R. Scott Reedy - Page 6

The 1962 feature film “Light in the Piazza” was shot on location at the Piazza della Signoria and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and the Via Veneto and Roma Ostiense railway station in Rome, making its technicolor splendor a hard act to follow when the story, based on a 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer, was developed for the stage in 2003.

And if you’re too busy to take your pencils back to school, and maybe not the biggest stickler for accuracy, then you may want to head to Stoneham for “Founding F%!#ers: The Story of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold,” a play by Conor Casey being given its world premiere at Greater Boston Stage Company through May 18.

Conductor Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops set the mood for the recent Opening Night at Pops, featuring the luminous Cynthia Erivo, with a rhythmic “The Club” from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” and the rousing “Gotta Dance” medley from “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway.”

And when it comes to the humble Harlem hair salon in Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, now in its New England premiere at SpeakEasy Stage in the Roberts Studio Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, through May 31, make that something to marvel at.

The musical “The Spitfire Grill” – with book and music by James Valcq and lyrics by the late Fred Alley, who also co-wrote the book – perfectly captures the small-town ethos of its rural Gilead, Wisconsin, setting.

In the summer of 1975, moviegoers flocked to theaters to see “Jaws,” the story of the hunt for a man-eating great white shark attacking beachgoers at a summer vacation spot, making the picture the first summer blockbuster.

The Boston Pops will once again turn to the music and stars of Broadway when the orchestra opens its 139th spring season at  Symphony Hall on May 8 with Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award-winner Cynthia Erivo (“The Color Purple”) as special guest.

Stage star Carolee Carmello has played a wide range of roles in her career – from “Cordelia, the kosher caterer,” in the original Broadway production of “Falsettos,” Lucille Frank in the Broadway premiere of “Parade,” Donna Sheridan in “Mamma Mia!” Dolly Gallagher Levi in “Hello, Dolly!” now she's starring in the national tour of Kimblerly Akimbo. Read our interview!

Few cultural icons have held the public’s attention for as long as the one and only Betty Boop. And now, the wide-eyed vixen has branched out from animated films and television to live-action Broadway in BOOP! The Musical.

And the Plastics of North Shore High School – the self-obsessed, their-way-or-the-highway trio of “mean girls” at the center of the eponymous hit 2004 feature-film comedy, the 2018 Broadway musical it inspired, and the 2024 feature film based on the musical  – have done just that, becoming an enduring part of pop culture.

Kristine Nielsen has made her name on Broadway playing roles in all kinds of comedies and dramas, but only a very few musicals. She’s changing that up this season, however, portraying Susan Proctor, an Actors’ Studio teacher and confidante to Ivy Lynn, a Broadway star preparing to play Marilyn Monroe, in the new musical comedy “Smash,” at New York’s Imperial Theatre.

Over 50 years since its original Broadway production had its out-of-town tryout at Boston’s Shubert Theatre, the Stephen Sondheim musical Company, with book by George Furth, has had three revivals.

Indeed, when those one-liners and puns are not only corny but all about corn, you just may want to surrender and let the laughs burst like Jiffy Pop, as they are on the North American tour of “Shucked,” the musical being presented by Broadway in Boston at Citizens Opera House now through April 20.

In “Sojourners,” the first play in the nine-part Ufot Family Cycle by first-generation Nigerian American playwright Mfoniso Udofia – presented last fall by the Huntington – Boston audiences met Abasiama, a hardworking Nigerian living in Houston, Texas, in 1978 and working toward a degree in biology.

What did our critic think of NIGHT SIDE SONGS at American Repertory Theater?