In a season where Stratford is struggling a bit, I haven’t seen a bad Shaw production yet. Ragtime is Fantastic (more on that later) and His Girl Friday is pretty good (again, more to come) but it’s French Without Tears that surprised me the most. I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into at […]
If you’re a theatre person, Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell’s self-inspired meta-musical [title of show] is something you will undoubtedly love. If you’re not a theatre person, you will likely enjoy it slightly less, but it’s still a funny and affecting story of creation, even if you don’t get every Sondheim reference. With very few […]
I have seen a lot of Shakespeare in parks, but I am fairly new to other theater presented outdoors. The last show I saw from Apollinaire was Cyrano de Bergerac, also in Mary O’Malley Park. Even though it was not Shakespeare, that text has a certain poetic bombast that doesn’t feel out of place when […]
“Even if I have to dig ditches for the rest of my life, I’ll be a ditch digger who once had a wonderful day” – Cornelius Hackl, the brightly optimistic heart of Stratford’s uneven but partly adorable oldschool comedy. I was highly skeptical of The Matchmaker, knowing that it would be even more dated […]
Stop. Go see this show. It’s not often that I make a frank endorsement for a show. Here it is: Three of Boston’s hottest fringe theatre companies have teamed up to bring a fantastically executed production of Naomi Iizuka’s Polaroid Stories to the Boston Center for the Arts. The Boston Actors Theater, Happy Medium Theatre, […]
Soulpepper was founded by friends. World-renowned, big-name, highly successful friends, but friends nevertheless. And to this day, Soulpepper is run by friends. You can see it when Albert Schultz knows the name of everyone in the lobby or when Derek Boyes uses his day off from You Can’t Take it With You to watch his friends perform […]
Rick Miller’s wackado Macbeth retelling, currently masquerading as a fourth Shakespeare production at the Stratford Festival, uses a comprehensive cast of voices from one of TV’s most successful crazy experiments, The Simpsons. When this silly one act was appearing at fringe and comedy festivals, or when it played at The Factory Theatre last September, it […]
Song cycles are tough. With isolated songs and vignettes, the audience glimpses briefly into the lives of the people in Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World. These people are faced with that moment of decision-making, where they stand on the brink of choice and change. I find the concept really electric and intriguing. […]