A. R. Gurney’s The Cocktail Hour is a witty, boozy comedy that shines a light on the many flaws and subtle delights of one WASP-y household in Buffalo during the 1970s. This autobiographical play centers on John (James Waterston), a repressed, neurotic publisher moonlighting as a playwright. John visits his parents in their twilight years […]
So, I missed November. We had some amazing works hit our Boston and Greater Boston stages. I apologize for missing so many of them, and I heard wonderful things, especially from Concord Players’ Les Miserables, Speakeasy Stage Company’s Kurt Vonnegut’s Make Up Your Mind (A World Premiere), and the Huntington Theatre Company’s limited engagement The […]
As America’s economy begins to slowly emerge from a painful recession, who isn’t in the mood for some lighthearted musical numbers about sailing into administrative success on waves of charisma, luck, and savvy fix-the-system know-how? Boston University on Broadway (BU on Broadway) provided some musical fun with their November production of How to Succeed in […]
It may be widely known that I don’t like original shows. I feel they’re often underrehearsed, poorly cast, and underrealized. That includes a script for which the playwright needs a few more rewrites. However, I was blown away by the Boston Playwright Theatre’s production of “Burning” by Ginger Lazarus. I can’t quite understand why everything […]
Simple Machine’s production of The Turn of the Screw, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from the ghostly tale by Henry James and directed by M. Bevin O’Gara, is very well-acted and very well-executed. The perk of a play like Screw is that everything hinges on only two actors. The dreadful risk of such a play is […]
As previously mentioned, Lyric Stage Company of Boston assembled one of the best seasons in Boston this year. For their fortieth year, Lyric Stage Company pulled out the big guns with silly and smart farces to beautiful and serene dramas to insightful and challenging musicals. For their second production of the season, Lyric Stage Company […]
I have strong feelings about Romeo and Juliet. There, I said it before and I’ll say it again. I always wait with baited breath during the Prologue to see how this new production will interpret this timeless classic. Sometimes, I leave merely disappointed; other times, I leave damned confused. Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s production leaned towards […]
“How will they stage a radio play?” I had no doubts that a creative theater company could very well stage a radio play, especially if the play in question was written by Angela Carter, the late British woman-of-many-letters, a novelist/journalist/dramatist/critic known for drinking deeply from the Gothic and the fantastic in literature, and infusing much […]