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Theater Review: CROWNS (Moonbox at Arrow Street Arts)
SIT BACK AND LET THIS CAST TAKE YOU TO CHURCH Aptly described as a powerful mix of gospel music and “hattitude,” Moonbox Production’s Crowns—which opened last night at Arrow Street Arts—indeed hits on many levels. Regina Taylor’s adaptation of the eponymous coffee table book by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry flows easily between music and…
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Theater Review: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (Actors’ Shakespeare Project)
HALCYON AND ON AND ON Director Maurice Emmanuel Parent’s vibrant, pulsing production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream transforms the woods outside Athens into a 1990s dance floor. With throbbing club beats (sound design by Mackenzie Adamick), fairies dressed in glitter and leather (costumes by Seth Bodie), and a gender-fluid aesthetic of hedonism, this Dream…
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Theater Review: IN THE BAR OF A TOKYO HOTEL (Tennessee Williams at the Hudson Backstage Theatre in Hollywood)
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’ SELDOM SEEN PLAY SHOWS WHY IT’S SO SELDOM SEEN It can be a curse to start one’s literary or dramatic career with a masterpiece. Doing so serves to intensify the expectations of one’s readership or audience while inflating the artist’s creative anxieties. Towards the end of his life, author of the classic antiwar…
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Theater Review: REGENCY GIRLS (Pre-Broadway World Premiere at The Old Globe)
A RIOTOUS CARRIAGE RIDE THROUGH TIME Somewhere between empire waistlines and leather harnesses, Regency Girls carves out a raucous, messy, and strangely moving place for itself onstage at The Old Globe. This new musical, with a book by Jennifer Crittenden and Gabrielle Allan, takes the stiff-backed decorum of Austen-era England and smashes it headfirst into…
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Theater Review: HAIRSPRAY (Desert Theatricals)
TRY TO FIND A HAIRSPRAY WITH BETTER HOLD; THIS ONE WORKS FROM HEAD TO NECK! As I was driving to the Rancho Mirage Amphitheatre I noticed that the regular Friday Night Stress was lifting from my shoulders. I already loved Hairspray and Desert Theatricals can be quite stylish and classy, but I soon discovered that…
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Theater Review: HER PORTMANTEAU (Central Square Theater and Front Porch Arts Collaborative in Cambridge, MA)
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED The fourth episode in Mfoniso Udofia’s ambitious nine-episode Ufot Family Cycle, Her Portmanteau, takes us deeper into the fascinating story of a very specific Nigerian-American family whose struggles remain universal. Gripping performances by Patrice Jean-Baptiste, Jade Guerra, and Lorraine Victoria Kanyike create an immersive and emotionally charged one-act play that kept…
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Theater Review: SHUCKED (National Tour)
IT DON’T GET MUCH CORNIER– AND THAT’S THE POINT In Shucked, the jokes fly fast as exploding kernels of popcorn in this Tony-award winning musical comedy—part Brigadoon, part Music Man, and wholly the old TV show Hee Haw (which I’ve never actually seen but instinctively recognize). Quinn VanAntwerp and Miki Abraham Jake Odmark and Mike Nappi Shucked is the…
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Theater Review: BUTTERCUP (Intercontinental Drift at Marin Shakespeare)
A RIOTOUS ROMP Audiences are often drawn to a theatre by curiosity when an unknown play opens, particularly when the description is “The sacred, the profane, and side-splitting hilarity unite mother and daughter.” What on earth does that mean? Gianna Digregorio Inspired by Guy de Maupassant’s 1880 short story “Boule de Suif” (which translates into…
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Theater Review: ARISTOTLE/ALEXANDER (Company of Angels)
Teenagers these days are out of control. They eat like pigs, they are disrespectful of adults, they interrupt and contradict their parents, and they terrorize their teachers. — Aristotle When you have endless arts options to choose from every day, you eventually develop simple, blunt, sometimes arbitrary, rules to help decide what to see. One…
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Theater Review: HAMLET (A.C.T.’s Strand Theatre)
A rare and exhilarating theatrical event is unfolding at American Conservatory Theater’s Strand Theater: Suzy Eddie Izzard’s one-person performance of Hamlet. This is no ordinary production. It’s a singular encounter with Shakespeare’s masterpiece, filtered through the mind, wit, and boundless energy of a celebrated British comedian, actor, and self-described “action transvestite” who now goes by…
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Theater Review: THE HEART SELLERS (TheatreWorks)
With just two actors onstage for 90 minutes, The Heart Sellers relies entirely on the chemistry, charisma, and emotional intelligence of its performers—and in TheatreWorks’s production, Nicole Javier as Luna and Narea Kang as Jane more than rise to the occasion. Under the fluid direction of Jennifer Chang, their performances are vivid, honest, and remarkably…
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Theater Review: THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG (Greater Boston Stage Company in Stoneham, MA)
GOING WRONG NEVER FELT SO RIGHT Like any great farce, the success of The Play That Goes Wrong depends on the utmost precision and skill of the actors, crew, and design team to make everything go right while simultaneously making it all appear to the audience to be going woefully wrong. It’s all in the…
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Theater Review: FAT HAM (San Francisco Playhouse)
TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE…AND FUNNY Now playing at San Francisco Playhouse, Fat Ham is James Ijames’ Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony-nominated riff on Hamlet—but this is no brooding royal revenge tale. Instead, it’s a vibrant, funny, and deeply human family drama set in a Southern backyard, where barbecue smoke and family secrets hang thick…
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Theater Review: THE CAKE (The Bent, Palm Springs)
A SLICE OF LIFE WITH LAYERS OF ISSUES The Bent, Coachella Valley’s main theatre geared towards the queer community, is currently running The Cake, playwright Bekah Brunstetter’s take on the true news story about a bakery that refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. The Cake is a dramedy, with four actors generating…
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Theater Review: DIETRICH (Tour at Revolution in Palm Springs)
FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN Last night, Revolution Stage Company presented Cindy Marinangel‘s in her one woman show, Dietrich. Inspired by the legendary Marlene Dietrich, this is a captivating night of theater. Marinangel fully inhabits Dietrich, bringing a fresh and compelling take on her life and career. From the moment she steps onto the stage she…
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Theater Review: UNCLE VANYA (Shakespeare Theatre Company)
A BEAUTIFULLY SHABBY, STARKLY HUMAN TRIUMPH From the moment the house opens, Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Uncle Vanya, directed by Simon Godwin and starring Hugh Bonneville, signals that this is no ordinary Chekhov. The “pre-show” is a quietly brilliant touch: actors drift onstage, greet the audience, lace up their boots, and half-slip into character as if the…
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Theater Review: CAROUSEL (Boston Lyric Opera)
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…
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Theater Review: SHOWSTOPPER (Gary Stockdale at Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks)
HIGH NOTES AND HARD KNOCKS: SHOWSTOPPER CHARTS THE SONGBOOK OF SURVIVAL Singer songwriter Gary Stockdale has a loyal but eclectic fan base. His long-term devotees date back to legendary TV producer Steven Bochco’s cutting-edge and sadly short-lived musical police drama Cop Rock, in which he played a drug dealer who stood before the bench and…
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Theater Review: DON’T EAT THE MANGOS (Huntington Theatre Company at Calderwood Pavilion)
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…
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Theater Review: #CHARLOTTESVILLE (Keegan Theatre in D.C.)
HAUNTING, URGENT, AND SPEAKS VOLUMES Priyanka Shetty’s #Charlottesville, currently running at the Keegan Theatre, is a searing and deeply personal exploration of one of the darkest moments in recent American history—the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. More than a mere recounting of the events, the production offers a visceral and emotionally charged portrait…
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