Interviewed by dramaturg Jessie Baxter, young playwright Ruby Rae Spiegel spoke about how writing a certain distance from the past helps her produce convincing work: “In high school I wrote a play about middle school, and in college I wrote a play about high school…I like to write when I have a bit of perspective, […]
Greetings, humans. We have genre variety this month to keep your reading palate happy. Two novels, two biographies, a collection of essays about America’s most famous playwright, and a collection of sketches of some of the greatest writers working today: Books In Hand: Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life I excitedly impulse-bought Yanagihara’s book after hearing […]
Before the show even started, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins immediately won me over. I was at the BCA, ready to watch a performance of appropriate, the New England premiere of the play and a SpeakEasy Stage Company production directed by M. Bevin O’Gara. In the program notes, Jacobs-Jenkins pointed out how revealing laughter can be as […]
Writing about the Vietnam War, Mary McCarthy identified the slippery motivations hiding behind the conflict’s carefully-constructed terms. To make their methods sound innocuous, the American military referred to napalm as “Incinder-jell,” and to defoliants as “weed killers.” McCarthy observed that this “resort to euphemism denotes, no doubt, a guilty conscience, or—the same thing nowadays—a twinge […]
New Repertory Theatre seems to be the only company in the Greater Boston area that is acknowledging the centennial of Arthur Miller’s birth. They have wisely decided to veer away from Miller’s traditional masterpieces (All My Sons, The Crucible, Death of a Salesman, and A View from the Bridge) in favor of a later work […]
Wax Wings Productions took on Cassie M. Seinuk’s new play at The Inner Sanctum Gallery the first two weekends of August. Wax Wings is a daring group that does not shy away from the fiery challenges of life in the theater fringe; unfortunately, they missed the mark with this new work. Daring in its exploration […]
Originally published on July 13, 2015 on Fabiana’s personal blog The Educated Procrastinator … Don Aucoin of the Boston Globe wrote a piece thunderously applauding Patti LuPone’s recent stage antics: during a performance of Shows for Days, the actress reached into the audience and plucked away a texter’s cell phone. Aggravated with what she sees […]
I hate to sound like a stereotypical foreigner, but when you are culturally bred to worship only baseball and fútbol, it’s difficult to see what Americans love so much about their own definition of “football,” their famously (or infamously) intoxicating game of equal parts grace and violence. Watching Company One’s production of Colossal, by Andrew […]
Life isn’t a movie script. Or a TV show, for that matter. But anyone who has spent time in the mind of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin knows stories can be well served through these media. We can have our cake and eat it too: a hurricane of human brilliance and drama can whirl around us, always […]
Bridge Repertory Theater lured audiences into a small hall at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion to revive a classic story of political conspiracy and personal betrayal. Their distilled production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, directed by Olivia D’Ambrosio, captured the essence of the play while (mostly) avoiding gimmicks. The result was a fleet and energetic show packed […]
Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See Book one is this month’s selection for BU’s Core Curriculum alumni book club. We chose the book because we needed a pick that was fast and pleasurable, yet wouldn’t skimp on substance or intelligence. Doerr’s book is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, was a […]
Fresh Ink Theatre staged an intriguing spin on the Oresteia and Iphigenia plays of Aeschylus and Euripides at the Hale Chapel in First Church Boston. Agamemnon (Robert Cope), the leader of the Greeks in their decade-long war against Troy, paid a terrible price to enable his fleets to arrive on the shores of Ilium; his […]
Bad Habit Productions put on a versatile and dynamic Orlando, Sara Ruhl’s adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel, in the BCA’s Deane Hall. Directed by Daniel Morris, the show’s performances were enhanced by a mobile set constructed in the round, by sumptuous costumes, and by warm and cool washes of color (orange, blue, and yellow) […]
Broadway. The term, encompassing both an urban location and the style of theater produced therein, is so familiar, so loaded with rich cultural history, that we almost can’t conceive of American theater without it. But while the term may conjure up images from decades of iconic performances, or discussions of an impressive financial, touristic, and […]
2014 was a rich year for the Boston theatre scene. Our reviewers saw plays fuelled by androids and absurdists, featuring ships being wrecked and planes taking off, energetic companies bringing to life works by classic playwrights, modern playwrights, and brand-spanking-new playwrights. And now, we are proud to announce the winners of the 2014 My Theatre […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2014 My Theatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Elizabeth Anne Rimar played (and is nominated for the role of) the pilot prodigy Maxine in New Rep’s production of Tongue of a Bird; gifted at finding lost souls in icy terrains, she struggles to keep a […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2014 My Theatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Jennifer Glick stunned audiences with her performance as Eponine in The Company Theatre’s 2014 production of Les Miserables. Her vocals and acting earned her the My Theatre (Boston) nomination for Best Actress. Chatting with Jennifer led to […]
This month finds me criss-crossing all kinds of literary terrain. Old novels, new(ish) novels, an audiobook, and a bonus extra; there’s plenty here to keep us busy. Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys I’m a Michael Chabon virgin (so much shame), and I figured I would eventually pop that cherry by reading Telegraph Avenue, or The Amazing […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2014 My Theatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Kevin Cirone struck out as a musical playwright in 2014 with his new work Creative License. The piece is nominated for a My Theatre (Boston) Award for Best New Work. I was curious to ask Cirone about […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2014 My Theatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Eunice Wong is a classically trained actor who has dazzled audiences across the United Sates, in Canada, and as far as Kyrgyzstan. She is nominated for the My Theatre (Boston) Award for Best Actress for her performance […]
Although Downton Abbey has been recently winning back my attention after a humdrum 4th season, I decided to watch a different period piece being performed live at the BCA during this gloomy winter season in Boston. The Huntington production of The Second Girl, written by Ronan Noone and directed by Campbell Scott, presents a look […]
An evening spent discussing quantum physics might not sound like your cup of tea. But this year marks the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, and Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen, about the fateful 1941 meeting of two famous physicists in Nazi-occupied Denmark, strikes a very relevant note. Porpentine Players performed this challenging and timely play, […]
All it takes is one well-placed, often shocking line to permanently cement a show in my mind. In Necessary Monsters, John Kuntz’s new play, I ran into that line about halfway through the two hour performance, at the pit of this nested, Russian-doll-of-a-show. An upper crust, philanthropic socialite (actually a performer in drag (Thomas Derrah) […]
I thought I was being clever when, as I tripped and scraped and picked my way over the frozen tundra that used to be the sidewalk along Arsenal Street, I said to myself: “I’ll begin the review with some joke comparing the show to the Snowmaggedon that has plagued Boston this month.” After stepping out […]
Watching Lyric Stage Company’s production of Intimate Apparel, directed by Summer L. Williams, I came to an unexpected conclusion: in this production, the important period piece finds its strongest stride in the individual and intensely personal more than in its historicity. There is so much to enjoy here: set in 1905, the play follows Esther […]
When I heard about the shootings at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, I immediately thought of the religion scholar Stephen Prothero. More specifically, I thought about his book God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World, which I finished reading just about a month ago. Prothero’s main argument is […]