Lynne Weiss

DICKENS IN AN IRISH PUB ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ The New England premiere of An Irish Carol by playwright Matthew Keenan offers a fresh take on Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, a familiar and much-performed holiday classic that holds out, again and again, a secular interpretation of the renewal…

TRIED AND TRUE ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ Annie is an excellent choice for Boston University Wheelock Family Theatre’s holiday offering this year. True to the mission of Wheelock Family Theatre (to create professional theatre and educational experiences for artists and audiences of all ages), the audience last night included…

MORE NAUGHTY THAN NICE, WITH PLENTY OF SPICE ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ As they have for the past thirty years, Ryan Landry’s Gold Dust Orphans honor the saturnalian origins of Christmas with a holiday burlesque. This time the target of the spoofing crew of shamelessly talented punsters, dancers, singers,…

THE KEYS OF KNOWLEDGE What can I say about a show that offers one moment of delight after another while holding the anguish of parental narcissism, the joy of discovering one’s own identity, and the power of creative expression to transform grief? One thing I can say is this: anyone within commuting distance of downtown…

A BRIDGE TO UNDERSTANDING There may have been, at some point in human history, an evolutionary advantage to sorting other people into “us” and “them.” But with modern weapons technology, whatever benefit that old reflex once offered has long vanished. Since the development of nuclear arms, in fact, that instinct to classify entire groups as…

A HOLIDAY CAROL THAT HITS ALL THE RIGHT NOTES If you’re looking for a holiday treat, look no further than the delightful production of A Sherlock Carol at the Lyric Stage. Brilliantly directed by Ilyse Robbins, this mash-up of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes combines wonderful performances with…

WOMEN ON THE VERGE Central Square Theater’s lovely production of playwright David Auburn’s (Proof) Summer, 1976 offers a story of two women who find an unexpected friendship at a tipping point in both their lives. It’s an especially fitting choice for Central Square Theater, the oldest female-led theater company in Boston. Central Square’s mission includes…

GUNNING FOR PUERTO RICO Stephen Sondheim chose an unlikely topic for his 1990 Assassins, a musical that portrays assassinating or attempting to assassinate a president is as American as popular music. I can’t say whether or not playwright Matthew Barbot was inspired by Sondheim’s musical, but Barbot certainly fills a hole in Sondheim’s line-up of…

THINGS THAT GO BOOM AND JUST RIGHT It’s impossible to see a production of Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick … Boom! without seeing it as a precursor to his Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Rent. All the elements are there—aspiring creatives living in lower Manhattan squalor, the lethal creep of AIDS, anxiety about “selling out” and abandoning dreams….

GREEN SCALES AND SHAM I generally count on SpeakEasy Stage for stellar productions of innovative and ground-breaking plays and musicals. But that history, along with fine performances and charming musicianship from Keiji Ishiguri as Lizard Boy Trevor, Peter DiMaggio as his friend Cary, and Chelsie Nectow as Siren are not enough to rescue this production…

CLOTHES MIGHT MAKE THE MAN, BUT NOT THIS SHOW Costumes were essential to the success of superstar Cher. She and her singing partner and husband Sonny Bono first burst on the music scene in the 1960s in the brightly colored bell-bottoms and fur vests of California’s emerging hippie culture. Madeline Hudelson (Babe) and Frankie Marasa…

LOVE IN UNEXPECTED PLACES Two women, from quite different backgrounds, meet in Boston in 1968, a time and a place where ancient grudges and present-day conflicts seem sure to keep them apart. And yet, their very differences bring them together. Adriana Alvarez (Jo) and Tara Forseth (Mary) convincingly portray a transformation from friendly kindness to…

MISERY LOVES COMPANY… AND A GOOD PLOT Karen MacDonald and Tom Coiner do a wonderful job of animating William Goldman’s stage adaptation of Stephen King’s intriguing, twisty novel by the same title. Best-selling novelist Paul Sheldon is rescued by Annie Wilkes, his self-described number 1 fan, following a car accident during a Colorado blizzard. In…

TWO LONG HOURS WITH THE FORMER MAN OF THE HOUR There is no question that Churchill was a hero who played a major role in saving the world from Hitler’s fascism (though perhaps not as big a role as Stalin, but let’s not go down that road). Nor is there any doubt that David Payne,…