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
Allison Russell as Maggie, Aimee Doherty as Sheila and Hannah Shihdanian as Bebe in A CHORUS LINE at Reagle Music Theatre June 15-24, photo credit Herb Philpott.
A Chorus Line, music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante, Reagle Music Theatre, 6/15/12-6/24/12, http://www.reagleplayers.com/current.html.
Reviewed by Gillian Daniels
(Waltham, MA) The Reagle Music Theatre is a supportive, intimate venue I remember with pleasure from when I visited it to review Christmas Time. Reagle puts on the same high quality production in A Chorus Line, too, despite some difficulty with the microphones halfway through the play I sat through.
A Chorus Line fits for the Reagle even if the original material hasn’t aged well. 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
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
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
l. to r. Bill Mootos, Ceit McCaleb Zweil, Lovely Hoffman, and Jennifer Fogarty in Little Shop of Horrors. Photo by Andrew Brilliant / Brilliant Pictures.
Little Shop of Horrors, book and lyrics by Howard Ashman, music by Alan Menken, New Repertory Theatre, Charles Mosesian Theater at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, 4/29/12-5/27/12, http://www.newrep.org/little_shop.php.
Reviewed by Kate Lonberg-Lew
(Watertown, MA) Sometimes you are having a bad day. Sometimes you are in such a bad mood that escapism is the only way to manage. It was in such a state that I entered the New Rep’s production of Little Shop of Horrors at the Arsenal Center for the Arts. I tell you this so that you will know exactly how steep a hill the cast had to climb in order for me to emerge smiling; which I did. Continue reading
As the culminating event in the College's year-long examination of the theme of violence, Assassins brims with a particularly urgent energy. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky for Boston University Photography © 2012 Boston University all rights reserved
Assassins, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman, Boston University Colllege of Fine Arts School of Theatre, Boston University Theatre, 4/4/12-4/10/12, http://www.bu.edu/cfa/2012/04/20/assassins/.
Reviewed by Craig Idlebrook
(Boston, MA) It’s nice for Stephen Sondheim and his partner John Weidman to clear up a few things for us about theater in their mishmash of a play, Assassins, playing at the Boston University Theatre.
They have proven a fundamental truth: You can populate your play with profoundly interesting characters, give them things to do that impact every theatergoer’s psyche and bestow wonderful music for them to sing as they do it, but if the script doesn’t allow them to interact in a meaningful way, it’s just an exercise in futility. The playwrights prove this point despite the best efforts of a talented cast, who creates full-fledged and compelling characters. In fact, the cast and stellar set give us such high expectations that it makes the mind want to rebel at this idle script all the more. Continue reading
