Lynne Weiss

MAMA’S BOY, FOR BETTER OR WORSE When I think of Shakespeare’s women, many names come to mind: Gertrude, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Beatrice, Portia, Helena, Titania, Rosalind, Juliet, Desdemona. Going forward, thanks to the powerful performance of Jennie Israel in Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s modern verse translation by Sean San José  of Coriolanus, I will always include Volumnia,…

A SATISFYING MEAL OF TASTY THEATER You might call Clyde’s the other piece of bread in Lynn Nottage’s sandwich about Reading, Pennsylvania, where the playwright spent two years conducting interviews with residents of what was then named the poorest town in America. The first result of those interviews was Sweat, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer…

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G Poet, screenwriter, and performer Lenelle Moïse (pronounced Len-EL Moy-EEZ) is a playwright for this co-production from The Front Porch Arts Collective and The Huntington, the latter of which is staging the charming and engaging K-I-S-S-I-N-G, a romantic comedy chockablock with originality. Drawing on Moïse’s experiences of growing up in Cambridge, the play opens with…

HATTIE, MAMMY AND OSCAR Playwright LaDarrion Williams has mined a moment in history to explore the human cost of being the first to achieve a milestone in this moving and ultimately affirming exploration of the ambivalence surrounding the first Black person to receive an Academy Award. As many know, Hattie McDaniel, who played Scarlett O’Hara’s…

A SLAM DUNK! The Great Leap opens with hearty humor and carries its audience along in an absorbing story until a profound poignancy begins to permeate the senses. Tyler Simahk plays Manford “the most feared [basketball] player in Chinatown” as a brash and determined 17 year old who opens the action by trying to talk…

SEVEN CHEERS FOR SEVEN GUITARS The Actors Shakespeare Company’s production of Seven Guitars deserves at least seven cheers for this powerful production of August Wilson’s Pulitzer-nominated portrayal of the life and death of a promising blues guitarist.         First cheer: Jon Savage‘s  scenic design and Abe Joyner-Meyers‘ sound design: Entering Hibernian Hall in Boston’s Nubian…

A MAGIC AFTERNOON Beautiful music (Christopher Vu, composer; Bo Jones (Lee) flute; Thomas Barth, cello, and Michael Weinfeld-Zell, percussion) and richly colored projected visuals gave a sold-out and extremely intergenerational audience a magical experience. Pinwheel, an ensemble of classically trained musicians and puppet artists, presented Magic Pearl, an adaptation by Veronica Barron, Max Gaylord, and  Jones…

THE ART OF BURNING WITH RAGE Fast-paced and gripping, laced at times with humor, The Art of Burning opens with an ominous threat: “Sometimes you have to kill the things you love to save them,” Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky) announces, putting the audience on alert. The ominous implications of this statement build when we hear Patricia…

THIS FREEDOM RINGS In a weekend of numerous uplifting events celebrating the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Hear Her Sing for Freedom stood out for bringing forward the life and role of Coretta Scott King, who married Dr. King in 1953. Coretta Scott was a serious vocalist and political…

PRELUDE TO A BREAKTHROUGH The Lyric Stage Company brings powerful performances to Dave Malloy’s remarkable evocation of the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff’s struggles with a creative block through hypnotherapy. Rachmaninoff himself is portrayed as two characters. One called Rachmaninoff (Dan Rodgriguez) sits at a white baby grand through most of the show, providing a stunning shower…

LET THE REVELS’ SUN SHINE IN TO YOUR HOME Like the waning of the old year and the arrival of the new that it celebrates, The Revels organization has returned to the stage in 2022 with a new name and new elements that express the organization’s commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion while retaining the…

COME FOR A THEATRICAL EVENT; STAY FOR THE STORY The eye-popping special effects of Life of Pi are reason enough to see this show. When video, lighting, and sound designers Andrzej Goulding, Tim Lutkin, and Carolyn Downing transform the solid stage of at A.R.T. not into dew, but a liquid — a spontaneous gasp and…