Lynne Weiss

A SPIRITED REVIVAL WITH DEPTH AND DISSONANCE Eighty years after Carousel had its final pre-Broadway preview at Boston’s Colonial Theatre, Boston Lyric Opera revives Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1945 classic with both nostalgia and an edge. Under the thoughtful direction of Anne Bogart and the sure baton of David Angus, this production revisits a golden-age musical…

MURDER BY MANGO Ricardo Pérez González’s Don’t Eat the Mangos—a tragicomedy brimming with revelation, rage, and retribution—transforms the Calderwood stage into a site of reckoning. Directed by David Mendizábel, this gripping family drama unfurls within the walls of a Puerto Rican home, where three adult sisters contend with the burdens of caregiving, long-held grievances, and…

THE TRIUMPH OF ALLISON ALTMAN There are many reasons to see The Triumph of Love, director Loretta Greco’s gender-bending comedy that channels equal parts Shakespeare, Billy Wilder, and a dash of John Cleese. But at the heart of its success is Allison Altman’s dazzling turn as Princess Léonide. Vincent Randazzo, Avanthika Srinivasan Patrick Kerr, Vincent…

UNTYING THE SPELL Tongva and Mescalero Apache actor GiGi Buddie delivers a spellbinding performance in Where We Belong, an autobiographical one-woman show by Madeline Sayet, who weaves a deeply personal narrative about the intersection of her Native identity and her love of Shakespeare. The Umbrella Stage production, directed by Tara Moses (Seminole Nation of Oklahoma),…

IT’S NOT SO MUCH HOW IRISH BECAME AMERICANS — IT’S HOW AMERICA BECAME IRISH Greater Boston Stage Company’s lively production of Frank McCourt’s The Irish and How They Got That Way ennobles often painful history with music, physical comedy, and funny tales. Directed by A. Nora Long, the show is set in a realistically appointed…

THE REDEEMING POWER OF ART Picture this. A white wall—or is it gray? or a blank canvas?—and a pale tile floor. Are we in an austere modern art museum or gallery? The lights go out and when they come up again, a man stands at the edge of the stage and begins to complain about…

OUT OF THE WOODS AND INTO THE GROVE The second in Mfoniso Udofia’s ambitious nine-play Ufot Family Cycle, The Grove, directed by Awoye Timpo, picks up the story of the Ufot family over three decades after the first play, Sojourners, introduced us to Abasiama Ufot, a Nigerian woman who comes to the United States to…

BEAUTIFUL, BORED, AND BENT ON DESTRUCTION For a taut psychological drama fraught with sexual tension, Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler remains unrivaled, and Parker Jennings delivers a mesmerizing performance as the title character—a woman simmering with rage beneath a veneer of poise, trapped in a world that offers her no escape. With astute director Danielle Fauteux…

A FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE ON A FAMILIAR JOURNEY Playwright Kate Hamill takes Homer’s Odyssey and gives it a sharp, contemporary spin, transforming the tale of wily and deceitful Odysseus (Wayne T. Carr) into a meditation on PTSD, accountability, and the shifting tides of power. In this bold reimagining at American Repertory Theater, Odysseus isn’t just a…

TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO WOMAN HAS GONE BEFORE After seeing SPACE at Central Square Theater, the line that haunted me came from Mae Jemison, the first Black woman to travel into space: “Rockets leave behind the thing that got them up there—their fuel tanks.” Like those fuel tanks, the first group of courageous and…

A SEARCH FOR MEANING BROUGHT TO GLORIOUS LIFE BY A PUPPET Based on the Booker-prize winning novel by Nobel-laureate South African J.M. Coetzee and adapted and directed by Lara Foot in collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company, Life and Times of Michael K tells a simple story: a man born with a cleft lip who was…

A HIGHLY RECOMMENDED LESSON ON FAMILY LEGACY Actors’ Shakespeare Project continues its exploration of August Wilson’s Century Cycle with an absolutely superb production of the 1987 Pulitzer-winning masterpiece The Piano Lesson. In a Pittsburgh home in 1936, two siblings of the Charles family debate whether to sell or keep an heirloom–the family piano, which is…

HOW THE COOKIE CRUMBLES From Intimate Apparel and Sweat to Clyde’s, playwright Lynn Nottage is known for her ability to illuminate the lives of ordinary and working-class people, Black and white. Crumbs from the Table of Joy is one of her early plays, first produced in 1995. Under the direction of Tasia A. Jones, the…

THE ELATION OF NEGATION Written by Jordan E. Cooper and directed by Dawn M. Simmons, the Boston premiere of this Tony-nominated series of provocative satirical sketches explores various facets of Black life in the United States, challenging audiences to consider whether racism can ever truly be eradicated. It’s the kind of humor that leaves you…

TAP INTO JOY AT A.R.T. I felt the first chills early in Diary of a Tap Dancer. It was during an ensemble number set in the Bronx and the birth of hip hop – I got that feeling in my solar plexus which told me this was a show bound for great things. That feeling…

FEAST ON THIS! For the second year, Front Porch Arts Collective offers its Holiday Feast of staged readings of scripts from the holiday episodes of Black sitcoms of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. The brainchild of co-producing artistic directors Dawn M. Simmons and Maurice Emmanuel Parent and directed by Jackie Davis, this event is fast…