Boston

SOMETHING WICKED GOOD THIS WAY COMES You’ve probably seen one or more productions of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth before, but you’ve likely never seen one like this Christopher V. Edwards-directed production by Actors’ Shakespeare Project. Despite the spooky-month run, the emphasis here is not on ghostly apparitions or the “weird sisters,” but on political corruption and…

STANDING UP FOR HUMANITY Here are my criteria for a good night of comedy: 1) It needs to be surprising. 2) It needs to make me think. 3) It needs to promote values that make us better human beings. 4) Oh, it needs to be funny. Chris Grace Both Sardines (a comedy about death) at…

A STRONG BREW OF CHARACTER AND STORY The Counter is the latest in a series of plays in greater Boston featuring a character who pours drinks. In recent months we’ve had Primary Trust, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), Spitfire Grill, and Waitress. Spitfire Grill, Two Strangers, and The Counter all feature a…

LEGACY MEETS MORTALITY IN THE MOUNTAINTOP This superb production of Katori Hall‘s The Mountaintop, a surprise-filled two-hander depicting King’s last night before his assassination, is not just history. Director Maurice Emmanuel Parent works with two excellent actors—Dominic Carter and Kiera Prusmack—to lead us to understand that King’s concerns and work are still relevant. It’s at…

OUR TOWN, AND YOURS Thorton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize winning play Our Town is a masterpiece, drawing on inspiration from the likes of Bertholt Brecht and traditional Chinese theatre. With touches of feminism ahead of his time, and a celebration of the connections between the everyday and the cosmic dimensions of human experience, Wilder constructed…

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…

THE SHOW BEHIND THE SHOW A well-done backstage farce is always a good time, especially for theatre lovers. But a well-done backstage farce with something to say, with layers and depth—that is harder to come by, and even more of a good time—thespian or no. Hats off to Hub Theatre Company of Boston‘s The Understudy…