Regional

THE PAGEANT OF THE MASTERS IS ON THE CASE On March 18, 1990, two young men dressed as Boston police officers walked unchallenged into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Some 81 minutes later, after tying up security guards in the basement, they had taken 2 objets d’art and 11 major paintings’”including 3 of Rembrandt’s works’”with…

ETHER IS NEITHER/NOR A dramaturgical mess, Elizabeth Egloff’s strangely shapeless historical drama about the mid-19th-century advent of ether as an anesthesia contains a fascinating story but lacks clear protagonists and precisely drawn characters. With a sprawling number of roles played by a 16-member ensemble, Ether Dome (the name given to the operating theater of Boston’s…

FINDING NEW MOMENTS IN THE WOODS I wondered at the intermission of Fiasco Theater’s production of Into the Woods why they hadn’t cast amazing singers. Up to this point, the ten-member ensemble played instruments, doubled up on roles, and told the oft-produced Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical in a Story Theatre fashion, omitting the role of…

FOUR PLAY The setting for Ronald Harwood’s 1999 play is a retirement home in England for former opera singers. Three of the residents,   Reginald, Cecily, and Wilfred,  try to persuade a newcomer to sing with them the Quartet from Rigoletto (which they once were famous for) during Verdi’s Anniversary Gala. Problems arise as this new  arrival, an…

THE GREAT CALL OF CHINA The very nature of adoption can leave a child’”and the adult he or she becomes’”filled with questions: Who were you, Mother?   Why did you make this choice?   Do you regret it?   And perhaps most painful to ponder:   Would you be glad to meet me, if you could?   For Jade McCullough…

HARDLY THE ANIMAL IT WANTS TO BE Life comes to this new chamber musical, but only in the center of the second act, giving a hint of what the creators intended. Unfortunately, the flimsy premise and one-dimensional protagonists in librettist Rick Elice and composer/lyricist Michael Patrick Walker’s Dog and Pony result in a book with…

FRACTURED FAIRY TALES Director Jessica Kubzansky’s imagination is firing on all cylinders, turning frivolity into delight with South Coast Rep’s  The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, a Theatre for Young Audiences production. Playwright John Glore closely follows  Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith’s best-selling 1992 children’s book of the same name, turning 13 beloved fairy…

TRAGIC FOR HIM BUT GOOD FUN FOR US Hot on the heels of the run of Old Jews Telling Jokes, the Lyceum brings us a very different and more personal look at Jewish humor.   Instead of a non-stop set of jokes, comedian and actor Brad Zimmerman’s one-man show is a well-rounded piece.   Part observational humor,…

AMERICAN HERO OR AMERICAN ZERO? While researching a speech on the origins of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” I came across a name that I remembered from a visit to Gettysburg National Military Park’”Major General Daniel E. Sickles, Union Third Army Corps commander. One of the most controversial figures in American history, Sickles has an almost universally…

WHAT, WOULD IT KILL YOU TO HEAR A JEWISH JOKE, I ASK YOU? A German, a Frenchman, and a Jew are crawling across the desert.   The German says, “Mein Gott!   I’m so hot and thirsty and tired.   I must have a beer!”   The Frenchman says, “Mon Dieu!   I’m so hot and thirsty and tired.   I…

TIME IS RELATIVE FOR THE RELATIVES IN TIME J. B. Priestley’s Time and the Conways is in some ways a creaky play, yet the production at The Old Globe is so lovingly directed, thrillingly acted, and stunningly designed that I can declare with confidence it is one of the most luminous productions you may ever…

DIM LIGHTS As part of its 17th Annual Pacific Playwrights Festival, South Coast Repertory presented a play by Adam Rapp. Unlike Theresa Rebeck’s Zealot and Rajiv Joseph’s Mr. Wolf, which received staged readings last weekend, Mr. Rapp’s The Purple Lights of Joppa Illinois, read once at SCR’s NewSCRipts series last December,  was given a fully staged…