BOSTON THEATER REVIEWS

DAMES AT SEA is a welcome escape from the upheaval of the moment, if only for a couple of hours. The six-member cast shines with an abundance of smiles, vocal belts, and tap routines that they make look easy. Ephie Aardema, who has previously made a few splashes on this stage (HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSI...

New Repertory Theatre opens its season with IDEATION, the Boston-area premiere of Aaron Loeb's play that is equally thrilling and disturbing as we try to adapt to the rapidly changing normal in America. With an unpredictable neophyte at the helm of our ship of state, a legislative body in a perilous...

The Lyric Stage Company of Boston has hit the trifecta with their season opener GYPSY, directed and choreographed by Rachel Bertone, music directed by Dan Rodriguez, and raised to the rafters by Leigh Barrett's forceful Mama Rose. This is one for the ages....

Founding Artistic Director of Gloucester Stage Company returns to direct the New England premiere of his latest comedy, OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES. Paula Plum, Sarah Hickler, Obehi Janice, and Debra Wise play four diverse women who meet in a spacious Paris apartment to remember and memorialize the r...

With time spent on Broadway, off-Broadway and on stages from France to China, A.R. Gurney's Sylvia is now in performances at Elements Theatre Company at Rock Harbor. It is the epitome of taking something that is seemingly normal and turning it into a drama-filled, heartfelt tale of what it means to ...

FINDING NEVERLAND was born across the river in Cambridge at the American Repertory Theater three years ago, but has settled in for a fortnight in the downtown Boston Theater district. Under the direction of Diane Paulus, with choreography by Mia Michaels, the original design team remains intact, and...

When the unconquerable Billy Flynn and the ensemble sing of that "old razzle dazzle," they sing of corruption and deceit - of wicked things turned into truth when presented in just the right light. Under the pretense of being decent in a world of easy exploitation and unremorseful women, Billy's smi...

In a bizarre and unfortunate case of life imitating art, Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston found itself without its leading man only hours before the curtain going up on their season-ending production of 42nd STREET. Producing Artistic Director Robert J. Eagle announced that the understudy woul...

Randy Rainbow kicked off his first New England tour in Boston last night with two shows at the Roberts Studio Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts. On his maiden trip to the Hub, Rainbow was greeted with a rousing ovation by a decidedly liberal audience primed to yuck it up at the expense of th...

Sunday in the Park with George is a musical about the "art of making art" and two artists' journeys of filling in a blank canvas. It tells the story of George, a fictionalized version of the real George Seurat, and the creation of his famous painting, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande J...

BULLETS OVER BROADWAY brings Woody Allen's New Yorker sensibility to the seaside community of Ogunquit, Maine, along with a coterie of thugs, hoofers, show people, and one adorable pug. Based on Allen's and co-writer Douglas McGrath's 1994 film of the same name, the musical incorporates old songs fr...

It is a simple premise: Two candidates in a pharmaceutical drug trial fall in love, but is their chemistry real, or induced? This scientific debate is the subject of Lucy Prebble's THE EFFECT, now in its New England Premiere at Gloucester Stage Company. Under the direction of Sam Weisman, the play s...

Laughs in abundance are in free fall in the Huntington Theatre Company's production of Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire's RIPCORD, a bejeweled vehicle for a pair of women of a certain age that is polished to a shine by the brilliant performances of Nancy E. Carroll and Annie Golden. Under ...

The Nora Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Alan Brody's THE MIDVALE HIGH SCHOOL FIFTIETH REUNION, a light-hearted, evocative trip down Memory Lane with the Class of 1954. Directed by Lee Mikeska Gardner, Emmy-winning actor Gordon Clapp and Underground Railway Theater Artistic Director D...

Israeli Stage presents the North American premiere production of Hanna Azoulay-Hasfari's DAYS OF ATONEMENT, a dramatic exploration of the Moroccan-Israeli immigrant experience through the eyes of four estranged sisters who reunite when their mother goes missing on the eve of Yom Kippur. Producing Ar...

Gloucester Stage Company opens it 38th season with the New England premiere of John Kolvenbach's play about a pair of brothers who decide to try robbing a bank in an unwise career move. Taking the money turns out to be much easier than finding a way out of the executive washroom. A sympathetic bank ...

Amy Herzog's 2013 Pulitzer Prize finalist and 2012 Obie Award-winner for Best New Play opens the 40th Anniversary Season in Lenox under new Artistic Director Allyn Burrows. Annette Miller gives an incredible performance as the widowed nonagenarian Vera Joseph who is visited by her 21-year-old, untet...

The Lyric Stage Company of Boston closes out the season with David Lee's adaptation of Lerner and Loewe's CAMELOT, a revision that hones in on the relationships among the three principals and retains the glorious score, while jettisoning considerable weight from the historically burdensome book. Pro...

SpeakEasy Stage Company's Boston premiere of Marsha Norman's (Book) and Jason Robert Brown's (Music and Lyrics) adaptation of Robert James Waller's novel is elevated by the luminescent Jennifer Ellis and hunky Christiaan Smith. The libretto wobbles, but the leads and ensemble warble Brown's soaring ...

The 2017 Boston Pops Spring season is a tribute to Boston Pops Conductor Laureate John Williams who celebrates his 85th birthday this year. Opening night featured film and recording star Queen Latifah in her Pops debut and they'll do it all over again tonight....

GREECE is the word and the place where Ryan Landry and his Gold Dust Orphans take you for their latest musical extravaganza. It's 1950 B.C., the gods are gathered on Mt. Olympus, and the mean girls and toga-clad boys are returning to Olympia High School with a new student in their midst. Will Sandy ...

World premiere of MY 80-YEAR-OLD BOYFRIEND at Merrimack Repertory Theatre is based on the true story of Broadway singer/actress Charissa Bertels and her unlikely friendship with a decidedly older gentleman. The narrative is uplifting, the score floats along with the story like a raft on a lazy rive...

Zeitgeist Stage Company introduces new faces that meld into an impressive ensemble to convey the unusual and flawed characters from the mind of Williams and the pens of half a dozen eclectic playwrights in DESIRE: AN EVENING OF PLAYS BASED ON SIX SHORT STORIES BY TENNESSEE WILLIAMS. A self-admitted ...

Stoneham Theatre seriously ups its game with Moira Buffini's 1997 play GABRIEL, a World War II tale of survival and intrigue, where the fate of a family may rest upon the identity of a mysterious stranger. Producing Artistic Director Weylin Symes directs a cast that includes some of Boston theater's...

New Repertory Theatre takes us for a ride in the wayback machine for the Boston-area premiere of one of Lydia Diamond's earliest plays. THE GIFT HORSE is a somewhat autobiographical, witty play that is heavy on character, rife with serious themes, and about fifteen to twenty minutes longer than what...