwishing/
Danny Bryck is an actor, writer and theatre artist hailing from Amherst, Massachusetts.
Much Ado About Nothing…With A Twist adapted by Daniel Morris, Bad Habit Productions, Deane Hall at Boston Center for the Arts, 4/28/12-5/13/12, http://www.badhabitproductions.org/shows/season/MuchAdo.html.
Review by Craig Idlebrook
(Boston, MA) There’s a funny story the actor Charles Grodin shares about famed acting teacher Uta Hagen, where Hagen was dissecting the terribleness of a scene Grodin had just done. She hated everything except for one moment when Grodin’s scene partner was slow to hand the actor a prop. Because there was a delay, Grodin looked genuinely concerned, and that, Hagen announced, was true acting.
I’m not a big fan of the Method myself, but I’m starting to see her point, especially when it comes to Shakespeare. Acting involves a weird combo of memorization and playful improvisation. But when it comes to the Bard’s work, too many productions are populated with actors who know they are saying weighty words and making weighty gestures; every move is preordained and dripping with importance. Such a style robs the lyrical and impish qualities of plays that once were performed for bawdy Elizabethans.
Luckily, there are productions like Bad Habit’s staging of Much Ado About Nothing to inject life into scripts that we have too long sanctified. Continue reading
