Although Downton Abbey has been recently winning back my attention after a humdrum 4th season, I decided to watch a different period piece being performed live at the BCA during this gloomy winter season in Boston. The Huntington production of The Second Girl, written by Ronan Noone and directed by Campbell Scott, presents a look […]
An evening spent discussing quantum physics might not sound like your cup of tea. But this year marks the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, and Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen, about the fateful 1941 meeting of two famous physicists in Nazi-occupied Denmark, strikes a very relevant note. Porpentine Players performed this challenging and timely play, […]
All it takes is one well-placed, often shocking line to permanently cement a show in my mind. In Necessary Monsters, John Kuntz’s new play, I ran into that line about halfway through the two hour performance, at the pit of this nested, Russian-doll-of-a-show. An upper crust, philanthropic socialite (actually a performer in drag (Thomas Derrah) […]
I thought I was being clever when, as I tripped and scraped and picked my way over the frozen tundra that used to be the sidewalk along Arsenal Street, I said to myself: “I’ll begin the review with some joke comparing the show to the Snowmaggedon that has plagued Boston this month.” After stepping out […]
Watching Lyric Stage Company’s production of Intimate Apparel, directed by Summer L. Williams, I came to an unexpected conclusion: in this production, the important period piece finds its strongest stride in the individual and intensely personal more than in its historicity. There is so much to enjoy here: set in 1905, the play follows Esther […]
I first saw Fufu and Oreos in a staged reading. Obehi Janice performed her one-woman creative memoir at Company One’s 2014 XX PlayLab, only slightly hindered by carrying a binder-script and lacking props. The piece piqued my interest, and I was looking forward to seeing it fully produced. Bridge Repertory Theater has taken it up: […]
Here are four productions going up this month that particularly caught my attention. Three of the four are period pieces (two take place in 1912), and all of them, in their diverse ways, deal with the most basic of human drives: the desire to achieve fulfilment and find happiness in the face of intense environmental […]
Where do I begin in describing how much fun I had at Kerplop! The Tale of the Frog Prince? I suppose at the beginning, with a description of a traditional panto for those not in the know. A pantomime in this context is a UK theatrical tradition based on staging well-known fairy tales in an […]