Caryl Churchill is one of my favorite female playwrights to read. I find her work almost unmanageable onstage because of her feminist tilt and unforgiveable agenda. With that lens, I attended Bad Habit Production’s Top Girls, Churchill’s most iconic and arguably best work, featuring a strong ensemble of Boston’s top female actresses. While the play’s […]
New Repertory Theatre presented a Special Encore Extension of their hit production of Imagining Madoff. I couldn’t imagine myself not seeing it for the first time, the second time around. Written by Deborah Margolin, the play explores the intensely intimate (but fictional) encounter between Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff and fictitious Jewish Solomon Galkin. The result is […]
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 as a haven for Iranian art and culture. Lush and bewitching paintings line the hall walls and provide a backdrop for lectures, film screenings, and, […]
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 My Fair Lady?” That question struck me as odd at the time, but I’ve come to realize that there’s something of a consensus among American […]
Recently, I had occasion to see the pre-Broadway production of Bill Condon’s new revival of Side Show the Musical at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. With the recent announcement that it will be officially transferring to the St. James this fall, I thought it might be a good time to share a few thoughts […]
To this point, I have successfully avoided all local production of Les Mis. When the right to perform the mega-hit musical became available last summer, some ten producing organizations within 20 miles of Boston snatched them up for the 2013-2014 season, and despite my distaste for this choice as a producer and local artist, Company […]
I’m a fan of weird shit. Honestly. I love when artists can take the strangest, quirkiest little spaces, mount engaging, innovative, and bizarre work, and somehow connect with their audience through their own unique voice. Astro Boy and the God of Comics at Company One was (almost) everything that I wanted it to be and […]
Carrie: The Musical has an awful book; there, I said it. Lawrence D. Cohen took every piece of camp from Stephen King’s popular novel, and removed almost all of the humanity from the characters to create a one-note musical of epic proportions. The SpeakEasy Stage Company attempts to amend this broken musical, but, under the […]