Nancy Grossman - Page 12

FUN HOME is a true story about real people, and Producing Artistic Director Paul Daigneault's production at SpeakEasy Stage Company, the Boston regional premiere of the 2015 Tony Award-winning musical, will make a believer out of anyone who sets foot in the Roberts Studio Theatre. Based on Alison Bechdel's memoir/graphic novel of the same name, the groundbreaking musical tells the story of the cartoonist's complicated family, looking back at her childhood and adolescence with Alison at three different ages as our guide. It is a memory play, a coming out story, a tragedy, and a comedy. Above all else, it is one of the highest points in a Boston theater season that has already had some very high points.

Inspired by her experiences working in the recreation department at a youth residential care facility in the Lone Star State, Kira Rockwell has written a fictional story about five adolescent girls that portrays their back stories, personalities, and behaviors with authenticity, while trying to erase the misconception that they are all bad girls and gently educating her audience about the challenges they face. Under the direction of Leila Ghaemi, an ensemble cast of BU School of Theatre undergrads coalesces into a seamless unit that definitely fights above its weight.

New Repertory Theatre's mission is "to produce plays that speak powerfully to the vital ideas of our time," a statement which they adhere to vigorously. In this season, under the theme of "Awakening," New Rep presents the New England premiere of WE WILL NOT BE SILENT, a docudrama by playwright David Meyers. Based on true events, the play focuses on one young German woman's resistance to Hitler and the Nazi party, her determination to maintain her principles and integrity in the face of grueling interrogation, and the price of her righteousness. Under the direction of Artistic Director Jim Petosa, with ever-increasing tension and drama, Sarah Oakes Muirhead and Tim Spears give riveting performances as the detainee and the detective who holds her destiny in his hands.

Simon Geller and WVCA-FM, his one-man classical music radio station, were part of the local color of Gloucester, Massachusetts, for 24 years. From 1964 until he retired in 1988, Geller lived, breathed, ate, and slept to single-handedly produce commercial-free broadcasts from his in-home studio, doing it his way with meager financial support from his listeners. Playwright Ken Riaf, who lives and works in Gloucester as a practicing attorney, has been developing MY STATION IN LIFE with the Gloucester Stage Company since last season's NeverDark reading. Ken Baltin returns to GSC for the first time since appearing in Neil Simon's LAST OF THE RED HOT LOVERS (2009) to bring his interpretation to this most interesting character.

Theater Uncorked returned to the First Church Cambridge this past weekend for two performances of a staged reading of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, a 1963 play by Dale Wasserman, based on the novel of the same name by Ken Kesey. Lest the inmates run the asylum, the strong directorial hand of Bobbi Steinbach kept the chaos under control, presumably in a kinder, gentler way than Nurse Ratched's managerial style. Her staging made it feel like so much more than a reading, especially in the group scenes, where the bonding and banter among the patients rang true. There was nary a weak link in the ensemble, and the leading players were so strong in their characterizations that my mind drew a blank when trying to imagine anyone else as Ratched (Kerry A. Dowling), Randle P. McMurphy (Gene Dante), or Chief Bromden (Pedro Figueroa).

The Central Square Theater, in conjunction with Catalyst Collaborative@MIT, has a corner on the market of blending art and science. It is no easy task to create intelligent, dramatic entertainment that can live up to their mission and put across its message with clarity, as well as artistry. However, when a group of serious artists comes together with purpose, the whole may be greater than the sum of its parts. Director David R. Gammons overlays his kaleidoscopic vision onto British playwright Nick Dear's adaptation of FRANKENSTEIN, from the novel by Mary Shelley, inviting the audience to conceive of a monster of their own imagination rather than the familiar cinematic versions.

A year ago, almost to the day, Alan Cumming made his debut with the Celebrity Series of Boston, performing his touring show SINGS SAPPY SONGS at Sanders Theatre. This time around, Cumming and his quartet of crack musicians took the stage Sunday night at the considerably larger Symphony Hall, wowing the sold out house with his cabaret program LEGAL IMMIGRANT. Cumming tells stories at least as much as he sings, but his eclectic musical selections are made all the more compelling with Musical Director Lance Horne on piano, virtuoso cellist Eleanor Norton, young newcomer Riley Mulherkar on trumpet, and Chris Jago alternating between drums and guitar.

Playwright/director Michael Gaucher and Bitter Bitch Productions bring a live edition of the beloved sitcom to the stage at Club Cafe. DIRTY SECRETS: A GOLDEN GIRLS LOST EPISODE is your chance to get up close and personal with the other Fab Four in Gaucher's original story, complete with song, dance, and 1980s commercials. The drag parody features Blake Siskavich, Joshua Roberts, Brooks Reeves, and Joey Lachimia.

There is much fun afoot in this cleverly written, earnestly acted, and crisply directed play being revived on the main stage at the Huntington Theatre Company. SHERLOCK'S LAST CASE had its world premiere in 1984 in Los Angeles before transferring to Broadway for a short run in 1987 with Frank Langella in the lead role. Huntington stalwart Maria Aitken returns to direct a tightly-synched cast with Rufus Collins (Holmes) and Mark Zeisler (Watson) as the long-time companions taking on a new nemesis. Has Holmes met his match, or will he live to sleuth again?

Embarking on its 28th season, SpeakEasy Stage Company presents the New England premiere of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning play BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY by Stephen Adly Guirgis. Director Tiffany Nichole Greene is the navigator and masterfully guides a stellar cast on this journey. From the opening scene, the people on stage take form as authentic, real life folks and we are sitting down to breakfast with them.

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.