Nancy Grossman - Page 30

ROOSEVELVIS is the latest production of the TEAM, a Brooklyn-based ensemble dedicated to making new work about the experience of living in America today. Fusing stage and screen, music and dance, humor and pathos, and gender bending portrayals, the show makes liberal use of film to chronicle a fanciful road trip from the Badlands to Graceland, one woman's much-needed journey of self-discovery.

Recent IRNE Award-winner Sarah Gazdowicz directs LAURA with a steady hand, garnering especially strong performances from Alexander Cook as Detective Mark McPherson and Steven Barkhimer as Waldo Lydecker. Jasmine Rush coolly plays the title character, an attractive career woman whose portrait infatuates the detective investigating her murder.

New Repertory Theatre closes its season with Mark St. Germain's FREUD'S LAST SESSION, an imagined meeting between Dr. Sigmund Freud and scholar/author C.S. Lewis. The pair skillfully debate the question of God's existence as England gears up for war with Nazi Germany. Jim Petosa deftly directs Joel Colodner and Shelley Bolman as the two academics in this cerebral play.

Zeitgeist Stage Company presents the Boston area premiere of Samuel D. Hunter's A GREAT WILDERNESS, set in a gay conversion camp in Idaho. A gentle Christian counselor takes on one final camper before his retirement, but the boy wanders off into the woods, setting in motion a physical search for him and soul-searching for the adults in his life. The plot gets lost in the woods with the missing boy, resulting in a very different play than anticipated.

Step back from the craziness of the current election season and into the zaniness of a fictional farcical political campaign in Lila Rose Kaplan's HOME OF THE BRAVE. Sean Daniels directs an ensemble cast in this good old-fashioned comedy, featuring family values, a dollop of magic, and a potential nominee you can wholeheartedly support. Loosely inspired by Moliere's TARTUFFE, Kaplan's play is the perfect antidote to real presidential politics.

WE'RE GONNA DIE is a sweet and weird song cycle, the perfect vehicle for Company One Theatre and the engaging Obehi Janice, backed up by a four-piece band that kicks it on the stage of Oberon. Playwright Young Jean Lee takes us through a series of life lessons by telling stories about pain, loneliness, illness, loss, and love, using humor and music to make us feel alright about the inevitable. It is definitely worth an hour of your time.

Boston Public Works presents Jim Dalglish's UNSAFE - a psychological thriller, a look at one family's attempt to live a normal life after the devastating losses of 9-11. Are we far enough removed from the event to be able to see it as fodder for drama? The play is powerful, relentless, and unsettling, building tension and terror up to an explosive, raw catharsis. UNSAFE offers authentic performances across the board and design elements that capture the emotional essence of the story. This one will leave you thinking - and feeling.

THE WILD PARTY is exactly what it says it is, and Moonbox Productions invites you to be a voyeur for the Michael John Lachiusa version of Joseph Moncure March's 1928 risque narrative poem, directed and choreographed by Rachel Bertone. Katie Anne Clark and Todd Yard anchor a crazy-good, talented ensemble and you will be immersed in the Roaring Twenties zeitgeist. It's a wild ride that you won't want to miss.

MR. BURNS, A POST-ELECTRIC PLAY defends the thesis that storytelling and making theater may be of great value in times of crisis, but goes awry with its repetitious retelling of an episode of THE SIMPSONS. Director A. Nora Long, a creative design team, and strong acting performances are not enough to put a charge in playwright Anne Washburn's work.

THREESOME blends the personal and the political, as well as comedy and drama, in a powerful and provocative multi-layered story. Artistic Director Danielle Fauteux Jacques pulls no punches and spurs her trio of actors (Alison Meirowitz McCarthy, Mauro Canepa, Geoff Van Wyck) to bravely deliver raw performances.

Gina Gionfriddo and Peter DuBois team up once again to present the world premiere of her latest play, CAN YOU FORGIVE HER? The playwright's trademark dark humor is on display and performed to a high standard by a stellar cast of five.

Director/choreographer Ilyse Robbins pays homage to Bob Fosse, but puts her artistic stamp on the 1966 Tony Award-winning musical. You will love Vanessa Dunleavy as the hopeful dance-hall hostess looking for love in all the wrong places. Stoneham Theatre veterans and newcomers comprise a stellar ensemble that delivers the songs and dances with panache.

The National Touring Production of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, directed by three-time Tony Award winner Jack O'Brien, breathes new life into the venerable hills and introduces a star-in-the-making. Vivacious and talented Kerstin Anderson captivates us from the opening strains of the title song, and her passion and energy propel the show forward. More than five decades after its Broadway premiere, the powerful message of the story and the superb Rodgers and Hammerstein score still resonate.

New Repertory Theatre participates in the National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere of Steve Yockey's BLACKBERRY WINTER, a thoughtful, poignant take on one woman's coming to terms with her mother's diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease. Director Bridget Kathleen O'Leary and Adrianne Krstansky bring out the humor while focusing on the human emotions, rather than the illness, and the result is surprisingly uplifting.

Idris Goodwin's second break beat play is a love story set in the world of hip-hop, exploring one young man's search for authenticity and identity when he moves from the suburbs to the urban environment. Hoping to immerse himself in the culture of the hip-hop music world, T.O. learns important life lessons from a no-nonsense Journalism professor and from being tossed around on the rocky shoals of love.

The New England premiere of Robert O'Hara's BOOTYCANDY at SpeakEasy Stage Company is based on the author's own experiences of growing up black and gay in America. Similar in structure and tone to THE COLORED MUSEUM, it is a series of loosely connected vignettes that rely on humor and satire to confront racial, sexual, and cultural stereotypes. Summer L. Williams directs an outstanding cast of five actors who portray nearly two dozen characters.

Flat Earth Theatre opens their tenth anniversary season with the East Coast premier of Gina Young's cheeky exploration of growing up queer in the 90s. An ensemble cast of seven women and four men portray girls and boys of varying ages and personality types, but you will recognize all of these kids and may see yourself among them. Through a series of vignettes, dances, and songs, Young captures the awkwardness and anxiety of sexual awakening and feeling "different," but would get more bang for the buck with some judicious editing.

Bridge Repertory Theater of Boston presents the world premiere of local playwright MJ Halberstadt's THE LAUNCH PRIZE under the direction of Tiffany Nichole Greene. A quartet of visual arts graduate students anxiously awaits the announcement of the prize winner and their friendship is challenged by the competition. Over the course of eighty minutes, the foursome unleashes a virtual herd of elephants in the room as issues of race, gender, entitlement, and duplicity bubble up from deep wells of resentment.

Described as a theatrical crime caper, FAST COMPANY explores a major con gone wrong and digs into the dynamics of the family Kwan. It's a fun ride when the game is being plotted and executed, but slows considerably when the focus is on the family. The actors do what they can to get inside their characters, but they're written a little flat and the relationships are less than compelling.

The Suffolk University/Boston Playwrights' Theatre co-production of RHINOCEROS, newly adapted by Wesley Savick from Derek Prouse's translation, features a Boston setting, but maintains the themes of Eugene Ionesco's 1959 classic play from the Cold War era. Things being as they are, that sort of feels like the good old days, yet we are reminded that conformity, fascism, and totalitarianism have never gone out of style.