Musicals

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Review: Musings on MSMT's Xanadu

The gods must be ’80s
For years now, the decade of the 1980s has been enjoying a curiously sustained wave of nostalgia.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | July 27, 2011

Review: Going Crazy for Gershwin

A revised, revamped classical musical hits big
Every summer, the Arundel Barn Playhouse continues the classic tradition of Maine summer stock theater, by bringing their leading performers from out of town — often New York City — to put on a series of shows and live in beautiful rural Arundel for the season.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | July 06, 2011

Review: The Lion King inspires at PPAC

A roaring success
The Lion King is roaring at the Providence Performing Arts Center through February 20, and the theatergoing denizens of this urban jungle are happy.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 10, 2011

By | January 01, 0001

A star search is reborn

A classic Chorus Line at Theatre by the Sea
A Chorus Line is quite a heartfelt love song to musicals and the hoofers in them.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | June 09, 2010

Curse and worse

Johnny Baseball is stuck in the minors
The high point of Johnny Baseball , the new musical receiving its world premiere from the American Repertory Theater (at the Loeb Drama Center through June 27), comes two-thirds of the way through the second act.
By STEVE VINEBERG | June 09, 2010

Street corner symphonies

The Four Seasons live in Jersey Boys
We’d be happy enough if Jersey Boys were just a musical revue, thrumming with the the Four Seasons’ hit parade. But on top of that we get a compelling story, following the lives of ’60s heartthrob Frankie Valli and those who rocketed to fame with him.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 19, 2010

Zero at the bone

SpeakEasy’s Adding Machine sings
A bleak expressionist fable centered on a murderous bookkeeper symbolically named Zero. Even when you throw in sexual repression, religious zealotry, a trip to Heaven, and enough dissonance to sate Stephen Sondheim, that doesn’t sound like the stuff of song and dance.
By CAROLYN CLAY | March 23, 2010

Now playing — RISD: The Musical!

Revues
We all know RISD students like to paint and draw, but can they hoof it? Or belt out a show tune and carry a giant pencil at the same time? Well, yes, it turns out.
By ELIZABETH RAU | February 17, 2010

Improv Asylum presents Scott Brown: The Musical

Tax Relief? Good Grief!
Should US Senator Scott Brown ever find any downtime between crucial votes on the future of this nation and hand-modeling gigs, he may want to flex his melodrama muscles.
By MADDY MYERS | February 12, 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

Good and evil

Wicked is a grand spectacle of sights and sound
From L. Frank Baum's 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz came the 1939 film; from Gregory Maguire's 1995 book Wicked came the 2003 Broadway hit of the same name.
By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | 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

Still Wonderful

Center Stage interprets Capra’s Life
It's a risky gamble, creating a stage version of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life .
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 16, 2009

Spelling-bound

URI’s makes Putnam County worth visiting
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a harmless enough little confection for, say, when you've had enough high-protein Shakespeare.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 08, 2009

Good Fela! beats Nigerian drum

Boston and Broadway
Riddle this: what's more unlikely than the fact that the current toast of Broadway is a musical about a Nigerian agitprop pop singer, or that it owes its existence to a Caucasian commodities trader from New England?
By CHRIS FARAONE | December 09, 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

Play by play: November 6, 2009

Boston theater listings, November 6, 2009
Boston's weekly theater listings
By JEFFREY GANTZ | November 04, 2009

Play by play: October 9, 2009

Theater listings
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 07, 2009

Play by Play: October 2, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 30, 2009

Play by Play: September 25, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 22, 2009

Play by play: September 18, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 17, 2009

Berlin calling

A ‘very Trinity’ take on Cabaret
If you ask someone whether they've seen Cabaret , odds are the answer will be yes. Ask Curt Columbus, and the answer is likely to be: Which one? Sitting in the upstairs theater of Trinity Repertory Company, where their production runs through October 11, the artistic director rattled off a chronology as lengthy as a convoluted German sentence.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | September 15, 2009