Tag Archives: 2018

May 07

She Will Cut You: TOP GIRLS

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Sophia Ramos, Carmen M. Herlihy, Paula Plum, Kiara Pichardo, and Carmen Zilles; Photo: T. Charles Erickson,

Presented by Huntington Theatre Company
By Caryl Churchill
Directed by Liesl Tommy
Dramaturgy by Phaedra Michelle Scott
Original music & sound design by Broken Chord

April 20 – May, 2018
Huntington Theater
Avenue of the Arts
Boston, MA
Huntington on Facebook

Review by Kitty Drexel

(Boston, MA) Congrats to the Huntington for finally get that permanent ramp set up.

Top Girls is a feminist play by Caryl Churchill. It has a good script. It’s a good play for women. It isn’t Caryl Churchill’s only feminist play. It isn’t the only feminist play for a cast of women. There are others out there waiting to be produced, and yet, the New England theatre community loves this show. So much so that it’s been produced three times in the Boston-area alone in the past four years. The Kilroy’s List was supposed to end the ad nauseum repeats.   Continue reading →

May 03

Meet the Producer: An Interview with The Startup’s Elisha Siegel

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An Interview with Elisha Siegel
Presented by Boston Chai Party
Foundation Kitchen
Somerville, MA
The Startup on Facebook

By Diana Lu

(Somerville, MA) When the words “Boston” and “startup” are used in the same sentence, most people think of software or biotech. However, Boston has also been a long-time incubator for some of the best comedy of this generation. Countless internationally famous comedians have cut their teeth at local institutions, such as The Comedy Studio and Comedy Connection. Today, the local comedy community is as welcoming as it is thriving—I recently heard a heartwarming story in which a young man who was interested in comedy visited a newly opened theater, and the theater manager let him in, took him in front of the empty theater, and just lit the spotlight for him, because he had never been onstage before. There are more theaters, shows, and open mics now, and in more areas of the city, than ever before. New performers have every opportunity to try telling jokes for the first time in their lives, while veteran comics march on creating, experimenting, and developing their unique voices, as well as producing independent shows. Audiences only need to Google “comedy Boston” for a slew of high-quality options to choose from on any given night of the week. Continue reading →

May 03

As You Like It: “We that are true lovers run into strange capers”

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Presented by The Hyperion Shakespeare Company and Harvard Office for the Arts
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Nathaniel Brodsky

April 26-29, 2018
Agassiz Theatre
Cambridge, MA
HSC on Facebook

Review by Polly Goss

(Cambridge, MA) As You Like It is a long-time favorite of audiences despite its often lowly standing among critics. The play deliberately borders on the nonsensical, as Shakespeare takes us on a glorious gender swapping romp through the mystical forests of Arden. This latest production from Harvard’s Hyperion Shakespeare Company successfully captures the intensity of first loves and the youthful energy at the heart of the piece. Whilst the direction felt a bit haphazard in places, the talent of some of the cast members helped to carry the show and pay tribute to the richness of Shakespeare’s script. As You Like It is a good choice for a student production of Shakespeare, the obvious enthusiasm of the actors (and their friends in the audience) made this production a pleasure to watch. Continue reading →

Apr 23

Mother’s Day Should be Plural: “Little Orphan Danny”

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Julie Foldesi (Band Member/Women) and Dan Finnerty (Book, Lyrics, Music/Danny)
Photo by Meghan Moore

Presented by Merrimack Repertory Theatre
Concept by Dan Finnerty and Sean Daniels
Book and Lyrics by Dan Finnerty
Music by Dan Finnerty and Dan Lipton

March 21 – April 15, 2018
Lowell, Massachusetts
MRT on Facebook

Review by Craig Idlebrook

(Lowell, MA) As a father of an adopted child, I often wonder how I will guide my son through the emotional stages of thinking about his origin story. I picture many long, earnest, possibly tear-filled conversations that will be good for us to go through, but certainly not entertaining. In Little Orphan Danny, wiseass rock singer Dan Finnerty decided to tell his own story of adoption, and it’s indeed a tearjerker of a musical. My eyes were wet and my ribs were sore from laughing so hard. Continue reading →

Apr 23

“Cabaret” : Red Lights & Secrets

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Aimee Doherty* Photographer: Tom Shoemaker

Presented by Moonbox Productions
Based on stories by Christopher Isherwood
Lyrics by Fred Ebb
Music by John Kander
Book by John Masteroff
Directed by Rachel Bertone
Music Direction by Dan Rodriguez

April 14th thru 29th, 2018
BCA Calderwood Pavilion
Wimberly Theater, Boston
Moonbox on Facebook

Review by Bishop C. Knight

(Boston, Massachusetts) I assume that unlike many in the audience at the Wimberly Theatre, I went to the Calderwood Pavilion knowing nothing substantial about Cabaret and naïvely expecting lots of eye-high rockette dance moves.  Seated with friends before the show, I opened up a program and encountered a quote by Christopher Isherwood, the British-American novelist who holds a principal place within my private imaginative world.  This quotation was from Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, upon which Cabaret is based, and it goes “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Someday, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.”   Continue reading →

Apr 20

It’s a Great Cake. A Bride-Cake. Mine: “Old New Borrowed Blue”

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Celeste Godin as Havisham; photo by Nile Scott Shots.

Presented by MetroWest Opera
Conducted by Brendon Shapiro
Stage directed by Cassandra Lovering

Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night
Libretto by Jon Olon-Scrymgeour
Music by Dominick Argento

The Beautiful Bridegroom
Music and libretto by Dan Shore

April 19 – 21, 2018
Plaza Theatre
Boston Center for the Arts
Boston, MA
MetroWest on Facebook

Review by Kitty Drexel

(Boston, MA) Many an opera is devoted to women’s pre and post connubial anxieties. With all of the riches for women, one must ask where are the men?  In Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night Dickens’ spinster is an anti-heroine reliving a decades old tragedy. In The Beautiful Bridegroom, a Lady, her daughters and maid all wish for wedded bliss. If weddings are such fun, there should be operas from the giddy perspective of tenors in tuxes and basses in vestments. A person is supposed to like the person they marry. For all its progress, opera has further to go.   

Continue reading →

Apr 03

Pepsi Can’t Save You Now: “Somewhereville”

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Presented by ImprovBoston
Directed by David Thomas

March 9 – 30, 2018
40 Prospect Street in Central Square
Cambridge, MA
IB on Facebook

Review by Diana Lu

(Cambridge, MA) Halfway between improvised comedy and two-act play, Somewhereville tells the hilariously horrific tale of a post-apocalyptic nightmare in which the world has ended because of – audience suggestion? In its final installment, it was the Kardashians who were responsible for destroying civilization.  We learn in the three-character monologue opening that the “KKK-KK” has created an idiocracy-like hellscape via excess consumerism and social media over consumption. Continue reading →

Apr 02

“A Dead Man’s Diary”: A Sacred Love for Theatre

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Presented by Arlekin Players Theatre
Based on the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov
Original stage composition based on the novel written by Igor Golyak and Zhenya Brodskaya
English translation by Yana Minchenko
Composed by Jakov Jakoulov
Directed by Igor Golyak
Choreographed by Victor Plotnikov

17 March thru 1 April 2018
Emerson Paramount Center
Jackie Liebergott Black Box
Downtown Boston, Mass.
Arlequin Players on Facebook

Reviewed by Bishop C. Knight

(Emerson College) A Dead Man’s Diary was a drama performed in Russian, and patrons could request an earplug device that provided English voiceover during the production.  The play begins with our main character Sergei Maksudov writing a novel that is inspired by a dream of his native city and, upon completing this work, Maksudov shares his manuscript with various writers and critics.  One of his readers prompts Maksudov to adapt the book to a play, and thus commences Maksudov’s meanderings through the world of theatre ‒ a sphere where he is scorned by the director of the Moscow Art Theater, Stanislavsky.  At its core, Mikhail Bulgakov’s Theatrical Novel examines a writer’s sacred love for theatre. Continue reading →

Mar 26

Punk, Communist Opera to Burn Your Daddy’s Ears: The Threepenny Opera

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The Threepenny Opera from Boston Lyric Opera on Vimeo.

Presented by Boston Lyric Opera
Music by Kurt Weill
Libretto by Bertolt Brecht
English translation by Michael Feingold
Original German text based on Elisabeth Hauptmann’s German Translation of John Gay’s
The Beggar’s Opera
Conducted by David Angus
Stage directed by James Darrah

March 16 – 25, 2018
Huntington Avenue Theatre
264 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA
BLO on Facebook

Review by Kitty Drexel

(Boston, MA) 3Penny is not your Daddy’s stodgy traditional opera. Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht were communist rabble rousers hell-bent on challenging the operatic form. They were freedom fighters rebelling against the Nazis through theatre. A stalwart Marxist, Brecht wanted to destroy opera’s association with the bourgeoisie. Weill believed opera could belong to the proletariat if given the opportunity. Both would have appreciated the BLO’s production of The Threepenny Opera. Opera purists would not.     Continue reading →

Mar 26

Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club presents “The Laramie Project”

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Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club Presents THE LARAMIE PROJECT at A.R.T.’s Club OBERON

 Cambridge, MA – Tickets are now on sale for Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club’s production of The Laramie Project. Performances will take place on Wednesday, April 11 and Thursday, April 12 at 7:30 PM, as well as Friday, April 13 at 3:00 PM and 8:00 PM. Performances are at the American Repertory Theater’s second stage, Club OBERON (2 Arrow Street, Cambridge, MA).

Tickets ($15-$35) may be purchased through the A.R.T. box office (64 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA – (617) 547-8300), online (http://bit.ly/laramieatoberon), or at the door pending availability.

Facebook Event: http://bit.ly/laramie2018

About the Play – In 1998, Matthew Shepard was fatally injured and left for dead because he was gay. Following his death, the Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming to understand the town which came to be defined by two men’s crime. The Laramie Project retells the words of Laramie’s residents verbatim, and in their retelling, begins to uncover the prejudices, both loud and quiet, that boil over into violent hate crime.

Join the ensemble of actors as they embody these stories, bringing the Laramie of 1998 to the immersive Club OBERON. Join them as they ask – what does Laramie have left to tell us? Continue reading →