Performing Arts

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Review: Ghosts, people, booze flow together in AIRE's The Seafarer

Mixing spirits
When it comes to ghosts and other supernatural catalysts, Halloween's theatrical repertoire is actually rivaled by that of the Yuletide season.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 03, 2010

Cool drink on a hot day

With Table Manners, Gloucester Stage gives Ayckbourn his due
Alan Ayckbourn has been often dismissed as the British Neil Simon. He's also been hailed as a playwright of such acute insight that, if you look beyond the laughs, he deserves to be mentioned in the same critical breath as Harold Pinter.
By ED SIEGEL | July 05, 2010

Brown's theater juggernaut fires up again

Playtime
The Brown/Trinity Repertory Theatre, a summer program that cultivates promising young playwrights, is set to launch this year's slate of three plays on July 7. Expectations are high.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | June 30, 2010

Brown's theater juggernaut fires up again

Smart acting

Lyric's clever cast in Fools
When Neil Simon penned Fools , writes director Celeste Green in the program notes to her Lyric Music Theater production of the 1981 comedy, he was playing to lose: He was hoping not to make us laugh and cry, but to hose his investors and flout his ex-wife, who was promised the profits of his next play.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 24, 2010

Ain't that America?

Good ol’ boys and girls in Trailer Park Musical
Armadillo Acres in the Florida of The Great American Trailer Park Musical may not be a place you want to live, what with the thin walls and occasional gunfire, but it could be a fun place to visit. The Center Stage production in West Kingston is giving us plenty of reason to stick around.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | June 16, 2010

It’s good to be king

TRIST takes Henry VIII outdoors
After being out of the local theater scene for a couple of decades, the Rhode Island Shakespeare Theater (TRIST) is back, staging an outdoor production of Henry VIII at the Roger Williams National Memorial Park, on North Main Street in Providence, through June 26.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | June 15, 2010

Freaks, Geeks, and Faux Bono

Boston-area subcultures keep the Bay State comfortably kooky this summer
As Bay Staters, we recognize that our European ancestors sure knew how to roll: scarlet letters, sticks up asses, if-she-drowns-she's-not-a-witch-if-she-floats-she's-a-witch-so-let's-kill-her legal applications.
By ALEXIS HAUK | June 20, 2010

With plans for a downtown mural, Shepard Fairey returns to Providence

Obey
It is a rather unremarkable collection of bricks at the moment: an exterior wall at the back of Trinity Repertory Company’s Pell Chafee Performance Center in downtown Providence.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 16, 2010

Play by play: June 4, 2010

Theater listings, week of June 4, 2010
Theater listings, week of June 4, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | June 03, 2010

Night moves

Theater Of Thought’s Killer Joe
Theater of Thought has done it again, this time with dark humor and Texas accents, as it amplifies theatrical reality with a site-specific rendition of Killer Joe .
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 26, 2010

Play by play: May 28, 2010

Theater listings, May 28, 2010
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 27, 2010

Glee and sympathy

The Gold Dust Orphans’ The Gulls; Nora’s The Lady with All the Answers
If Ryan Landry gets any more respectable, he’ll be hosting Masterpiece Theatre.
By CAROLYN CLAY | May 18, 2010

Play by Play: May 21, 2010

Theater listings, May 21, 2010
Boston's weekly theater listings
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 19, 2010

We band of brothers

Young actors bring a Spartan production of Henry V to the Apohadion
This is the first independent production by the group of five friends who met at Boston’s Emerson College, where they helmed incarnations of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet and Sam Shepard’s True West .
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | May 19, 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

More Bard, another park

Acorn takes Shakespeare to the Riverbank
Just as fiddleheads and lilacs sprung early this year, so have the urban-pastoral pleasures of al fresco Shakespeare.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 19, 2010

Second sight

Boston Ballet reprises Jiří Kylián’s Black & White
May in Boston has always been Storybook Ballet Month, as Boston Ballet finished off its season with Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty or Don Quixote , something classical and highbrow and reassuring. That, after all, is what Boston audiences want, right?
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 28, 2010

Theme and variations

Boston Ballet’s ‘Ultimate Balanchine’
George Balanchine was famous for “non-story” ballets, but when you put three of his works — the usual number to fill up an evening — together, you always get some kind of narrative.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 13, 2010

Sparring with the Ultimate

Boston Ballet in The Four Temperaments, Apollo, and Theme and Variations
There’s never been a more brilliant exemplar of the ballet art than George Balanchine.
By MARICA B. SIEGEL | May 11, 2010

Old haunts

Blithe Spirit at the Lyric; Hot Mikado at New Rep; August: Osage County at the Colonial
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that Blithe Spirit , that cocktail shaker full of dry martini and ectoplasmic mayhem, will amuse. Playwright Noël Coward diagnosed his own gift as a talent to do just that.
By CAROLYN CLAY | May 11, 2010

Hot and bothered

2nd Story’s hilarious Underpants
Shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater and you get one response. Shout “Die Hose!” (women’s undies) in a German theater back in 1911 and you got another kind of uproar.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 12, 2010

Play by play: May 14, 2010

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

Interview: Paul Provenza

Comedy life saver
In Satiristas! veteran comic Paul Provenza engages in revealing, surprising conversation with a diverse group about comedy’s role in revealing uncomfortable truths about our world and ourselves.
By ROB TURBOVSKY | May 04, 2010

Face the nation

SpeakEasy’s The Great American Trailer Park Musical; Zeitgeist’s Farragut North
White-trash collection has seldom been as hilarious as it is in The Great American Trailer Park Musical , which makes its Brahmin-area debut courtesy of SpeakEasy Stage Company.
By CAROLYN CLAY | May 04, 2010

Meta-theater

Tim Rushton bring existential relevance to town
Choreographer Tim Rushton makes unusual, high-powered dance movement and blends it with slick but modest theatrical appurtenances, sound scores that claim your attention, and important program notes.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 04, 2010

Play by play: May 7, 2010

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

Youth movement

Fusionworks’ Locally Grown
In the current Fusionworks production, Locally Grown , artistic director Deb Meunier and her company are welcoming two dance groups from local high schools.
By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | May 05, 2010

The race is on

Running through Acorn’s 24-Hour Play Festival
Around 7 pm last Saturday at the St. Lawrence, a sealed envelope was sliced open and its contents, handwritten on three slips of paper, were revealed to a full house: “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 05, 2010

Talking ’bout a revolution

The Gamm’s life-affirming Rock ’n’ Roll
It takes a theatrical genius like Tom Stoppard to come up with Rock ’n’ Roll, which merges the pulsing spirit of both until they feel like one. And it takes a theater of the caliber of the Gamm to make history feel like a Stones concert that becomes a political rally.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 05, 2010