As the curtain went up on A Doll’s House, I was instantly pleased and very impressed by James Noone’s set design. The Huntington Theatre Company so often errs on the side of banal hyperrealism in its sets. While the gorgeous visuals and almost painfully precise attention to detail of those designs are obviously the result […]
SpeakEasy greeted 2017 by bringing the hot Broadway hit Hand to God to the BCA. Robert Haskin’s play about a young Christian boy and his possessed, twisted sock puppet buddy Tyrone is amusing, dark, and staged to great effect by director David R. Gammons. Jason (Eliott Purcell), wants to please his harried and bereaved mother, […]
Thurgood, by George Stevens, Jr., is a celebratory overview of the extraordinary life of a civic-minded litigator…
When I rewatch the film Cabaret, I still find it difficult to listen to the final stanza of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” It doesn’t matter how beautiful the young German’s tenor voice is; even if he didn’t have a swastika band on his uniform shirt sleeve, even if he wasn’t raising his arm in a […]
A 2015 MyTheatre Award nominee for her outstanding performance as Arthur Roeder in Flat Earth Theatre’s Radium Girls, Bridgett Hayes is a standout actress in the Boston community. We caught up with her to look back on her best work thus far, discussing along the way what it’s like to be an empathetic child, how theatre […]
In 2015, Boston theatre pulled no punches. Historical legacies were questioned, minority voices cried louder, the talent of female theatre artists was not in question, and plenty of performers strutted their stuff in drag, across football fields, through time and space and gender, and over lines of chalk. Don’t miss our 2015 Nominee Interview Series, featuring […]
A woman stands in front of us, a smile “made of granite” plastered on her face, and she tells us her mother is “living with,” not suffering from, Alzheimer’s disease and the related dementia. If this were a real-world encounter, if we were not blessed with the anonymity of sitting in an audience, we all […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Coriana Hunt Swartz is nominated for her Outstanding Costume Design for Flat Earth Theatre’s Terra Nova. A stalwart of the company since 2008, she brought her historical costuming expertise to the table for an expedition to the South […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Jake Scaltreto is nominated for his Outstanding Direction of Flat Earth’s Theatre’s Terra Nova. A cofounder of Flat Earth, Scaltreto has directed, produced, taken photos, and done graphic design for the company. We talked about how directors should […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Boston is the only MyTheatre branch that has a category for Best Dramaturgical Notes. One of the biggest reasons why we include the category is the incredible work of double nominee David N. Rogers whose thoughtful written accompaniments […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Matt Arnold is nominated for his performance in the ensemble of Terra Nova. His character’s wit and good cheer do not save him from an untimely death in the icy depths of the South Pole. Arnold supplements his […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Chris Chiampa is nominated for Best Actor for his role as Captain Robert Falcon Scott in Flat Earth Theatre’s Terra Nova. The English Royal Navy Officer led a doomed expedition to the South Pole. We discussed playing historical […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Kamela Dolinova is nominated for her role as Kathleen Scott in Flat Earth Theatre’s Terra Nova. The wife of Captain Robert Falcon Scott is not your run-of-the-mill weeping Penelope figure; this intelligent and independent woman is an equal […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Brad Smith is nominated for his sound design in Flat Earth Theatre’s production of Terra Nova, a show filled with terrifying shrieks of Antarctic winds. We chatted about the design process, Smith’s recent IRNE nomination, and just how […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Chris Larson is nominated for Best Actor his role as Philo Farnsworth in Flat Earth Theatre’s production of The Farnsworth Invention. Farnsworth grows from a child prodigy raised on a farm in rural Idaho to the […]
I knew the show was pushing the right buttons when a third of the audience left at intermission. Company One and ArtsEmerson do not offer half-baked theatre, and playwright Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins doesn’t write for the fainthearted. This production of Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon did not flinch as it relentlessly pushed its audience to confront unpleasant historical […]
I can usually count on the Huntington to stage a heart-pounding dinner party. Whether its in a familiar story like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, or in a new sizzling show such as Smart People, I never tire of swiveling my neck back and forth as if at a tennis match, wondering when the ticking […]
One of the unexpected pleasures of New Rep’s current season—exploring themes of “identity”—is the inclusion of several small-cast shows. Shrugging off the expense and complications of large casts and cluttered sets, we are left with a few talented individuals charged with making their story relevant enough to hold our attention. New Rep’s production of Via […]
A revived musical has just pulled into town. SpeakEasy Stage Company has brought back the musical Violet, directed by Paul Daigneault, musical direction by Matthew Stern, to the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion. Jeanine Tesori (music) and Brian Crawley (book and lyrics) first joined forces to adapt Doris Betts’ short story “The Ugliest Pilgrim” into a musical […]
The imaginary beasts are back this January with their seasonal Winter Panto. This year they present the story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the well-loved classic by L. Frank Baum, and proceed to shake it up in true panto style. References to Beyoncé, State Farm Insurance, and Hamilton bubble easily to the surface, as […]
2015 has been a delightfully unsettling year for the Boston theatre scene. As a critic, I was always kept pleasantly off-kilter. I’ve been on football fields and in fairy tales. I’ve seen Shakespeare plays in courthouses, parks, and churches. I’ve seen fantastic shows directed by, staged by, and wonderfully performed by women. The latter was […]
I am pleasantly surprised by the recent renaissance of interest in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. This summer I attended a delightful all-female production staged by Maiden Phoenix Theatre Company in a Somerville park, free for all to attend. This year Jeanette Winterson released her novel version of the play, The Gap of Time, published by […]
Fleet, comic, utterly cosmopolitan, Six Degrees of Separation is one of John Guare’s sharpest works. Loosely based on real-life events, the play revolves around the mysterious figure of Paul. This young man manages to impress and verbally seduce his way into the homes of some Upper East Side Manhattanites. Two couples and a Jewish doctor […]
Attending Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s production of Othello, directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary, staged at The Modern Theatre at Suffolk University, I focused on John Kuntz’s Iago. He didn’t go for hand-rubbing evil villain; he didn’t laugh maniacally during his many asides to the audience. He wasn’t particularly smooth-talking or violent. In fact, he was mostly […]
The Huntington opened its 34th season in September with Stephen Sondheim’s romantic, waltz-infused musical A Little Night Music. Full of sumptuous tunes, gorgeous costumes (design by Robert Morgan), and great performances, the production does justice to Sondheim’s dreamy, romantic tale of, as director Peter DuBois puts it, “sex and death.” Led by the warm and […]
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, […]