Tag Archives: MA

Nov 06

It Starts in the Home: “3/Fifths’ Trapped in a Traveling Minstrel Show”

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Wesley T. Jones, Vienna Carroll, Michael Bryan; Photo credits: David Marshall

Presented by Sleeping Weazel
Conceived and written by James Scruggs
Directed by Mark Rayment

Nov. 3-11, 2017
Nicholas Martin Hall
Boston Center for the Arts
Boston, MA
Sleeping Weazel on Facebook

Review by Kitty Drexel

(Boston, MA) 3/Fifths’ Trapped in a Traveling Minstrel Show reclaims appropriated Black culture so to spit racism into the faces of oppressors. It’s beautiful and horrifying. Potential audience members please be aware that 3/Fifths’ contains nudity, graphic violence, and the unvarnished, unadulterated truth of what it is to be a Black man in America. Gunshots and police video are used because violence is our legacy and our future. 3/Fifths’ is a mirror showing us who we already are. Continue reading →

Nov 03

Art within Cultural Context: “Kiss”

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Kiss presented by ArtsEmerson
Written by Guillermo Calderón
Directed by David Dower

October 26 – November 19, 2017
Emerson Paramount Center՚s Jackie Liebergott Black Box Theatre
Washington Street
Boston, Massachusetts
ArtsEmerson on Facebook

Review by Holly Goss

(Boston, MA) Kiss is a play within a play that tells the story of a zealous young theatre group՚s gross misinterpretation of a Syrian play called Kiss. These naive and fresh-faced actors, come up against a nasty dose of realism when they learn what Kiss really means. However the play falls apart when the cast try to diligently apply their new knowledge, to re-perform this seemingly simple love story and reveal the true horror of the war lurking underneath. This second performance falls flat and fails to deliver the big twist the audience anticipate. Kiss tackles a breadth of themes, the war in Syria, the importance of cultural context, the purpose of art. However, the writing is ultimately overly ambitious and is unable to get to the heart of these important questions. Continue reading →

Oct 30

“GoreFest XV” and Its Demons

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Presented by ImprovBoston
Book by Nate Lopez
Lyrics and score by Jake Cassman
Directed by Nate Lopez
Produced by Josh Garneau

October 19 – 31, 2017
ImprovBoston, 40 Prospect Street
Central Square, Cambridge, MA 02140
ImprovBoston on Facebook

Reviewed by Bishop C. Knight

(Cambridge, Massachusetts)  The cast of the horror show Gorefest XV: Horror House stars clichés such as Rich Guy, Girl Next Door, Mom Girl, Devil Girl, Overachiever Girl, Gay Guy, and Laura Dern.  They were hilariously accurate stereotypes, even Laura Dern as Laura Dern.  For example, Overachiever Girl became sulky when she placed second in a contest.  And Laura Dern screamed “Take this Academy,” as she stabbed herself with a trophy, falling to a fake death, on a stage smothered in puddles of fake blood.   Continue reading →

Oct 25

“The Werewolf”: Supernatural Melodrama is Split Open to Reveal Howling Good Time

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Photo credit: Sara Haugland; a werewolf, extra fluffy.

Presented by WholeTone Opera 
Based on Le Loup-Garou by Louise Bertin
Fresh Libretto by Teri Kowiak & J. Deschene
New Music by Molly Preston

October 20—31st
The Rockwell in Davis Sq, Somerville
255 Elm Street, Somerville, MA 02144
The Werewolf on Facebook

Review by Gillian Daniels

(Davis Square, Somerville, MA) The Werewolf fooled me. Genuinely fooled me. I don’t know if that was its intention, but it did. It begins wholly in the realm of operatic convention. Alice (Jeila Irdmusa/Katie O’Reilly) wanders through the dark woods, possibly beset by something terrible. She meets her sisters, played by Nathalie Andrade, Elizabeth Clutts, Brooke Dircks, and Rebecca Wright, and they frolic. Then she encounters a handsome young man (played fantastically by Andy Troska through out the play) and they, well, also frolic, though in a much more suggestive way. Then we jump forward to Alice and her sisters preparing for her wedding, where Bertrand (Nick Stevens) reveals a werewolf (or loup-garou) is on the loose and the charming, flamboyant Vincent (Von Bringhurst/Nora Maynard) is referred to as a man of “unusual tastes,” everyone starts kissing each other, and the ethereal aura of the beginning collapses into a riotous comedy of errors with supernatural elements and a prominent queer subplot. Continue reading →

Oct 24

Fractured Mirrors of Friendship: “A Guide for the Homesick”

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Presented by Huntington Theatre Company
Directed by Colman Domingo
Written by Ken Urban

October 6 thru November 4, 2017
Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at Boston Center for the Arts
527 Tremont Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02116
Huntington Theatre on Facebook

Reviewed by Bishop C. Knight

(Boston, Massachusetts) Sometimes friends party together, and sometimes friends talk about sex, and sometimes friends will live together.  Some friends from Massachusetts lovingly label each other as fellow Massholes, and there is nothing like the spark of instantaneous friendship when two strangers come from the same homeland.  A Guide for the Homesick is about two Bostonians abroad whose paths converge, who get drunk together, who discuss sex, have sex, and who share a holiday affair that neither will ever forget. Continue reading →

Oct 23

WholeTone Opera Presents “The Werewolf,” Oct. 20 – 31

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WholeTone Opera Presents: THE WEREWOLF
At The Rockwell in Davis Sq, Somerville
October 20 & 27, 7pm
October 21 & 28, 10pm
October 22 & 29, 1pm
October 31st, *HALLOWEEN* 8pm
Tickets: http://bit.ly/2x575HH
The Werewolf on Facebook

From the company that brought you La Zombiata, the zombie love opera, comes a freshly transformed and fiercely queer production. This Halloween, WholeTone Opera and The Rockwell present:
THE WEREWOLF!

A cursed and seductive nobleman has transformed into a loup-garou (werewolf)! He terrorizes a quiet village where almost no one is quite as they seem. To whom will the clever young witch, Alice, choose to pledge eternal devotion? To the werewolf, or the pious falconer? Or will Vincent, a sassy young nobleman, be the one to find true love at long last?

Adapted from Louise Bertin’s 19th century melodrama, Le Loup-garou, with new music by Molly Preston.
Visually inspired by early 20th C horror films with set design by Helen McCarthy & video projection mapping by Theresa Silver.
Modernized English libretto by Teri Kowiak & J. Deschene.
Special opener at every curtain featuring Parlor Opera Players!
Pre-show Tarot available from Cali Panesis.

Ring in this Halloween with comedy, horror, gaity, and WholeTone Opera at The Rockwell!
Costumes Encouraged!

Oct 17

A Drunken and Rowdy Roar for Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”

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Presented by Magnificent Bastard Productions
Written by William Shakespeare (possibly)
Produced by Magnificent Bastard Productions

October 14 through November 25, 2017
The Rockwell  ↭  Davis Square Theatre
255 Elm Street, Somerville, MA  02144
MBP on Facebook

Review by Bishop C. Knight

* WARNING:  nudity, inebriation, and foul language

(Somerville, Massachusetts)  Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare has ruined me.  No, I did not become an alcoholic after attending their performance of The Taming of the Shrew.  However, I now require theatre experiences where the cast enjoys themselves as much as the audience.  The easygoing actors began the evening with basically a stand-up routine that had absolutely nothing to do with English theatre, but we the patrons loved this opening act, and I am pretty sure William Shakespeare himself would have loved it too.   Continue reading →

Oct 10

Meditations on Incorporation: “Lost Tempo”

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Photograph credit: Kalman Zabarsky

Presented by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
By Cliff Odle
Directed by Diego Arciniegas

October 5 – 22, 2017
BPT
949 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
BPT on Facebook

Review by Kitty Drexel

(Boston, MA) Addiction will kill everything you love and then it will kill you. In the 1950’s and 60’s drug dependency, not unlike depression, was considered a moral failing. The US govt. chose to ignore the plight of its people. Today, the opioid epidemic rages around us, silently killing thousands of Americans every day. The occupants of the White House would prefer to pretend we’re living in the 50’s. While the President is very proud to have invented and solved the “opioid crisis emergency” in one afternoon with a press release, updates are nonexistent. In fact the Feds haven’t updated their site since June. Cliff Odle’s Lost Tempo tells us more about the consequences of opioid abuse in 100 minutes than Trump’s administration has in two months.   Continue reading →

Oct 10

“A Bright Room Called Day”: an ambitious call for resistance

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Photo by Jake Scaltreto; Prologue: Evening Meal in a Windstorm — with Lindsay Eagle, Juliet Bowler, Noah Simes and Isaiah Max Plovnick.

Produced by Flat Earth Theatre
Written by Tony Kushner
Directed by Dori. A Robinson

September 30-October 14, 2017
The Black Box at the Mosesian Center for the Arts
Watertown, MA
Flat Earth on Facebook

Review by Polly Goss

(Watertown, MA) A Bright Room Called Day transports us back to a sitting room in 1930s Germany, inhabited my minor actors, eccentric filmmakers and artists. This bohemian gaggle of comrades band together in the early 1930s through their love of Communism, Art and Revolution. As 1933 marches on, the world around them darkens and the sitting room becomes their last refuge from Hitler’s rule. Continue reading →

Oct 06

Latin America without Latinos: EVITA

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Presented by North Shore Music Theatre
Lyrics by Tim Rice
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Direction and Choreography – Nick Kenkel
Music Direction – Mark Hartman

September 26 – October 8, 2017
62 Dunham Road
Beverly, MA
NSMT on Facebook

Essay by Craig Idlebrook

(Beverly, MA) You’re going to a play; it’s a play about a different time and a different country – Argentina, mid-century, Evita. Maybe you’re going to escape, maybe you’re going to learn something, maybe you’re going to be entertained. Continue reading →