Karen MacDonald

Latest Articles

All's Well on Boston Common

Love sick
I think of Measure for Measure , with its fanatically chaste heroine, and All's Well That Ends Well , with its lovely lass in pursuit of a lout, as Shakespeare's "Smart Women, Foolish Choices" plays.
By CAROLYN CLAY | August 08, 2011

Review: Two Wives is a roaming holiday

Indian idyll
A hectic if underpopulated Indian travelogue celebrating both love beginning and love being let go of.
By CAROLYN CLAY | November 08, 2010

Review: The Huntington's Bus Stop

All aboard for this smooth ride
Bus Stop is hardly a neglected masterpiece, or even William Inge's best play (that would be Picnic ), but when you watch Nicholas Martin's production, the Huntington's season opener (at the Boston University Theatre through October 17), you understand why it was a hit on Broadway in 1955.
By STEVE VINEBERG | September 29, 2010

Review: An Ideal Husband

Wilde thing: this Gloucester Husband is not ideal
"Nothing succeeds like excess," Oscar Wilde famously opined.
By CAROLYN CLAY | August 17, 2010

Play by play: May 14, 2010

Theater listings, May 14, 2010
Boston's weekly theater listings
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 17, 2010

Play by play: May 7, 2010

Theater listings, May 7, 2010
Boston's weekly theater listings
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 04, 2010

Play by play: April 30, 2010

Theater listings, week of April 30, 2010
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 28, 2010

Transformations

Young Frankenstein at the Opera House; The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead in Lowell
As fans of the film are aware, that precipitous crag atop which the castle of Young Frankenstein sits is a Catskill. But in The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein (at the Opera House through May 2), the mountain is shrouded less in 1930s-horror-movie gloom than in Vegas glitz.
By CAROLYN CLAY | April 27, 2010

Play by play: April 23, 2010

Theater listings, week of April 23, 2010
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 21, 2010

Play by play: April 16, 2010

Theater listings for the week of April 16, 2010
Theater listings for the week of April 16, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 15, 2010

Play by play: March 12, 2010

Theater listings, week of March 12, 2010
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 10, 2010

After Eden

Stick Fly at the Huntington; Paradise Lost at the ART; boom at New Rep
One of the heroines of Stick Fly , a post-doctoral student of etymology, likes to smear honey on the table and then scrutinize the flies that get stuck in it.
By CAROLYN CLAY | March 11, 2010

Play by Play: March 5, 2010

Theater listings, March 5, 2010
Boston's weekly theater listings
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 03, 2010

Play by play, February 26, 2010

Theater listings, week of February 26, 2010
Boston's weekly theater listings
By JEFFREY GANTZ | February 24, 2010

Play by play: February 19, 2010

Theatre listings, week of February 19, 2010
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | February 17, 2010

Play by play: February 5, 2010

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater listings
By JEFFREY GANTZ | February 03, 2010

Play by Play: January 29, 2010

Theater listings, January 29, 2010
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 27, 2010

Play by play: January 22, 2010

Theater listings, January 22, 2010
Boston's weekly theatre schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 20, 2010

American dreams

All My Sons at the Huntington; In the Heights at the Opera House; [title of show] at SpeakEasy
It's hard to imagine being dwarfed by the titanically insignificant Willy Loman.
By CAROLYN CLAY | January 19, 2010

Play by play: January 15, 2010

Theater listings, January 15, 2010
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 13, 2010

Play by play: January 8, 2010

Plays from A to Z
Boston's theater schedule: January 8, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 06, 2010

Play by Play: January 1, 2010

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater listings: January 1, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | December 30, 2009

Looking back, going forward

A diverse display for 2010
Economic recession and post-racial themes abound in Boston’s early 2010 theater repertoire.
By MADDY MYERS | January 13, 2010

2009: The year in theater

Stage worthies
A quick look at this past year in Boston's theater scene.
By CAROLYN CLAY | December 21, 2009

Play by Play: December 12, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Boston theater listings: December 12, 2009
By JEFFREY GANTZ | December 09, 2009

Play by Play: December 4, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | December 02, 2009

Lincoln Yule log

The Huntington celebrates A Civil War Christmas
Abraham Lincoln, as he said in his second inaugural address, yearned to "bind up the nation's wounds." Since the great man was assassinated little more than a month later, he didn't quite get around to it. No worry, Paula Vogel has taken over the job with A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration.
By CAROLYN CLAY | November 24, 2009

Play by play: November 20, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater listings
By JEFFREY GANTZ | November 18, 2009

Play by Play: November 13, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | November 11, 2009

Clever or klepto?

Third examines dogma, preconceptions
A certain branch of modern liberal academia could stand a little likening to Lear, as stubbornly entrenched in its own theories, deconstructions, and Weltanschauungen as it is.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | October 14, 2009