Boston Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 9

BWW Review: WOLF PLAY at Company One Theatre
by Andrew Child - February 24, 2020

For a long time within their history, Company One has cornered the market in Boston for selecting those cutting-edge new works that are able to effectively spark conversations and juxtaposing them against each other in ways that are both productive and incendiary. Hats off to Director of New Work, I...

BWW Review: 10 X 10 NEW PLAY FESTIVAL at Barrington Stage Company Offers A Little Something for Everyone.
by Marc Savitt - February 17, 2020

With costumes by Trinity Koch, lighting by Lucas Pawelski, sound by Alex Sovronsky, stage management by Rachel Lynne Harper, and line production by Nora Zahn, ten new plays presented by six fine performers under the guidance of two strong directors, the  10 x 10 NEW PLAY FESTIVAL continues at Barrin...

BWW Review: HAMLET 360: THY FATHER'S SPIRIT at Commonwealth Shakespeare Company
by Andrew Child - February 15, 2020

It is interesting to look at the history of art and entertainment by analyzing the innovations which have been deemed exclusively novelties and written off as fleeting trends by their contemporaries. For film, color and sound were both considered by many to be cheap gimmicks that would quickly fade ...

BWW Review: MEAN GIRLS at Citizens Bank Opera House
by Jan Nargi - February 09, 2020

With friends like The Plastics, who needs enemies? That's the basic premise for the surprisingly fresh and sometimes scathingly funny high school musical MEAN GIRLS written by Emmy Award winner Tina Fey based on her 2004 hit film. Treading the familiar teen angst territory of cafeterias, locker room...

BWW Review: DETROIT RED at ArtsEmerson
by Andrew Child - February 07, 2020

In David Mamet's book On Directing Film, he breaks down the way a linear narrative can be conveyed by placing images in direct contrast to each other. a?oeThe dream and the film are the juxtaposition of images in order to answer a question.a?? Certainly, with a majority of the action taking place up...

BWW Review: AN EVENING WITH SUTTON FOSTER at Celebrity Series Of Boston
by Andrew Child - February 04, 2020

Sutton Foster, since her Tony Award-winning break through as the title role in Thoroughly Modern Millie, has been one of the select leading ladies who have held a decades-spanning monopoly on Broadway's biggest musicals. Foster holds the distinction of being one of the gawkiest, most palatably quirk...

BWW Review: KING JOHN at Praxis Stage
by Andrew Child - February 01, 2020

Why isn't this show an impersonation of cool even if it falls into some trappings of the dreaded 'regional theatre' scene? I think it's because Praxis Stage is, at its heart, genuinely concerned with the prospects of theatre that every other theatre in this city needs to purport to care about in ord...

BWW Review: HUNDRED DAYS: Every Song Tells a Story
by Nancy Grossman - January 28, 2020

HUNDRED DAYS and the intimate Black Box at the Umbrella Stage Company in Concord are a perfect match, not unlike Abigail and Shaun Bengson, the couple whose true story of their romantic and musical journey is told in this original song cycle. Staged like a concert before a few cabaret-style tables a...

BWW Review: BRIGHT HALF LIFE at Actors' Shakespeare Project
by Andrew Child - January 27, 2020

Queer couples in the greater Boston area: if you are looking for a mushy, warm, romantic gay love story with a backbone and plenty of heartbreak that will make you want to cuddle up with your partner between now and Valentine's Day weekend, you couldn't do much better than Actors' Shakespeare Projec...

BWW Review: LAST CATASTROPHIST: Don't They Know, It's the End of the World?
by Nancy Grossman - January 26, 2020

David Valdes has seen the future and it doesn't look good. If you're already losing sleep over the onrush of climate change, if the rollback of environmental regulations makes your blood boil, and if you fret about the steady departure of actual scientists from government agencies, Valdes' play LAST...

BWW Review: BOOM at Wellesley Repertory Theatre
by Andrew Child - January 25, 2020

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's boom was the most produced American play of 2010. 10 years later, Wellesley Repertory Theatre has brought it back, directed by artistic director, Marta Rainer, armed with the proverbial program note toting its enduring relevance. In a way, it seems to wittily comment on the 'N...

BWW Review: SMOKED OYSTERS at TC Squared Theatre Company
by Andrew Child - January 22, 2020

One of the inescapable pillars of the human condition is the universal narcissism with which we consume media. Entirely incapable of existing within a vacuum with the narratives presented to us, we search films, theatre, books, songs, and television for those personal implications we are certain the...

BWW Review: THE CAKE: Two Brides, One Conundrum for North Carolina Baker
by Nancy Grossman - January 20, 2020

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court handed a narrow victory to a Christian baker from Colorado who refused for religious reasons to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. Hailing from a conservative North Carolina background, playwright Bekah Brunstetter is personally familiar with people like Della, the...

BWW Review: A BRONX TALE at Hanover Theatre In Worcester, MA
by Jan Nargi - January 19, 2020

If you like your coming-of-age-on-the-mean-streets stories served with an extra side of red sauce, then Chazz Palminteri's semi-autobiographical A BRONX TALE is for you. Featuring characters with names like Rudy the Voice, Eddie Mush, Jojo the Whale and Frankie Coffeecake, this musical adaptation of...

BWW Review: PASS OVER: Poetic, Profane, and Powerful Drama of Search for a Promised Land
by Nancy Grossman - January 17, 2020

SpeakEasy Stage Company presents the New England premiere of Antoinette Nwandu's PASS OVER, in a co-production with The Front Porch Arts Collective. In this intense drama performed without intermission, two young Black men represent the lives of countless others like them who have dreams of reaching...

BWW Review: MAYTAG VIRGIN: Folding Laundry, Mending Hearts at Merrimack Rep
by Nancy Grossman - January 14, 2020

MAYTAG VIRGIN is a slice of life, character-driven romantic comedy about two forty-something school teachers, both widowed, who meet cute in their connecting yards in a fictional town in Alabama. Good fences make good neighbors and their lack of one leads to many challenges, but they are both warm p...

BWW Review: CATS at Citizens Bank Opera House
by David Tompkins - January 10, 2020

a??a??a??a??a??a??a??CATS opened at the Citizen's Bank Opera House Tuesday night. Directed by Trevor Nunn the current Broadway tour of CATS, with choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler based on the original Choreography by Gillian Lynne, is terrific. The pacing is perfect, and the acting, singing, and ...

BWW Review: CRY IT OUT at Apollinaire Theatre Company
by Andrew Child - January 05, 2020

You know those cartoons where the little fish is eaten by a bigger fish and then, just when you think everything is going to be fine, that fish is eaten by an even bigger fish? That kind of sums up how Molly Smith Metzler's 2017 play, Cry It Out unfolds in its new production by Apollinaire Theatre C...

BWW Review: PUFFS at FTLO Theater Company
by Andrew Child - January 02, 2020

Arguably, for a certain age group, there are no greater cultural influences than Harry Potter and Spongebob Squarepants. (Cue laments from the homeschooled crowd that they were never permitted to engage with such low-brow, mind-numbing media. Those of us with less protective mothers are doing just f...

BWW Review: THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (ABRIDGED) at Actors' Shakespeare Project
by Andrew Child - December 27, 2019

In a recent review for Actors' Shakespeare Project's King Lear, I tried to boil down what an audience can expect from any piece the group presents. (Thanks to their conveniently affordable student tickets, they are a theatre from whom I have perhaps seen more productions than any other company.) I p...

BWW Review: THE CHRISTMAS REVELS: A Long Tradition of Community Forged Through Music
by Nancy Grossman - December 19, 2019

From what I can tell, THE CHRISTMAS REVELS is one of those much-loved traditions that people look forward to revisiting year after year, like a performance of THE NUTCRACKER or A CHRISTMAS CAROL, or taking the kids to see Santa Claus. However, unlike those other holiday seasonal shows, the REVELS ...

BWW Review: New Rep's OLIVER!: Singing and Dancing Orphans, But No Dog
by Nancy Grossman - December 17, 2019

New Repertory Theatre dusts off an old chestnut for a family-friendly, non-holiday, crowd-pleasing offering as their gift for the season. Lionel Bart's OLIVER!, based on Charles Dickens' novel OLIVER TWIST, is known to be a little dark, with its themes of orphans, child exploitation, and vast income...

BWW Review: Moonbox Productions' PARADE: Attention Must Be Paid
by Nancy Grossman - December 16, 2019

As the year winds to a close, and the holiday hustle and bustle keeps us spinning our wheels, it can be a salve for the spirit and rest for the weary to sit in a darkened theater for a couple of hours. There is a plethora of seasonal fare competing for your entertainment dollars, but may I suggest s...

BWW Review: MOBY DICK: The One That Got Away
by Nancy Grossman - December 14, 2019

The much-anticipated MOBY DICK (A Musical Reckoning), from the team that brought you NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 in 2015, has finally surfaced at the Loeb Drama Center of the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge. Based on the iconic American novel by Herman Melville, the three-and-a...

BWW Review: TUCK EVERLASTING: If You Could Live Forever, Would You?
by Nancy Grossman - December 12, 2019

There's not a Christmas tree in sight, but there's plenty of uplifting, feel good spirit in the Umbrella Stage Company's TUCK EVERLASTING, the third production of their inaugural season in their gleaming new building in Concord. Under the direction of Elliot Norton Award-winner Nancy Curran Willis, ...