Performing Arts

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Review: Ghosts, people, booze flow together in AIRE's The Seafarer

When it comes to ghosts and other supernatural catalysts, Halloween's theatrical repertoire is actually rivaled by that of the Yuletide season.
Mixing spirits
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 05, 2010

Cool drink on a hot day

Alan Ayckbourn has been often dismissed as the British Neil Simon. He's also been hailed as a playwright of such acute insight that, if you look beyond the laughs, he deserves to be mentioned in the same critical breath as Harold Pinter.
With Table Manners, Gloucester Stage gives Ayckbourn his due
By ED SIEGEL | July 02, 2010

Brown's theater juggernaut fires up again

The Brown/Trinity Repertory Theatre, a summer program that cultivates promising young playwrights, is set to launch this year's slate of three plays on July 7. Expectations are high.
Playtime
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | July 02, 2010

Brown's theater juggernaut fires up again

Smart acting

When Neil Simon penned Fools , writes director Celeste Green in the program notes to her Lyric Music Theater production of the 1981 comedy, he was playing to lose: He was hoping not to make us laugh and cry, but to hose his investors and flout his ex-w
Lyric's clever cast in Fools
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 25, 2010

Ain't that America?

Armadillo Acres in the Florida of The Great American Trailer Park Musical may not be a place you want to live, what with the thin walls and occasional gunfire, but it could be a fun place to visit. The Center Stage production in West Kingston is givi
Good ol’ boys and girls in Trailer Park Musical
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | June 18, 2010

It’s good to be king

After being out of the local theater scene for a couple of decades, the Rhode Island Shakespeare Theater (TRIST) is back, staging an outdoor production of Henry VIII at the Roger Williams National Memorial Park, on North Main Street in Providence, thro
TRIST takes Henry VIII outdoors
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | June 18, 2010

Freaks, Geeks, and Faux Bono

As Bay Staters, we recognize that our European ancestors sure knew how to roll: scarlet letters, sticks up asses, if-she-drowns-she's-not-a-witch-if-she-floats-she's-a-witch-so-let's-kill-her legal applications.
Boston-area subcultures keep the Bay State comfortably kooky this summer
By ALEXIS HAUK | June 18, 2010

With plans for a downtown mural, Shepard Fairey returns to Providence

It is a rather unremarkable collection of bricks at the moment: an exterior wall at the back of Trinity Repertory Company’s Pell Chafee Performance Center in downtown Providence.
Obey
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 18, 2010

Play by play: June 4, 2010

Theater listings, week of June 4, 2010
Theater listings, week of June 4, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | June 04, 2010

Night moves

Theater of Thought has done it again, this time with dark humor and Texas accents, as it amplifies theatrical reality with a site-specific rendition of Killer Joe .
Theater Of Thought’s Killer Joe
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 28, 2010

Play by play: May 28, 2010

Boston's weekly theater schedule
Theater listings, May 28, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 28, 2010

Glee and sympathy

If Ryan Landry gets any more respectable, he’ll be hosting Masterpiece Theatre.
The Gold Dust Orphans’ The Gulls; Nora’s The Lady with All the Answers
By CAROLYN CLAY | May 21, 2010

Play by Play: May 21, 2010

Boston's weekly theater listings
Theater listings, May 21, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 21, 2010

We band of brothers

This is the first independent production by the group of five friends who met at Boston’s Emerson College, where they helmed incarnations of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet and Sam Shepard’s True West .
Young actors bring a Spartan production of Henry V to the Apohadion
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | May 21, 2010

Street corner symphonies

We’d be happy enough if Jersey Boys were just a musical revue, thrumming with the the Four Seasons’ hit parade. But on top of that we get a compelling story, following the lives of ’60s heartthrob Frankie Valli and those who rocketed to fame with him.
The Four Seasons live in Jersey Boys
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 21, 2010

More Bard, another park

Just as fiddleheads and lilacs sprung early this year, so have the urban-pastoral pleasures of al fresco Shakespeare.
Acorn takes Shakespeare to the Riverbank
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 21, 2010

Second sight

May in Boston has always been Storybook Ballet Month, as Boston Ballet finished off its season with Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty or Don Quixote , something classical and highbrow and reassuring. That, after all, is what Boston audiences want, right?
Boston Ballet reprises Jirí Kylián’s Black & White
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 21, 2010

Theme and variations

George Balanchine was famous for “non-story” ballets, but when you put three of his works — the usual number to fill up an evening — together, you always get some kind of narrative.
Boston Ballet’s ‘Ultimate Balanchine’
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 14, 2010

Sparring with the Ultimate

There’s never been a more brilliant exemplar of the ballet art than George Balanchine.
Boston Ballet in The Four Temperaments, Apollo, and Theme and Variations
By MARICA B. SIEGEL | May 14, 2010

Old haunts

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that Blithe Spirit , that cocktail shaker full of dry martini and ectoplasmic mayhem, will amuse. Playwright Noël Coward diagnosed his own gift as a talent to do just that.
Blithe Spirit at the Lyric; Hot Mikado at New Rep; August: Osage County at the Colonial
By CAROLYN CLAY | May 14, 2010

Hot and bothered

Shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater and you get one response. Shout “Die Hose!” (women’s undies) in a German theater back in 1911 and you got another kind of uproar.
2nd Story’s hilarious Underpants
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 14, 2010

Play by play: May 14, 2010

Boston's weekly theater listings
Theater listings, May 14, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 14, 2010

Interview: Paul Provenza

In Satiristas! veteran comic Paul Provenza engages in revealing, surprising conversation with a diverse group about comedy’s role in revealing uncomfortable truths about our world and ourselves.
Comedy life saver
By ROB TURBOVSKY | May 07, 2010

Face the nation

White-trash collection has seldom been as hilarious as it is in The Great American Trailer Park Musical , which makes its Brahmin-area debut courtesy of SpeakEasy Stage Company.
SpeakEasy’s The Great American Trailer Park Musical; Zeitgeist’s Farragut North
By CAROLYN CLAY | May 07, 2010

Meta-theater

Choreographer Tim Rushton makes unusual, high-powered dance movement and blends it with slick but modest theatrical appurtenances, sound scores that claim your attention, and important program notes.
Tim Rushton bring existential relevance to town
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 07, 2010

Play by play: May 7, 2010

Boston's weekly theater listings
Theater listings, May 7, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 07, 2010

Youth movement

In the current Fusionworks production, Locally Grown , artistic director Deb Meunier and her company are welcoming two dance groups from local high schools.
Fusionworks’ Locally Grown
By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | May 07, 2010

The race is on

Around 7 pm last Saturday at the St. Lawrence, a sealed envelope was sliced open and its contents, handwritten on three slips of paper, were revealed to a full house: “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
Running through Acorn’s 24-Hour Play Festival
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 07, 2010

Talking ’bout a revolution

It takes a theatrical genius like Tom Stoppard to come up with Rock ’n’ Roll, which merges the pulsing spirit of both until they feel like one. And it takes a theater of the caliber of the Gamm to make history feel like a Stones concert that becomes a po
The Gamm’s life-affirming Rock ’n’ Roll
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 07, 2010

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[ 05/23 ] "Natural Histories: Photographs by Barbara Bosworth" @ Peabody Essex Museum

[ 05/23 ] Amy Arbus: "After Images" @ Griffin Museum of Photography

[ 05/23 ] Pirates of Penzance @ Loeb Drama Center