
10 September 2014
Shahnameh Shines at Touch Art Gallery
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
Hidden in the middle of a quiet, tree-lined street in Cambridge, there lies a secret gem of artistic work. Touch Art Gallery, an intimate gallery of contemporary international artwork, specializes …

06 September 2014
#PygmalionUnderground Should Stay There
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
One day, as a teenager, I was about to read a copy of Pygmalion and my father said to me, “Why do you want to read Pygmalion? Isn’t it just …

27 August 2014
Female Falstaff @First
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
Nothing says feminism quite like equal opportunity fat jokes; enter Theatre@First’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry the 4th. Gender-bending such a grotesque, masculine figure as Falstaff might sound unworkable, but as …

30 June 2014
Odyssey Opera’s Triumphant Premiere
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
Odyssey Opera is coming just in time. Three years ago, there were two regional-theater-sized opera companies in town, the Boston Lyric Opera (the “BLO”), which tends to stage standard classics …

26 May 2014
1 2 3 Needs 2 or 3 More Drafts
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
Plays are short. Obviously, we’ve all been to plays that feel far too long, but when it comes down to it, a full-length play has only a few hours to …

16 April 2014
Astounding Feats of Movement in Lebensraum
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
How did they do all that? That was the prevailing thought left in my mind at the end of visionary director Jakop Ahlbom’s Lebensraum (Habitat), ArtsEmerson’s latest presentation of a …

10 April 2014
A Glorious Rigoletto
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
Opera and subtlety don’t often go well together. Opera comes from the greatest possible highs and lows of the human experience, from the glorious pain of love, murder, and suicide. …

22 March 2014
A Surprising Theatrical Presentation
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
There’ve been a lot of plays about race in Boston over the past couple of years. We had Lydia Diamond’s Stickfly and Kirsten Greenidge’s Luck of the Irish moving to …

20 March 2014
Spring Is Always Welcome
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
It’s refreshing to see a show like Spring Awakening get so much play in Boston area theaters. Even ten years ago, our theater scene would never have so accepted a …

20 March 2014
U.S. Premiere Peggy Pickitt Sees Chelsea
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
I’m surprised that American theater companies so rarely perform the plays of Roland Schimmelpfennig. Schimmelpfennig (I believe it’s pronounced “sha-ba-da-va-da”) is one of Germany’s most popular and acclaimed…

19 March 2014
Go See The Whale
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
Go see this play. Do it. Buy a ticket right now. People throw around the word “must-see” a lot with new and exciting media, but Speakeasy’s production of Samuel D. …

22 February 2014
Watch Out for Zeitgeist’s Latest Ayckbourn Production
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
It’s funny how once in a while a drama can feel more timely a few years after its premiere. Sometimes it takes a theater culture some time to acclimate itself …

20 February 2014
Problematic Yet Promising: Fresh Ink’s Handicapping
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
Playwrights want to be profound. One of the main reasons that we go to the theater is to experience drama so palpable that we become engaged enough to take in …

01 February 2014
Anything but Insignificant
By Rick Chason // Theatre (Boston)
I’d been looking forward to the Nora Theatre Company’s production of Terry Johnson’s Insignificance at Central Square Theater for months. Two years ago, the company produced one of my favorite …