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Theater Review: CHURCHILL (Calderwood Pavilion at Boston Center for the Arts)
TWO LONG HOURS WITH THE FORMER MAN OF THE HOUR There is no question that Churchill was a hero who played a major role in saving the world from Hitler’s fascism (though perhaps not as big a role as Stalin, but let’s not go down that road). Nor is there any doubt that David Payne,…
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Theater Review: CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (Palm Canyon Theater)
A SUGAR RUSH WITHOUT THE GOLDEN TICKET Palm Canyon Theatre kicks off its 39th season with David Greig‘s musical adaption of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a production that’s as colorful and sugary as a Wonka Bar — but often hollow once you bite in. Directed by Se Layne, the production bursts with…
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Theater Review: DIAL M FOR MURDER (Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook Terrace)
A KILLER REVIVAL Drury Lane’s Dial M for Murder may be set in 1950s London, but under Adam Immerwahr‘s taut direction, the suspense feels freshly sharpened. Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation keeps the bones of Frederick Knott’s 1952 thriller intact while daringly reimagining one key element: Margot Wendice’s affair is now with another woman. It’s a…
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Theater Review: ANTHROPOLOGY (Rogue Machine Theatre)
WHEN GRIEF MEETS THE ALGORITHM The terrible beauty of grief is that it makes us do irrational things with the most rational tools. In Lauren Gunderson‘s anthropology, now in its North American premiere at Rogue Machine Theatre, a Silicon Valley software engineer named Merril uses artificial intelligence to resurrect her missing sister Angie, only to…
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Theater Review: JAJA’S AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING (Mark Taper Forum)
BRAIDS AND BELONGING Some plays don’t announce themselves with spectacle. They invite you in through a metal grate, into a cramped Harlem salon where the air smells of braiding gel and the television plays Nollywood movies on loop. Before you know it, you’re laughing, aching, realizing how invested you’ve become in the fate of women…
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Theater Review: MACBETH (Actors’ Shakespeare Project)
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…
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Theater Review: PARALLEL PROCESS (Odyssey Theatre)
GHOSTS OF WAR, SHADOWS OF BROTHERHOOD Looking back fifty years, who doesn’t wish they’d acted differently? Decisions made in a moment can have eternal consequences. Ever help your brother commit a murder? Was it self-defense? What would the police think? Is violence ever justified? Tom Jenkins and Alan McRae In Parallel Process, written and directed…
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Theater Review: COME FROM AWAY (Paramount Theatre)
A NEWFOUND(LAND) WAY OF LOOKING AT MUSICAL THEATER It’s always a joy — and a rarity — to see a musical I’ve witnessed before reemerge as something fresher than the first time I saw it. Such is the case with the astounding production of the popular musical Come from Away at Paramount Theatre in Aurora….
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Theater Reviews: SARDINES (The Huntington’s Maso Studio) & 300 PAINTINGS (A.R.T.’s Farkas Hall)
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…
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Theater Review: VEAL (A Red Orchid Theatre)
SINK YOUR TEETH INTO THIS BLOODY CUT OF MEAT At some time in the future, a band of rebels have staged a successful coup against the United States. The prevailing system of order has been violently overthrown. Cities are razed to the ground, with surviving citizenry housed in camps. Food is scarce. Medicine is scarcer….
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Theater Review: SMALL (The Old Globe in San Diego)
SMALL IS EPIC In his exceptional how-to book Storyworthy, author and storyteller Matthew Dicks advises us to stop recounting tales that few can relate to — like the time you climbed Mt. Everest — and instead share stories that help others see themselves in similar moments. That’s how a story connects. Robert Montano does exactly…
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Theater Review: ADOLESCENT SALVATION (Rogue Machine Theatre at The Matrix)
The Radiant Disorder of Tim Venable’s Teenage Inferno [Contributing writer: Nick McCall] Rogue Machine is presenting Tim Venable’s intense and disquieting new play Adolescent Salvation, which arrives not as a tidy debutante but as a brilliant troublemaker. It lurches, it burns, it contradicts itself. It is alive in ways most new plays are not. Venable…
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Theater Review: SUFFS (National Tour)
A GREAT MUSICAL, SUFFS REMINDS US THAT DEMOCRACY ONLY MOVES FORWARD WHEN WOMEN DO While much of what we love in musicals is pure fiction, history has had an undeniable flair for the dramatic — and Broadway has always noticed. From Hamilton to 1776 to Evita, political legends have inspired some of the stage’s most…
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Theater Review: OTHERKIN (Road Theatre Company)
DRAGONS, DOOMSDAY, AND DAZZLE The Road Theatre Company launches its 34th season with N.T. Vandecar’s Otherkin, a bold, visually stunning new work staged by Christina Carlisi in her directorial premiere. Even when its mythology gets dense, the production keeps you hooked, partly because it looks fantastic, but mostly because it’s anchored by the beating heart…
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Theater Review: ROME, SWEET ROME (Chicago Shakespeare)
CARB-LOADERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! “For the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread…†Alright, so that’s not from Julius Caesar but Coriolanus, that other Shakespeare play about a politician undone by his own ambition and hubris (and that coincidentally also features a character called Brutus), but in this “ad-rap-tation” of the Bard’s…
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Theater Review: THE COUNTER (Umbrella Stage Company in Concord, MA)
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…
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Theater Review: WEATHER GIRL (St. Ann’s Warehouse)
WEATHER FORECAST: FUNNY AND SUNNY WITH A CHANCE OF ARMAGEDDON In recent years, I have watched a wave of productions by Millennial and Gen Z artists who are, quite understandably, petrified by the future and by the ecological catastrophe we have handed them. Francesca Moody Productions, the British powerhouse behind two of the most successful…
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Theater Review: LEO LIONNI’S “FREDERICK” (Chicago Children’s Theatre)
A thing of beauty is a joy forever. — John Keats Sleep-deprived and fortified with four cups of coffee, I hauled my cranky, cynical self on a Sunday morning to the Chicago Children’s Theatre in the West Loop to watch the opening production of their 20th season: a musical of Leo Lionni’s Frederick, a Caldecott Honor…
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Theater Review: HUZZAH! (The Old Globe)
HUZZAH AND HO-HUM The curtain speech at Huzzah! — which opened Thursday at The Old Globe — comes with bassoon and tambourine: silence thy phones, feed not ye actors. This bit of business tells you everything. The evening ahead will be enthusiastic, self-aware, and content to play within modest boundaries. The cast Nell Benjamin and…
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Theater Review: INTO THE WOODS (Spreckels Theatre Company in Rohnert Park)
A SONDHEIM SPECTACLE Sonoma County’s Spreckels Performing Arts Center has launched a tremendous production of Into the Woods, the perpetually popular and nearly forty-year-old musical spoof of classic fairy tales by composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim and author James Lapine. The show debuted on Broadway in 1987, won multiple Tony awards, and has been a recurring item…
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