Nancy Grossman - Page 42

America's Orchestra opened its 129th spring season with Keith Lockhart conducting and Jason Alexander as special guest artist. Best known as Seinfeld's best buddy George Costanza, the Tony Award-winning Alexander is a consummate showman and offered a celebration of Broadway music to complement the Pops' selections by American masters from Copland to Ellington to Gershwin.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company finally tackles the subject of comedy, condensing the complete history (abridged) into a concise two-hour package that doesn't miss a trick. From cavemen to clowns, shtick to Stooges, and Seinfeld to the Supreme Court, there's something for everyone in the myriad sketches offered up by this trio of talented comedians. With the exception of the mention of a few of George Carlin's infamous seven words, THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF COMEDY (ABRIDGED) at Merrimack Repertory Theatre is good family entertainment and the kids might even learn to appreciate the pioneers of the art form.

GOOD TELEVISION proves that live theater makes everything better, even reality television. First time playwright Rod McLachlan creates complex characters and focuses on their diverse motivations in this authentic take at Zeitgeist Stage Company. Artistic Director David J. Miller seamlessly directs an ensemble of eight actors who give fully-realized performances and bring us behind the scenes of a fictionalized intervention-style show.

There's something beautifully poetic in juxtaposing two current offerings by small theater companies in Boston. Bad Habit Productions celebrates ambitious women in Caryl Churchill's TOP GIRLS at the Boston Center for the Arts, while Ryan Landry and the Gold Dust Orphans are light years removed from Walt Disney in SNOW WHITE AND THE 7 BOTTOMS at Machine Nightclub in the shadow of Fenway Park.

Solo performance piece written and performed by James Fluhr (Boston University CFA '11), OUR LADY was created as a response to hate and homophobia, as well as to reveal the author's own coming out story. It is a moving, riveting mixed media theatrical event playing as part of the Next Rep Black Box Festival at New Repertory Theatre.

Huntington Theatre Company playwright-in-residence Melinda Lopez collaborates with Director M. Bevin O'Gara to bring BECOMING CUBA to the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. Rich in historical content, the play is set in Havana in 1897 in the midst of the Cuban War of Independence (Spanish-American War), and features beautiful writing, fully-realized characters, and evocative design elements.

Stoneham Theatre presents the world premiere of Michael Aman's THE UNBLEACHED AMERICAN, a play about Ernest Hogan, the "father of ragtime." A long forgotten African American musical innovator, Hogan attained great success before tumbling into infamy. This important story imagines his relationship with an Irish immigrant nurse charged with caring for him in the final months of his life at the turn of the 20th century.

Whistler in the Dark Theatre is calling it a day, but not before staging one final play that will challenge their audience. Concluding their season celebrating Caryl Churchill, the Whistlers are fading out with the dystopian fable FAR AWAY.

Fort Point Theatre Channel pairs Samuel Beckett's KRAPP'S LAST TAPE with THE ARCHIVES by local playwright Skylar Fox for an engaging double bill. Steven Barkhimer in the former and Sally Nutt, Allison Smith, and Karin Trachtenberg in the latter all give quality performances in two one-acts that reflect on memory, regret, and preservation.

Tony Award-winning composer-lyricist Jason Robert Brown is the Blodgett Artist in Residence at the Harvard University Department of Music for the spring term and he gave the equivalent of a master class last night at Oberon. In a seventy-five minute performance, Brown served a buffet of delicious morsels from his musical theater canon and had the audience eating out of his hand.

Merrimack Repertory Theatre cranks up the way back machine to transport the audience to Lebanon, Missouri, on July 4, 1944, in Lanford Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winner TALLEY'S FOLLY, but the play chugs along on fumes, despite the best efforts of all parties.

Kate Burton, accomplished Chekhovian actress, plays onstage mother to her son Morgan Ritchie in the Huntington Theatre Company's production of THE SEAGULL, featuring an ensemble of local favorites and Broadway veterans. Director Maria Aitken leads a stellar team of designers to create magic at the BU Theatre.

Leave your inhibitions at the door and fasten your seat belt for a musical theater experience that simmers, smolders, and titillates. Bridge Rep gets up close and personal with Michael John LaChiusa's HELLO AGAIN in an immersive, cabaret-style production. Emerson College alum Michael Bello directs an ensemble of six exciting, young actors and actresses.

Ellen Mclaughlin's TONGUE OF A BIRD is the first show in New Repertory Theatre's inaugural Next Rep Black Box Festival. No one can dispute the intimacy of the venue, or the up-close-and-personal flavor of the production, directed by Emily Ranii and featuring an all-female cast. This band of sisters bares the souls of their characters and supports each other like birds in chevron flight, but the play lacks sufficient lift to let them soar beyond the blue horizon, or over the peaks of the Adirondack Mountains where the story takes place.

FLASHDANCE - THE MUSICAL delivers on its promise of electrifying dance, but its story is forgettable and fails to inspire.

Playwright David Valdes Greenwood offers a requiem to explore the randomness of violence, the collateral damage suffered by the community, and the road to reclaiming one's humanity. BULLY DANCE illuminates its unpleasant theme with thoughtful writing, respectful performances, and unexpected beauty.

An homage to Agatha Christie, SOMETHING'S AFOOT rolls along merrily in the hands of a cast of Stoneham Theatre favorites.

Annie Baker takes live theater to the movies in THE FLICK, set in a rundown, second-run Worcester movie house. The audience gets to be like a fly on the wall as the ushers sweep up the detritus and muddle through their existential struggles between shows. Not much happens, but everything changes over the course of three hours.

Fusing theater, dance, music, and video, ArtsEmerson's MAN IN A CASE is an unusual entertainment, something that has to be seen to be appreciated. At the least, it is an example of thinking outside of the box and an opportunity to see one of the world's greatest dancers onstage; at best, it is an opportunity to see that one of the world's greatest dancers has many more tricks up his tights and that his fluid movements have not abandoned him. You can take the dancer out of the ballet, but you cannot take the ballet out of the dancer. Even in a straight play, the man still has all the right moves.

Actors' Shakespeare Project mounts a lighter, accessible version of Anton Chekhov's final play in Founder's Hall at The Dane Estate at Pine Manor College in Brookline. Performing in the round in this stately, dramatic setting, the actors inhabit space and time in a way that allows their characters to emerge naturally, enhanced by the proximity of their audience