Jan Nargi - Page 2

In a brief engagement at the Hanover Theatre in Worcester, Mass. (which ended this Sunday), the national tour of Steve Martin and Edie Brickell's southern musical BRIGHT STAR flickers between down-home country charm and maudlin storytelling. Strong performances and a kickin' on-stage bluegrass band, though, manage to knock off the tarnish of this tepid tale of hope and redemption to deliver an uplifting message in the end.

The national tour of the Tony Award-winning musical FUN HOME has landed in Boston and it's as sharply drawn and richly performed as its highly acclaimed Broadway predecessor. Once again mounted on a proscenium stage (it played in the round at Circle in the Square following its original Off-Broadway run at the Public Theatre), FUN HOME loses none of its laser focus as it shines a loving but bittersweet light on the family of a lesbian cartoonist whose memories spring to life from the pages of her latest graphic novel.

Director Maria Friedman's Olivier Award-winning London revival of Stephen Sondheim's MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG lives up to its acclaim in this Huntington Theatre Company production continuing now through October 15. Both Sondheim and Huntington Artistic Director Peter DuBois have called Friedman's MERRILY the best they have ever seen. Those declarations prove not to be hyperbole.

The ingenious stage adaptation of Mark Haddon's popular mystery novel THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME invites the audience into the challenging world of 15-year-old Christopher Boone (Adam Langdon on opening night) whose exceptional brain is trapped inside an emotionally stunted body. Through the heightened use of sights, sounds, and technically stylized staging, this Tony Award-winning play creates a world of frightening sensory overload that enables the viewer to empathize viscerally with a boy who can't empathize with others.

The Costa Verde Hotel on the cliffs high above Acapulco might as well be the end of the world for the tourists and American ex-patriots who converge there in Tennessee Williams' haunting and haunted THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA currently receiving a star-studded revival at the A.R.T. in Cambridge, Mass.

Joie de vivre is in short supply in AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, the acclaimed Broadway musical now launching its first national tour in Boston through November 6. Inspired by the beloved 1951 MGM movie musical starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, this Broadway iteration looks and feels monochromatic compared to its opulent Technicolor predecessor, but that is mostly by design. This adaptation brings the story's post World War II setting front and center, revealing a city and its inhabitants still shell shocked as they try to rebuild in the aftermath of the Nazi occupation.

Tight harmonies and an even tighter cast make the first national tour of the Tony Award-winning Best Musical A GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER delicious fun. Now at Boston's Citi Center Shubert Theatre through October 23, this totally original musical comedy by Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak crackles with snappy wit and endlessly clever songs.

The Ogunquit Playhouse in southern Maine has been setting the bar higher and higher with each new production under Bradford T. Kenney, artistic director. What used to be a quintessential ocean-side summer stock house now operates from May through November, often mounting New England, and occasionally national, regional premieres. Its current musical, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, is the company's most ambitious venture yet. Adapted from the 1996 Disney animated film which was based on the classic Victor Hugo novel "Notre Dame de Paris," the Ogunquit production boasts a towering vaulted set design, a 21-member cast of Broadway veterans, and a tremendous 32-member choir. This HUNCHBACK delivers soaring vocals as big as its epic themes.

The talented, hard-working children of MATILDA THE MUSICAL NATIONAL TOUR spend much of their time on stage revolting against their horrible headmistress Miss Trunchbull. Off-stage they should revolt against the horrible sound system that renders their lyrics indecipherable.

It's a lot to ask of a leading lady to make audiences forget Barbra Streisand in the role that catapulted her to stardom. That's one of the reasons why FUNNY GIRL, the musical that forever linked Streisand to the title character Fanny Brice, has never been revived on Broadway. Well, look no more, producers. If ever there was an actress who could fill Streisand's shoes and make FUNNY GIRL her own, it's the star who's currently electrifying audiences in the role at North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly: Shoshnna Bean.

Currently performing at the Lyric Stage in Boston is PETER AND THE STARCATCHER, Rick Elice's (Jersey Boys, The Addams Family) theatrical prequel to Peter Pan based on the best-selling children's novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. On and Off-Broadway, this high-energy, whimsical back story, directed by Alex Timbers and the late Roger Rees, took riotous, magical flight. At the Lyric, Peter barely gets off the ground.

At one point during her new one-woman play IN THE BODY OF THE WORLD, based on her highly acclaimed 2013 memoir of the same name, Eve Ensler repeats a phrase over and over to one of her doctors: "You're going to radiate my vagina. Radiate. My vagina. Radiate. My vagina. Radiate. My. Vagina." A pause, and then: "Do you know who I am?"

The coming of age of America during the tumultuous 1960s is brought vividly to life in DOGFIGHT, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's exquisite little musical now being presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company of Boston. Set in San Francisco on the eve of President Kennedy's assassination, DOGFIGHT pits the innocence of youth against the harsh realities of war as three young Marines dubbed 'the three bees' (for Birdlace, Boland and Bernstein) celebrate their last night at home with their buddies before shipping out to Vietnam.

The horrific future depicted in George Orwell's cautionary tale '1984' feels that much more frightening in 2016 because so much of the oligarchical world predicted by the visionary author in his dystopian 1949 novel has come to fruition. The power gap between the haves and the have-nots is alarming. Politicians use doublethink to twist hypocrisies into mind-numbing (and brainwashing) campaign slogans. Three-second sound bites and 140-character tweets are the newspeak that distills thought into easily regurgitated propaganda.

There's not much hope for the girls at the center of MILK LIKE SUGAR, Kirsten Greenidge's Obie Award-winning play about teenagers seeking fulfillment through pregnancy. Though the writing can be cliched at times, portrayals and direction are truthful. Thanks to excellent performances throughout, the memory of each of the play's imperfect characters will linger.

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has assaulted the fourth wall and countless racial stereotypes in his funny and audacious new play AN OCTOROON. Adapted from an 1859 melodrama titled "The Octoroon" by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault, Jenkins' piece weaves a biting contemporary narrative within Boucicault's stock storytelling to turn familiar antebellum tropes into jarring racial commentaries. Imagine "Gone with the Wind" down the rabbit hole and you get the idea.

The extraordinary journey of the Broadway revival of PIPPIN began at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge a few years back, and now that triumphant Tony Award-winning musical, directed by Diane Paulus, is back in Boston via the national tour. While some tweaks have since been made to the production that had its Broadway tryout at the A.R.T., the show's exuberant joie de vivre and circus-inspired excitement are still intact. If anything, the show's politics and humor have been heightened in this iteration, thanks largely to its sensational cast.

If the homespun humor and quirky philosophizing that comes to you live from Lake Woebegone via A Prairie Home Companion warms you up on a cold winter's night, then NICE FISH is your cup of cocoa. The brainchild of Mark Rylance and Louis Jenkins, based on Jenkins' offbeat down home prose poems written over the course of 50 years, NICE FISH is a somewhat surrealistic tale of those hearty folk who search for solace on the frozen lakes of Minnesota and spiritual solitude in the murky depths of their own minds.

DISGRACED and VIOLET heat up the winter with power and grace as the Huntington Theatre Company and SpeakEasy Stage enter the second half of their 2015-2016 seasons with winners.

If the thought of seeing a contemporary opera based on Tolstoy's War and Peace sends Siberian shivers down your spine, fear not. All that Russian angst and all those convoluted relationships between 'people with nine different names' are brought forth with ingenious musical clarity in NATASHA, PIERRE AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812.