Nancy Grossman - Page 15

Let's hope that THE LAST SCHWARTZ is not the last we'll see of the combined works of Deborah Zoe Laufer and Paula Plum. Following the success of the pairing of playwright and director in last summer's hilarious hit OUT OF STERNO, Gloucester Stage Company reunites the talented tandem for a pleasure ride to the dilapidated country home of the dysfunctional Schwartz family in Lake Huntington, New York. The witty, insightful New England premiere is given its due by a crackerjack cast who look like they've been performing together for months, not days.

SHOW BOAT inaugurates a partnership between Fiddlehead Theatre and Citi Performing Arts Center Shubert Theatre. The lavish, spectacular production is co-directed by Meg Fofonoff and Stacey Stephens, features a 27-piece live orchestra, and a cast of 50 triple-threat performers. The costumes by Stephens are to die for and the musical numbers are triumphant. If only it had a little more heart.

Benjamin Evett recreates his 2015 Elliot Norton Award-winning solo performance of The Mariner in ALBATROSS, co-written by Evett and Matthew Spangler. Rick Lombardo is back at the helm as director, and plans have been announced to take the play to The Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August and Off-Broadway in January.

The Boston Pops has been winning the affection of audiences in Boston and beyond for 131 seasons with programs like The Golden Age of Broadway and featured performers Marin Mazzie, Jason Danieley, Laura Osnes, and Justin Hopkins. Keith Lockhart was on the podium and Lidiya Yankovskaya was Guest Chorus Conductor with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston opens its 48th season with its first-rate production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic CAROUSEL. A triumvirate of women - Jennifer Ellis, Jessica Kundla, and Leigh Barrett - give sparkling performances, augmented by Broadway veteran Ciaran Sheehan, but Rachel Bertone's choreography makes this one of the best rides for the summer season.

Written and directed by Producing Artistic Director Weylin Symes, with original music and lyrics by local actor/director/writer/composer Steven Barkhimer, LOBSTER GIRL is set in Cape Ann, Massachusetts. The homegrown production features about a dozen songs of eclectic genres that serve as the tug boat to the laden book. The water hasn't reached a boil yet for this crustacean.

Bridge Repertory Theater of Boston concludes its third season with Marisa Wegrzyn's MUD BLUE SKY. Tickets are available for three remaining shows this weekend. Director Bridget Kathleen O'Leary draws colorful performances from Leigh Barrett, Deb Martin, and Veronica Anastasio Wiseman as three world-weary flight attendants, and Kaya Simmons as their adolescent pot-dealer.

Gloucester Stage Company opens its 37th season with LETTICE AND LOVAGE as a star vehicle for Academy Award-nominated Gloucester resident Lindsay Crouse. Written by Peter Shaffer (EQUUS, AMADEUS) for beloved British actress Dame Maggie Smith, Crouse takes on the title role of tour guide Lettice Douffet and makes it her own with panache and good humor. Marya Lowry is her incredulous employer Lotte Schoen and together they raise the bar for the art of verbal sparring. The esteemed scene partners feast on Shaffer's rich language and throw themselves into the theatrical shenanigans of the play, with supporting silliness well-represented by Janelle Mills and Mark Cohen.

BLOOD ON THE SNOW imagines the details of the morning after the Boston Massacre. On March 6, 1770, the acting Royal Governor met with his advisors in the Council Chamber in the Old State House to determine how to restore calm and prevent further bloodshed. The event was a watershed moment for the citizens of Boston on the road to the American Revolution. Patrick Gabridge, the Bostonian Society, and the National Park Service stage the production in the very room where history was made, and the audience becomes the virtual 'fly on the wall.'

Producing Artistic Director and Founder of Israeli Stage, Guy Ben-Aharon helmed a staged reading of Swedish-Tunisian playwright/author Jonas Hassen Khemiri's I CALL MY BROTHERS last night in Nordic Hall at the Scandinavian Cultural Center in West Newton. The first-ever theatrical performance at SCC was in partnership with the Center for Arabic Culture and featured a quartet of Boston actors: Ramona Lisa Alexander, Greg Maraio, Nael Nacer, and Gigi Watson.

ROOSEVELVIS is the latest production of the TEAM, a Brooklyn-based ensemble dedicated to making new work about the experience of living in America today. Fusing stage and screen, music and dance, humor and pathos, and gender bending portrayals, the show makes liberal use of film to chronicle a fanciful road trip from the Badlands to Graceland, one woman's much-needed journey of self-discovery.

Recent IRNE Award-winner Sarah Gazdowicz directs LAURA with a steady hand, garnering especially strong performances from Alexander Cook as Detective Mark McPherson and Steven Barkhimer as Waldo Lydecker. Jasmine Rush coolly plays the title character, an attractive career woman whose portrait infatuates the detective investigating her murder.

New Repertory Theatre closes its season with Mark St. Germain's FREUD'S LAST SESSION, an imagined meeting between Dr. Sigmund Freud and scholar/author C.S. Lewis. The pair skillfully debate the question of God's existence as England gears up for war with Nazi Germany. Jim Petosa deftly directs Joel Colodner and Shelley Bolman as the two academics in this cerebral play.

Zeitgeist Stage Company presents the Boston area premiere of Samuel D. Hunter's A GREAT WILDERNESS, set in a gay conversion camp in Idaho. A gentle Christian counselor takes on one final camper before his retirement, but the boy wanders off into the woods, setting in motion a physical search for him and soul-searching for the adults in his life. The plot gets lost in the woods with the missing boy, resulting in a very different play than anticipated.

Step back from the craziness of the current election season and into the zaniness of a fictional farcical political campaign in Lila Rose Kaplan's HOME OF THE BRAVE. Sean Daniels directs an ensemble cast in this good old-fashioned comedy, featuring family values, a dollop of magic, and a potential nominee you can wholeheartedly support. Loosely inspired by Moliere's TARTUFFE, Kaplan's play is the perfect antidote to real presidential politics.

WE'RE GONNA DIE is a sweet and weird song cycle, the perfect vehicle for Company One Theatre and the engaging Obehi Janice, backed up by a four-piece band that kicks it on the stage of Oberon. Playwright Young Jean Lee takes us through a series of life lessons by telling stories about pain, loneliness, illness, loss, and love, using humor and music to make us feel alright about the inevitable. It is definitely worth an hour of your time.

Boston Public Works presents Jim Dalglish's UNSAFE - a psychological thriller, a look at one family's attempt to live a normal life after the devastating losses of 9-11. Are we far enough removed from the event to be able to see it as fodder for drama? The play is powerful, relentless, and unsettling, building tension and terror up to an explosive, raw catharsis. UNSAFE offers authentic performances across the board and design elements that capture the emotional essence of the story. This one will leave you thinking - and feeling.

THE WILD PARTY is exactly what it says it is, and Moonbox Productions invites you to be a voyeur for the Michael John Lachiusa version of Joseph Moncure March's 1928 risque narrative poem, directed and choreographed by Rachel Bertone. Katie Anne Clark and Todd Yard anchor a crazy-good, talented ensemble and you will be immersed in the Roaring Twenties zeitgeist. It's a wild ride that you won't want to miss.

MR. BURNS, A POST-ELECTRIC PLAY defends the thesis that storytelling and making theater may be of great value in times of crisis, but goes awry with its repetitious retelling of an episode of THE SIMPSONS. Director A. Nora Long, a creative design team, and strong acting performances are not enough to put a charge in playwright Anne Washburn's work.

THREESOME blends the personal and the political, as well as comedy and drama, in a powerful and provocative multi-layered story. Artistic Director Danielle Fauteux Jacques pulls no punches and spurs her trio of actors (Alison Meirowitz McCarthy, Mauro Canepa, Geoff Van Wyck) to bravely deliver raw performances.