Theatre

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Mad Horse’s Becky Shaw peers behind the love curtain

The one who knew too much
Three months after her father's death, the two people closest to thirty-something Suzanna (Elizabeth Chambers) don't have a lot of patience for her grief, which has her reduced to a weeping mess watching bad TV under a blanket.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 08, 2012

A knee-slapping Lend Me a Tenor at PC

Hilarious high notes
As hilarious as the race for the Republican presidential nomination is, even that is no competition for Ken Ludwig's Lend Me a Tenor.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 01, 2012

2nd Story’s Take Me Out

A dramatic grand slam
Ironic, isn't it? To your ordinary man in the street or workplace, masculinity usually isn't an issue. Yet macho scale rankings readily come up in professional sports, where prowess should be enough evidence of testosterone levels.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | January 25, 2012

Thespian games at the Theater Project

Play acting
Five people lie supine on the floor, feet outward, like a star.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 25, 2012

Huntington pays tribute to God of Carnage

Parent flap
If Lord of the Flies wanted an upscale-urban bookend, it could do worse than God of Carnage (presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the BU Theatre through February 5).
By CAROLYN CLAY | January 18, 2012

Midsummer gets a twist, in midwinter

Steamy dreaming
When I learned that Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was to be staged in frigid early winter, I wondered if the production's angle might be unabashed irony.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 18, 2012

Carolyn Gage interprets Lizzie Borden's case

Reclaiming history
Lizzie Borden, who allegedly murdered her father and step-mother in 1892, remains an iconic figure in American cultural memory.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 11, 2012

Wilbury’s darkly humorous Exit the King

The reign man
Playwright Eugene Ionesco, a progenitor of Theater of the Absurd along with Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, put a lot of himself into Exit the King instead of keeping his usual ironic or satiric distance.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | January 11, 2012

Shrek the Musical charms at PPAC

'Toon time
Talk about your franchises.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | January 04, 2012

A decidedly dramatic year (with a bit of comic relief)

Seriously!
This has been a good year for theater around here, from the reprise of a "Were you there when . . .?" rendition of a Shakespeare classic to a sprinkling of notable original productions.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 21, 2011

The highlights of 2011’s theatrics

From madness to mealtime
Some of the most exhilarating moments in theater this year happened in the Apohadion, as a pale and schizoid Michael Dix Thomas shrieked the opening strains of "The Ballad of Mack the Knife," summoning to stage the lurid, ghoulish menagerie of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera .
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | December 21, 2011

A perishing theatre gives way to a new one

The Stage
Living up to theoretician Gordon Craig's ideal of the "perishable" theatre as one nimble, flexible, and light on its feet, Providence's Perishable Theatre remained fresh for its 28-year shelf life; it shuttered this year because funding sources — not new ideas — had dried up.
By CHRISTINA BEVILACQUA | December 23, 2011

Trinity Rep’s It’s a Wonderful Life

More comfort and joy
For theatergoers not sufficiently uplifted this holiday season by Trinity Repertory Company's production of A Christmas Carol , the troupe is presenting a second annual feel-good offering, It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play , in the downstairs theater through December 31.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 14, 2011

Warming up to Portland Stage’s Snow Queen

Out in the cold
This week, we look at another theatrical alternative to the Dickens ghosts.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | December 14, 2011

Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium’s Parade

An unfortunate man
Parade might be the best musical, as well as the most unlikely one, that you've never seen. Its one-line plot description isn't exactly alluring.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 07, 2011

New: Old traditions

AIRE spins Christmas with a Celtic charm
The winter holidays' bells, lights, and trees are already upon us, and along with them the first of the holiday-themed shows.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | December 07, 2011

Kathleen Turner can't save High

Wasted
The most shocking thing about High (at the Cutler Majestic Theatre through December 11) is not that Kathleen Turner plays a nun.
By CAROLYN CLAY | December 13, 2011

Trinity’s compelling Christmas Carol

Comfort and joy
The more things stay the same, the more they change. At least that's the way they've been having it with Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol at Trinity Repertory Company for 35 years.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 30, 2011

2nd Story serves a pair of frisky farces

French ticklers
How generous. With its latest production, 2nd Story Theatre is giving us a hilarious double feature.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 30, 2011

2nd Story’s inspiring Little Women

Timeless acts of kindness
Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is so beloved a morsel of American literary optimism that it would be hard to do badly with an adaptation of the 1868 novel. And there have been numerous ones, from films to an opera and a musical.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 21, 2011

Acorn bares souls in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Illusions + pretenses
Edward Albee's heavyweight Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a horror story.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 16, 2011

The Originals stage Pinter's Betrayal

Reverse psychology
Harold Pinter's masterwork Betrayal is a story of a British triangle.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 09, 2011

Dramatic Rep digs deep for catharsis

Finding the Tigers within
Today is a good day for twenty-something Sherry (Casey Turner): She's out of bed, over her depression, and starting her first-ever job as an elementary art teacher and art therapist.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 02, 2011

Providence College’s Cripple of Inishmaan

Urge for going
Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan , the last of his Aran Islands trilogy, is being served very well by the actors at Providence College Theatre (through November 6). You could say without heated opposition that they are doing a better job than the playwright himself did.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 02, 2011

Mabou Mines deconstructs Ibsen, plus The Civilians

In the Heights
I have been looking forward to this Obie-winning allegory built on Ibsen's A Doll's House since it opened in New York in 2003.
By CAROLYN CLAY | November 08, 2011

Of Farms and Fables shows beauty, struggle of family farming

Speaking from the fields
From the bean patch, Lily calls her husband Walker: Pests in the beans. Walker is over in the chard patch, which he says looks like Swiss cheese.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | October 26, 2011

URI’s Marat/Sade finds pleasure in pain

Musical madness
To compare a crazed society to a madhouse is a trite observation. But it became an astute metaphor and powerful theatrical experience when playwright Peter Weiss created Marat/Sade , as URI Theatre is robustly demonstrating (through October 23).
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | October 18, 2011