R. Scott Reedy

What did our critic think of NIGHT SIDE SONGS at American Repertory Theater?

The legend of Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre stems in part from the many pre-Broadway tryouts that have and continue to take place there, including not one but two now-iconic Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musicals, 1943’s “Oklahoma!” – when it was still being called “Away We Go!” – and 1945’s “Carousel.”

What did our critic think of THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG at Greater Boston Stage Company?

Written by and starring comedic actor and playwright Wallace Shawn and avant garde theater director André Gregory, and based on their lives, the 1981 film is the story of two old friends who share dinner at a New York bistro while revisiting their ongoing debate about the life of an artist and the art of making a living.

In playwright Ricardo Pérez González’s “Don’t Eat the Mangos,” three Puerto Rican sisters are living outside San Juan as a hurricane approaches and family tumult causes secrets and ugly truths to spill out.

The first production of Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux’s “The Triumph of Love” – performed in Paris in 1732 – was no box-office bonanza. Indeed, it closed after just six performances, with audiences apparently finding distasteful the story of a princess seducing not only a young man but an older man and an older woman as well.

Anyone familiar with the mysterious and spooky, not to mention altogether ooky, Addams Family will tell you that Morticia and Gomez’s daughter Wednesday is known not only for her morbid nature, but also for her ever-present and carefully protected pigtails.

What did our critic think of PARADE at Emerson Colonial Theatre?

Waltham native Krystal Hernandez made her Broadway debut on February 19, taking over the coveted role of Anna of Cleves, one of the wives of Henry VIII, in the New York production of the Tony Award-winning musical comedy “SIX,” now at the Lena Horne Theatre.

What did our critic think of A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE at Roberts Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion At Boston Center For The Arts?

Growing up outside Chicago, Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Sarah Ruhl (“The Clean House,” “In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)”) would listen to a cassette of Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” on holiday drives with her family to her father’s home state of Iowa.

What did our critic think of LADY DAY AT EMERSON'S BAR AND GRILL at Merrimack Repertory Theatre?

With its magnificent mounting of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” at Hibernian Hall in Nubian Square, Roxbury, through February 23, Actors’ Shakespeare Project has given Boston theatergoers the first must-see production of 2025.

Writer and director Gerard Alessandrini, the comedy mastermind behind “Forbidden Broadway,” has long taken his own Broadway fandom one step further, though, creating iconic parodies of stars like Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Carol Channing, Liza Minnelli, Yul Brynner, Patti LuPone, Chita Rivera, Mandy Patinkin, and Bernadette Peters and shows including “Hello, Dolly!” “The King & I,”  “Annie,” “The Phantom of the Opera,” “The Lion King,” and “Wicked.”

Actor, playwright, producer, and director Jordan E. Cooper is on a roll. The Emmy-nominated television sitcom “The Ms. Pat Show,” which he created, co-executive produces and directs, premiered on BET+ in 2021 and is now in its fifth season on the streaming service.

What did our critic think of HAUNTED at Company One Theatre?

Having landed more than a dozen hits – “Midnight Blue,” “Don’t Cry Out Loud,” “You Should Hear How She Talks About You,” and “Through the Eyes of Love” among them – on the Billboard charts in her long recording career, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Melissa Manchester knows what it’s like to be a part of pop-music history.

Goerke will be doing just that in “Die Tote Stadt” (“The Dead City”) – composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s poignant opera about the struggle with haunting memories of a lost loved one, that captures the final chapter of the Romantic era – which will be presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in collaboration with Boston Lyric Opera (BLO) on January 30 and February 1 at Symphony Hall.