Nancy Grossman - Page 5

Once upon a time, a guy and a girl meet on the streets of Dublin, bond over their shared passion for music, enrich each other's lives, and find the way forward to the separate paths that their lives were meant to follow. With its current homegrown production of ONCE, SpeakEasy Stage Company demonstrates once again its penchant for capturing the essence of an award-winning musical and successfully molding it to fit the expectations of their audience and the parameters of the Roberts Studio Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts. It was announced today that the run is extended for an additional week due to overwhelming demand.

THE ILLUSIONISTS - LIVE FROM BROADWAY can make you forget your troubles and get happy for a couple of hours. From start to finish, the six-member team of multi-talented performers takes turns completing stunning works of prestidigitation, illusion, and daring, mixed with charm, comedy, and extraordinary lighting and sound effects. THE ILLUSIONISTS has been on Broadway and traveling around the world for nearly a decade, so it is a finely-tuned machine that knows how to capture and hold an audience. The National Tour cast gracing the stage of the Emerson Colonial Theatre consists of Colin Cloud (The Deductionist), Raymond Crowe (The Unusualist), Paul Dabek (The Trickster), Jonathan Goodwin (The Daredevil), An Ha Lim (The Manipulator), and Sabine Van Diemen (The Sorceress), with a quartet of Magician's Assistants (Alison Karoly, Ashleigh McCready, Nick Raiano, Jesus Sepulveda Maldonado) whose athleticism and dance skills add some extra flair to the already hefty entertainment value.

With North Korea so much in the news these days, the American Repertory Theater is offering the opportunity to take a virtual trip to that part of the world with its production of Celine Song's new play, ENDLINGS. Set in part on South Korea's remote Man-Jae Island, and in part on the island of Manhattan, the Korean-Canadian-American playwright whisks us across borders, plunges us into the depths of the ocean, and endeavors to convey the immigrant experience and advocate for the concept that everyone has a right to just exist.

Pigeon keepers are an interesting and unique, albeit diminishing, subset of humans, and within that group is a subset, presumably small, of people who identify with the birds. Taking it one step further, Birdy, the protagonist in Naomi Wallace's adaptation of William Wharton's novel BIRDY, identifies, not with, but as a bird. Strange as it sounds, it may be the most sane response to an insane world in this drama that toggles back and forth between a pre-World War II Philadelphia suburb and an Army hospital in post-war Kentucky. It is a war story that plays out on the battlefield of an intense, intimate friendship, where the psychological wounds are more damaging and enduring than the physical ones. Steve Maler's skillful direction unleashes a dazzling palette of colorful performances, each actor contributing a broad brush stroke to the communal masterpiece.

Patrons of the Merrimack Repertory Theatre are quite familiar with playwright Lauren Gunderson, named the most produced playwright in America by American Theatre Magazine in 2017, most recently for the much-lauded MRT December production of MISS BENNET: CHRISTMAS AT PEMBERLEY which she co-authored with Margot Melcon. MRT now presents the world premiere of Gunderson's THE HEATH, a heartwarming tribute to the memory of her late grandfather. Miranda Barnett and George Judy inhabit their real-life counterparts with care and humanity.

Needham native Gerard Alessandrini has been practicing the craft of parody professionally for nearly four decades, ever since FORBIDDEN BROADWAY debuted in New York in 1982. Numerous iterations later, he has pointed his pen at perhaps the biggest target on Broadway, the award-winning juggernaut, Hamilton, and its creative genius, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Following its 2016 premiere and successful run at the Triad Theater in New York, Huntington Theatre Company presents the extended Boston engagement of the national tour of SPAMILTON: AN AMERICAN PARODY on its Wimberly Stage in the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.

Eighty years after the Broadway premiere of Lillian Hellman's THE LITTLE FOXES, the Lyric Stage Company production, under the direction of Scott Edmiston, demonstrates that the classic American drama has lost none of its punch. A titanic team of actors portrays the dynamic within the rapacious Hubbard family and the collateral damage they impose on all who have the misfortune of being in their path. Without exception, the characters are three-dimensional, fully realized, and thoroughly alive, compelling the audience to engage with them on an intensely emotional level.

THE CHRISTIANS by Lucas Hnath takes us into the world of an evangelical megachurch, a place that holds a certain amount of mystery for those of us who practice different religions or lack belief in any faith. Apollinaire Theatre Company and Director Brooks Reeves set the stage with a 16-voice choir, accompanied on the organ by their conductor, and a supersized wooden cross looming over them on the upstage wall. To create an ambience of authenticity, when the pastor and his associate make their entrance, they reach into the audience to shake hands and welcome us to the service while the choir rocks out on a processional hymn.

SCHOOL OF ROCK - THE MUSICAL is bursting with kids, all of them bursting with talent. Based on the 2003 movie starring Jack Black, the stage version is the brainchild of Andrew Lloyd Webber, a guy who knows a thing or two about creating successful musicals. Nominated for four 2016 Tony Awards, the show ran for more than three years on Broadway, a little over a year in London, and the national tour has been on the road since September, 2017. It's a feel good musical with a happy ending, something to lighten up the winter doldrums.

Anita Hollander lost her left leg to cancer in 1977 and channeled her experiences and musical theater skills into writing and performing a solo show, STILL STANDING: A MUSICAL SURIVAL GUIDE FOR LIFE'S CATASTROPHES. With songs, wit, and a powerful message of resilience, Hollander represents something far greater than mere survival when she takes the stage in New Rep's BlackBox Theater at the Mosesian Center for the Arts.

The world premiere of Boston playwright Michael Walker's BARE STAGE lands smack in the middle of the zeitgeist, surrounded by the swirling maelstrom of #MeToo and a building movement within the theater arts community to pay attention to the needs of actors when they are at their most vulnerable. Walker wades deeply into an exploration of nudity on stage, seeking to answer the question of when it is essential to the play, and when it crosses the boundary to objectification or exploitation. The bottom line is to find the balance between the point/counterpoint of censorship vs. artistic freedom.

Bedlam returns to Central Square theater for the third time in five seasons, fresh from a critically-acclaimed production Off-Off-Broadway. A little more than a century after George Bernard Shaw wrote PYGMALION, it continues to resonate in the #MeToo era with its feminist ideology.

In one of the most mesmerizing performances in recent memory, Jade Wheeler answers the question with a stunning interpretation of Eartha Kitt, both as an artist and as a person. With a foundation of creative direction by Cailin Doran, outstanding piano accompaniment by music director Seulah Noh, and synergistic design elements, Wheeler does the rest with the power of her voice, her magnetic gaze, and her expressive movements.

You might go home hungry, but you'll have your fill of belly laughs at Wendy MacLeod's SLOW FOOD now having its World Premiere at Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell. We've all been there, sitting in a restaurant, starving, and waiting what seems like eons before the waiter sashays over to introduce himself. "Hello, I'm Bryce - like the Canyon - and I'll be taking care of you." This is the premise and the situation for the couple having a bad first day on their anniversary trip to Palm Springs. Their gratification is seriously delayed, but we get 95 minutes of delicious comedy.

HEARTLAND conjures up an image of amber waves of grain and purple mountains majesties. For the part of it that is set in Nebraska, some of that may be appropriate. However, for the portion of it that is set in Afghanistan, it may be nothing more than a mirage. Likewise, the image of the United States as a land of exceptionalism and the world's moral authority would receive far more acceptance in the heartland than in that faraway, war-torn country that has been intertwined with ours for decades. Playwright Gabriel Jason Dean holds a mirror up to the face of US involvement with Afghanistan from the time of Russia's occupation, exploring a myriad of questions about responsibility, complicity, transparency, and morality, and the unintended consequences that always follow from even the most noble efforts.

Around this time last year, Chicago-based theatre troupe Manual Cinema made its debut appearance at ArtsEmerson: The World On Stage with a five-day run of ADA/AVA. Having been a big hit, they have returned for a second visit, presenting THE END OF TV for a two-week run at the Emerson Paramount Center. If you can't decide whether to watch television, see a movie, or go to a live performance, Manual Cinema has got you covered with their multimedia style of entertaining storytelling. In addition to live-action silhouettes, overhead projection, video, puppetry, and humans, it is all backed up by a five-piece band playing and singing an original score.

The 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalist for drama is a compelling production at the Lyric Stage Company with an all-female team of director, designers, and actors. Focusing on the lives of nine teenage girls, it is played out on a suburban soccer practice field where the challenges of the game are mingled with the challenges of coming of age. It is a welcome sight to behold.

Nearly a century and a half after Nora Helmer walked out on her husband Torvald and their three children in Henrik Ibsen's 1879 classic A DOLL'S HOUSE, playwright Lucas Hnath proposes a well-thought reply to the speculation of what became of her in A DOLL'S HOUSE, PART 2. Its 2017 Broadway staging received eight Tony nominations, with Laurie Metcalf taking home the award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Play, and the Huntington Theatre Company's co-production with Berkeley Repertory Theatre joins a roster of 27 theaters making it the most-produced play in the country during the 2018-2019 season.

The Boston premiere of the US National Tour of Roald Dahl's CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY opened at the Boston Opera House this week, just a year after the Broadway production closed. The core of the Broadway creative team brings in a 36-member cast, including the beguiling candy man Willy Wonka and the Oompa Loompas, his odd little troupe of orange-haired factory workers.

SpeakEasy Stage Company presents Boston premiere of Bess Wohl's 2015 Off-Broadway comedy with a stellar cast of locals under the masterful direction of M. Bevin O'Gara. A play with limited dialogue challenges the actors to bare their inner personae, while requiring that the audience listen harder and sit with the awkward experience. The reward is tons of fun and, perhaps, enlightenment? A great start for the 2019 theater season.