★★☆☆☆ “I recommend biting off more than you can chew” is one Alanis Morissette lyric that the team behind Jagged Little Pill appears to have taken far too literally. When the musical—clobbered together from Morissette’s catalogue of hits—premiered at Cambridge’s American Repertory Theater last spring, I wrote in my review that it […]
‘NATURE IS KIND, YOU KNOW?’ APRIL GARGIULO AND THE MAGIC OF VINTNER’S DAUGHTER
Your skin and my skin require the same nutrients to be its most healthy, its most balanced. That is fact, okay? … All skin requires the same nutrients to be its most healthy.
PEAK ARTISTIC EXPERIENCE: BOSTON’S LARGER STAGES DON’T NEED TO BE MORE LIKE THE MOVIES. THEY NEED TO BE MORE LIKE THE SMALL STAGES.
Boston’s larger stages don’t need to be more like the movies. They need to be more like the small stages. Theater critic Ed Siegel incensed some—and drew applause from others—when he published a divisive, bold essay last week bemoaning the current state of Boston theater. In his piece, which was published by WBUR’s […]
THE CHAOS OF DREAMS AND IMAGES: ARLEKIN’S THE SEAGULL IS REMARKABLE
★★★★★ Only about once—maybe twice—a year does a production come along that makes me feel as if I’ve been ignited from the inside out. It takes a special kind of vision—along with all the different theatrical stars lining up just right—to turn a long and (forgive me) boring Chekhov play into the most […]
IT’S TURKEY LURKEY TIME: LYRIC STAGE SCORES WITH THE THANKSGIVING PLAY
★★★★☆ Turkeys aren’t the only creatures on the chopping block in The Thanksgiving Play, an irresistible satire by Larissa FastHorse currently in its final week at the Lyric Stage Company. No, there’s another pitiable creature—far more common in these deep blue parts—taking the brunt of abuse. It isn’t a trashing, mind you, […]
THRILL ME, CHILL ME, FULFILL ME: MOONBOX’S ROCKY HORROR ROCKS
★★★★☆ Putting aside for a moment the merits of David Lucey’s sinful production of The Rocky Horror Show—of which there are many—I’d first like to point out that no other theater company in Boston (let alone a small theater company) is doing what Moonbox Productions is doing. Founded by Sharman Altshuler in […]
A CACOPHONY OF CHINTZ: SPONGEBOB SINKS AT THE WANG
★★☆☆☆ When it was announced in 2015 that Nickelodeon would be bringing a SpongeBob musical to Broadway, you can imagine how many people reacted with a giant eye roll, particularly those of us who had PTSD from the Broadway production of The Little Mermaid, which had sea creatures “swimming” around the stage on […]
LEARNING TO SEE IN THE DARK: JOMAMA JONES IN BLACK LIGHT
★★★★☆ “What if I told you it’s going to be all right? What if I told you not yet?” It’s this kind of wisdom—sometimes reassuring, sometimes unnerving, but always ominous—that pulses through Black Light, Daniel Alexander Jones’ one-woman mystical cabaret-style show that will run at American Repertory Theater’s OBERON through Sept 29. […]
A FEARLESS, BOLD VISION IN ARLEKIN’S THE STONE
★★★★☆ One house in Dresden becomes ground zero for a multigenerational exploration of guilt, complicity, survival, and truth in Marius von Mayenburg’s The Stone, which plays at Needham’s Arlekin Players Theatre through Sept 29. The play is a complicated one, made even more difficult by the fact that that it jumps back […]
BOYS TO MEN: AN ASTOUNDING ENSEMBLE GIVES LIFE TO CHOIR BOY
★★★★☆ A 2019 Tony Award nominee for Best Play, Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy is receiving a spirited, well-acted New England premiere at Boston’s SpeakEasy Stage Company, where it will run through Oct 12. McCraney, best known as the Oscar-winning co-writer of Moonlight, mines similar territory here—young black men coming of age while […]
