Nancy Grossman - Page 7

Merrimack Repertory Theatre opens it 40th anniversary season with NATIVE GARDENS, #8 on American Theatre magazine's list of the top 10 most-produced plays of 2018-2019. With a dozen theaters mounting Karen Zacarias' delightful tale that pits a millennial, Latinx couple against a white, baby boomer couple, across a shared backyard fence, my prediction is that there will be lots of happy patrons debating the definition of good neighbors after seeing this show. To complicate matters, all four are basically good and decent people, just like us, but circumstances change. When they are tested and show new colors, are they a temporary aberration or their true ones?

In news recently reported, the 2018-2019 season will be Zeitgeist Stage Company's last, after seventeen years of notable productions as an acclaimed stalwart of the Boston fringe theater scene. Artistic Director David J. Miller has never shied away from plays that deal with controversial or highly charged political subject matter, and he is not about to change now. For his penultimate production, Miller directs the New England premiere of Jon Robin Baitz's VICUÑA, a searing takedown of the current administration and its take-no-prisoners march from the nomination to the election.

What happens when you take an Oscar Wilde classic play from the Naughty Nineties, add about a dozen original musical numbers, and update the story and setting to London's swinging Carnaby Street in the sixties? Well, if you put it in the hands of Director/Choreographer Ilyse Robbins and Music Director Steve Bass, you get a rom-com that is heavy on both the romance and the comedy, a ride in the wayback machine, and an afternoon (or evening) delight at the Greater Boston Stage Company in Stoneham.

Brookline playwright and former Huntington Playwriting Fellow Eleanor Burgess captures the zeitgeist in her fast-paced and intense new play, THE NICETIES, now receiving its world premiere by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. Inspired by a 2015 firestorm at Yale University, her alma mater, Burgess dives head first into the deep end of racial politics in academia, and tackles difficult questions that are most often avoided in discourse in America today. She employs a millennial black student and a 60-year old white professor to effectively argue opposing sides of the debate, but Burgess is smart enough not to choose sides, leaving it up to the audience to contemplate their own thoughts and feelings.

Lyric Stage Company opens its 44th season with the Tony Award-winning (seven, including Best Musical) KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, directed and choreographed by Rachel Bertone, with music direction by Dan Rodriguez, who gets pizazz and a far bigger sound than anyone would expect from a five-piece orchestra. The show is almost entirely sung-through, and the Kander and Ebb score is outstanding, given its due by a cadre of vocalists who make each song better than the last. Eddy Cavazos and Taavon Gamble are impressive in their debuts at Lyric Stage.

New Repertory Theatre presents the New England premiere of Young Jean Lee's STRAIGHT WHITE MEN, most recently seen on Broadway over the summer. Lee became the first Asian-American female playwright to have a play produced on Broadway with this exploration of privilege, identity, and American values in a white, middle-class family.

World premiere musical theater piece adapted by Davone Tines and Michael Schachter from 1931 Langston Hughes poem, 'The Black Clown.' Dramatic monologue with orchestral accompaniment is part elegy, part declaration of independence, and part celebration which resonates in 2018 America. Tines gives a full-throated performance as the titular character with support from a twelve-person ensemble of singularly-talented singers and dancers.

TRUE WEST is a dark, yet humorous play by the late Sam Shepard, one of America's foremost playwrights. Joe Short directs a stellar cast of Nael Nacer, Alexander Platt, Mark Cohen, and Marya Lowry in a story of family dysfunction, dramatic conflict, and sibling rivalry, set in a Southern California suburb where Hollywood and the Mojave Desert compete to influence the lives of a pair of brothers.

Mark Linehan and Jennifer Ellis march in step in a glorious rendering of Meredith Willson's THE MUSIC MAN to close out Reagle Music Theatre's 50th Anniversary Summer Season with a bang. Director/choreographer Susan M. Chebookjian's staging is seamless, with one production number after another showing off the ensemble's terpsichorean talent with challenging dance combinations, and Music Director Dan Rodriguez conducts a 12-piece orchestra that brings out the brio of Willson's score. The 1957 Tony Award-winning Best Musical still has lots of get up and go, with stirring marches and patter songs, romantic ballads, and a town full of characters as American as apple pie.

Olivia D'Ambrosio's vision for DARK ROOM is an artistic blend of spoken dialogue, choreographed movement, evocative sounds and music, and the best use of the architectural features of the space at the Multicultural Arts Center in East Cambridge. George Brant's play is inspired by the life, death, and photography of Francesca Woodman, and Bridge Rep employs a cast of 22 women to portray the subjects of Woodman's works.

Timeless tale re-imagined with contemporary spin by Jason O'Connell and Brenda Withers. Jeremiah Kissel makes GSC debut in title role opposite Andrea Goldman, under the direction of Artistic Director Robert Walsh.

An energetic cast of nearly 40 performers and a 16-piece orchestra give the incomparable Cole Porter score of ANYTHING GOES its due. Leigh Barrett headlines as Reno Sweeney, and multiple IRNE Award-winners Elaine Grace and Dan Rodriguez direct/choreograph and music direct/conduct, respectively. The fabulous singing and dancing keep this ship afloat for its transatlantic journey.

Premiere of documentary play about the former First Lady takes us back to those saner days of yesteryear, when a Republican forced from office in ignominy was replaced by a decent man who tried to heal the nation. Betty Ford may have been her husband's greatest asset in the two short years they resided in the White House, but her impact rippled through the country for much longer.

ArtsEmerson presents the New England premiere of BORN FOR THIS - A NEW MUSICAL, based on the life story of Bebe Winans and his sister Cece Winans, offspring of a spiritual, musical Detroit family, who made a huge splash as teenagers on the Praise the Lord network of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in the 1980s. With a book by Charles Randolph-Wright, Bebe Winans, and Lisa D'Amour, and original music and lyrics by Winans, the majority of which were written for the show, BORN FOR THIS offers a longitudinal view of the Winans journey from music biz hopeful, to fledgling performer, to breakout R&B star, and award-winning (six Grammys) artist. Under the slick direction of Randolph-Wright and music director Steven Jamail, the cast is extraordinary from top to bottom, with Donald Webber Jr. and Loren Lott giving star turns as Bebe and Cece.

The 133rd spring season of The Boston Pops Orchestra at Symphony Hall is winding down, but the final week is a whirlwind of activity, culminating in three performances of WEST SIDE STORY: In Concert, and an appearance by two of the stars of the groundbreaking HAMILTON: AN AMERICAN MUSICAL. Tony Award-winning actress Renee Elise Goldsberry and her special guest, Tony-nominated Phillipa Soo, stepped in to replace Leslie Odom, Jr. (another HAMILTON alum) when a scheduling conflict made him unavailable.

Greater Boston Stage Company has lined up a dream ensemble for their season finale, CALENDAR GIRLS, based on the 2003 Miramax motion picture. Under the direction of Nancy E. Carroll, a formidable actor in her own right, Maureen Brennan, Sarah deLima, Mary Potts Dennis, Kerry A. Dowling, Karen MacDonald, and Bobbie Steinbach tastefully disrobe for a photo shoot to produce a calendar for charity. Cheryl McMahon, Kathy St. George, Jade Guerra, Michael Kaye, Sean McGuirk, and Nael Nacer keep their clothes on, but add to the fun.

Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston, celebrating its 50th Anniversary Summer Season, was still in its first decade when A CHORUS LINE opened on Broadway in 1975, kicking off its run of 6,137 performances. The groundbreaking musical was nominated for twelve Tony Awards, winning nine, and took home the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Forty-three years later, it remains a classic for elevating the nameless boys and girls who toil on the line to marquee status. Without the singers and dancers in the chorus, there could be no musical theater; and without musicals, the theater world would be a quieter, more subdued place.

Artistic Director Lee Mikeska Gardner embraces the mission of The Nora Theatre Company to "promote the feminine voice" with an all-male production of LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES, Christopher Hampton's 1985 adaptation from the novel by Choderlos de Laclos. Perhaps best known from the 1988 film DANGEROUS LIAISONS, which starred Glenn Close, John Malkovich, and Michelle Pfeiffer, the pre-French revolution era story is decadent, delicious, overflowing with sexual intrigue, and populated with characters who mostly get what they deserve. In Gardner's retelling, the audience gets what it deserves, a thoroughly entertaining, albeit mildly risque, evening at the theater.

Boston's newest small theater company christened its inaugural season with a one-night only, pop-up musical benefit performance of SWEENEY TODD, THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET IN CONCERT on Saturday, June 2nd, at First Church Cambridge. The brain-child and labor of love of Producing Artistic Director Shana Dirik, Theater UnCorked may be new and may be small, but its arrival is worthy of a champagne toast.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller was renowned and celebrated for his masterpiece DEATH OF A SALESMAN, as well as ALL MY SONS and THE CRUCIBLE, plays in which issues of morality took center stage. He refused to name names when called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, spoke out agains the Vietnam War, and was an activist in many social causes, allowing him to be seen as the moral conscience of the nation. However, Bernard Weinraub reveals Miller's feet of clay in the world premiere of his play FALL, directed by Peter DuBois at Huntington Theatre Company's Calderwood Pavilion.