Casey Seymour Kim

What did our critic think of SWEAT at THE GAMM THEATRE? For the better part of the last 40 years, things have been a nightmare for the American working class, especially across the so called 'rust belt' where factories once thrived and have now fallen silent and abandoned. In SWEAT, Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer prize winning play, the playwright takes us directly into that world with a piercing look at small town America and the destruction wrought in those communities by de-industrialization, racism, violence, and addiction.

ASSASSINS, the 1990 Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman show featuring the stories of nine successful and would-be presidential assassins, may seem like an odd choice of subject for a musical, particularly as the first musical in the Gamm Theatre's 35 season history. However, with inventive staging and a top-notch cast guided by artistic director Tony Estrella, this selection pays off.

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) stages Assassins, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's revue-style musical examining the motives of notorious Americans who take aim at the president of the United States-and what they believe is their best shot at the American Dream.

The Night Watch runs until February 10 at the Gamm Theatre in Warwick, RI.

The Gamm Theatre closes its fifteen year run in Pawtucket with Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT, so it was with mixed emotions that I turned right onto Exchange St. last Saturday, for the last time to be squeezed into the lyric, little bandbox of a theater. Fear not, theatergoers, they're not going away, just going to Warwick, where I trust they will continue to produce some of the most entertaining, interesting and thought provoking theater you can find. They chose to go out with Shakespeare and once again have found a new way to look at a play and led us to a new way to look at reality. It's what they do there.

Occasionally the name Anton Chekhov invokes the same kind of anxiety one may get from Shakespeare or other heavy literary writers who we feel like we should go see to appear educated/ arty, but who no one really enjoys. Unfortunately, that makes people forget one of the reasons Chekhov and Shakespeare are great--they know how to balance humor and drama in that way that feels very human and well-rounded. It activates all the parts of the viewer's brain, and leaves one feeling thoroughly entertained and thought-provoked at the end. The Gamm's production of UNCLE VANYA, translated and directed by Curt Columbus' manages to communicate volumes, while keeping everything accessible and relatable. The moments of humor are genuine and serve to heighten the tension in other scenes. Gamm regulars will have seen these actors in a dozen other roles over the years, yet they all managed to adopt their new personas in a way that feels so genuine it's like this world has always existed, and the audience managed to wander in at exactly the right time.

INCOGNITO is an incredibly ambitious play--not in terms of sets, but in terms of what is asks both the actors and the audience to comprehend. Each of the four actors in this production plays multiple characters over the course of four different but tangentially related vignettes that shift rapidly from one to another, and back and forth in time. Sound confusing? Don't worry, it is. The talented actors and director do quite well with a script that seems like a logistical nightmare, but what the playwright favored in cleverness, he neglected in terms of empathy and character development. There are some moments of genuine heart, but ultimately it feels like for the mental gymnastics the play asks of the viewer, the payoff isn't quite enough.

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) announces the New England premiere of Incognito by celebrated British playwright Nick Payne.

BroadwayWorld presents a comprehensive weekly roundup of regional stories around our Broadway World, which include videos, editor spotlights, regional reviews and more. This week, we feature THE NETHER in Rhode Island, THE LAST FIVE YEARS in Orlando, and STOREFRONT CHURCH in Phoenix, just to name a few. Check out our top features below!

THE NETHER, is a twisted look into a not-so-distant future where the internet becomes an immersive and physical experience. Unexpected reveals keep the plot moving, but the subject matter overall is uncomfortable to say the least. Playwright Jennifer Haley manages to avoid shock for the sake of shock, but this production certainly raises some thorny ethical dilemmas. Director Judith Swift manages to get a little close to taking things too far, but then pull back at the last second leaving the audience grappling with who the real monsters are.

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) stages The Nether, American playwright Jennifer Haley's daring sci-fi drama set in the dark recesses of the Web. Director Judith Swift (Grounded, The Beauty Queen of Leenane) mounts a limited 4-week run of this twisting, turning, two-tiered investigation into the moral consequences of making even the most depraved dreams a reality in the virtual world.  

GRIZZLY MAMA, by George Brant, was written in 2011 at the beginning of the inevitable downswing of the stranglehold Sarah Palin seemed to have on media at the time, and though the program clearly states that any resemblance of the characters in GRIZZLY MAMA to real people is mere coincidence, that's obviously as tongue-in-cheek as the play itself is trying to be. Perhaps this was effective when it first premiered, but the passage of time has eroded the stings and barbs of this satire leaving is as more of a dark comedy without the comedy.  With the ludicrous coverage of the coming 2016 election in everyone's face, a play like this just doesn't have any teeth, and it comes off as almost too safe.

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) opens the new year with the New England premiere of Grizzly Mama by award-winning playwright George Brant (Grounded, Gamm 2014). With biting humor and shocking twists, Brant's timely play explores political extremism from both sides of the aisle. Rachel Walshe (Marie Antoinette) directs Gamm Resident Actor Casey Seymour Kim as Deb Marshall, a newly feminist homemaker with a death wish for her neighbor, an ultra-conservative political candidate; with Amanda Ruggiero as Deb's apathetic teenager, Hannah, and Betsy Rinaldi as her adversary's celebrity daughter, Laurel.

At times, it can be hard to imagine that there was ever a period in history when society was as celebrity-obsessed as we are right now. With the internet, social media, Twitter, 24-hour cable news and everything else, information about the rich and famous is everywhere, all the time. It seems impossible to avoid and seems that the public's appetite for it is insatiable. On the other hand, David Adjmi's play Marie Antoinette, now playing at the Gamm Theatre, casts the famous French queen in much the same kind of world. And while the uneven play doesn't offer much that's new or original, it does provide another lens through which we can view and examine our own society and it's problems.

This Halloween, P.I.G. presents an improvised and interactive psychological thriller set in the bowels of a creepy cult, the Pilgrims of the Oath.

This Halloween, P.I.G. presents an improvised and interactive psychological thriller set in the bowels of a creepy cult, the Pilgrims of the Oath.

Strange Attractor Theatre, Rhode Island's only physical theatre company, invites the community to a free work-in-progress showing of their sixth original work, Idle on March 1, 2014 at 8pm at the Mathewson St. Theatre in downtown Providence. Inspired by company member Jed Hancock-Brainerd's childhood collection of porcelain Dickens Village Christmas Houses and the ever-growing divide between the haves and the have-nots, Idle is an absurdist response to the American dream of working less and having more. The showing will be followed by an informal feedback session with complimentary wine and cheese.

Recently, a friend mentioned his girlfriend's exciting new "big promotion and raise." Providing more details, he added that she would now be making close to thirty-five thousand per year. This could not help but make me wonder about the state of our country's current economic and employment crises. It is clear that a "new normal" has been established in the United States, where the vast majority scrape by, just surviving, mostly by working hourly-wage, low-paying jobs. Where once the dream was a comfortable, secure, middle-class or even upper-middle-class-life, that life no longer exists for many, if not most. It's been replaced by a much less secure or comfortable existence that fewer and fewer have the hope to climb out of. This predicament is perfectly brought to very real life by David Lindsay-Abaire's play Good People, playing at the Sandra Feinstein Gamm Theatre.

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) stages the Rhode Island premiere of Good People, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire's tough, tender and seriously funny play about class divisions and the shrinking American Dream. Directed by Rachel Walshe (Anne Boleyn, Mauritius), Good Peopleruns from tonight, November 7 through December 8 at The Gamm Theatre, 172 Exchange St., Pawtucket, RI. Check out a first look below!