Lynne Weiss

MULTILINGUAL PRE-WEDDING JITTERS The sixth play in Mfoniso Udofia’s nine-play Ufot Family Cycle brings us the adorable couple Ekong Ufot (Kadahj Bennett) and Lumanti Shrestha (Mahima Saigal) as they struggle with Ekong’s deeply damaged father (Adrian Roberts as Nsikan Disciple Ufot) in the final weeks of what should be happy preparations for their wedding. The…

SLEUTHING FOR LAUGHS? YOU’LL FIND THEM HERE It’s elementary! A clever script, thanks to the prolific and popular playwright Kate Hamill, and superb physical and verbal comedy, thanks to a great quartet of actors, make Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson — Apt. 2B the perfect solution to the puzzle of how to find a satisfying…

STAR STRUCK Awe-inspiring lighting design (Eduardo M. Ramirez) and beautiful sound effects and music (Kai Bohlman with Violet Wang) elevate Lauren Gunderson’s fictionalized biography of astronomer Henrietta Leavitt (1868–1921) to a meditation on the meaning of human life in relation to the cosmos. This Brit d’Arbeloff Women in Science Production, directed by Sarah Shin, also…

THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR Not every life-altering relationship is romantic. Sometimes it’s a friend who helps us endure, who shapes us in ways that can last long after the friendship has ended. Boston audiences can experience that truth in two very different plays in the weeks ahead: Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust (SpeakEasy Stage at Boston Center for…

COMEDY IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS So much could have gone wrong in this production of playwright David Templeton’s delightfully original and utterly unique Featherbaby, but in the able hands of director Weylin Symes, this co-world premiere (simultaneously produced in California) takes flight. Let’s start with the casting. To say that Paul Melendy is the…

TAKE MY HUSBAND, PLEASE Marriage has long been fodder for male stand-up comics, but it has generally been women who have been the butt of the jokes. Actress, comic, and TV personality Joy Behar offers a refreshing alternative to that tired trope with My First Ex-Husband, which has made its journey from Off-Broadway to The…

ON THE RIGHT TRACK The 7 Fingers (Les 7 Doigts), a Montréal-based circus arts company, brings 90 spellbinding minutes of exhibitions of strength, flexibility, coordination, balance, courage, timing, and trust to the A.R.T.’s Loeb Drama Center in Passengers. The 7 Fingers collaborated with A.R.T.’s 2012 production of Pippin and have performed on numerous occasions at…

THE LEFT BEHIND Frankly, I was in theater hell this Saturday afternoon. Two women on one side of me were whispering to one another throughout the first 10 minutes of the show; a man on the other side was eating something out of a crinkly bag and repeatedly clearing his throat. People in front of…

REPAIR AND REPARATIONS Company One’s world premiere of The Meeting Tree powerfully evokes the debate and the struggle over reparations and restitution through the lives of six women, some Black, some white, all of them related through their connection to one white man who lived in Alabama before the abolition of slavery. Director Summer L….

WIN OR LOSE, IT’S ABOUT LOVE Wow! Whoever wrote Love’s Labour’s Lost was a comic genius. The wordplay, the multi-lingual puns, and the send-ups of characters stumbling over their own foolishness are endlessly entertaining—except that many productions of this play by William Shakespeare fall flat. The sometimes obscure (to us) Elizabethan references and word usage…

A TRASH-TALKING ODD COUPLE The Garbologists opens with a few seconds of complete darkness and the clang and grind of machinery before two bright headlights move straight toward the audience. Then the lights come up on what was previously an empty street to reveal two New York City Sanitation Department workers in the cab of…

ANOTHER FAMOUS BALCONY SCENE Romeo and Juliet isn’t the only play with a famous balcony scene. The London revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Evita has attracted attention for the decision to stage the signature song “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” on a balcony outside the London Palladium, disappointing many in the ticket-buying…

BULLISH ON WOMEN’S EDUCATION With sharp, witty, and informative dialogue, Bryna Turner’s Bull in a China Shop offers a fascinating glimpse into the life and accomplishments of Mary Wooley (Linnea Lyerly), the little-known and yet highly influential president of Mount Holyoke College from 1900 to 1937. Wooley transformed a women’s seminary with an emphasis on…

A BEAUTIFUL TAPESTRY OF SONGS AND STORY Reagle Music Theatre kicks off the summer with a vibrant, lovingly crafted staging of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, directed with finesse and flair by Deanna Dys. Her production fluidly moves from cramped domestic scenes in Brooklyn to the adolescent alchemy of late-50s and early-60s pop in the…

REVENUE AND RESPECTABILITY George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) knew about cancel culture long before the term came into vogue. The first New York production (1905) of Mrs. Warren’s Profession was shut down by police due to charges of obscenity, and while we aren’t seeing police shut down theaters today, funding cuts may have a similar effect….