BOSTON THEATER REVIEWS

It's a lot to ask of a leading lady to make audiences forget Barbra Streisand in the role that catapulted her to stardom. That's one of the reasons why FUNNY GIRL, the musical that forever linked Streisand to the title character Fanny Brice, has never been revived on Broadway. Well, look no more, pr...

Currently performing at the Lyric Stage in Boston is PETER AND THE STARCATCHER, Rick Elice's (Jersey Boys, The Addams Family) theatrical prequel to Peter Pan based on the best-selling children's novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. On and Off-Broadway, this high-energy, whimsical back story, dire...

The fun musical hits its final stage this season and you don't want to miss it...

Bridge Repertory Theater of Boston concludes its third season with Marisa Wegrzyn's MUD BLUE SKY. Tickets are available for three remaining shows this weekend. Director Bridget Kathleen O'Leary draws colorful performances from Leigh Barrett, Deb Martin, and Veronica Anastasio Wiseman as three world-...

Gloucester Stage Company opens its 37th season with LETTICE AND LOVAGE as a star vehicle for Academy Award-nominated Gloucester resident Lindsay Crouse. Written by Peter Shaffer (EQUUS, AMADEUS) for beloved British actress Dame Maggie Smith, Crouse takes on the title role of tour guide Lettice Douff...

Art isn't easy. From Edvard Munch's agoraphobia to Sarah Kane's depression, the art world's rap sheet for its dense population of individuals with mental illness is haunting. Just ask Turner, the newest 'it talent' on the Chelsea art scene, who is struggling with a myriad of emotional and psychologi...

At one point during her new one-woman play IN THE BODY OF THE WORLD, based on her highly acclaimed 2013 memoir of the same name, Eve Ensler repeats a phrase over and over to one of her doctors: "You're going to radiate my vagina. Radiate. My vagina. Radiate. My vagina. Radiate. My. Vagina." A pause,...

The Cape Cod Theatre Company, home of the Harwich Junior Theatre, has decided to step away traditional staged storytelling and try something different with its newest "jukebox" production of Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash. Created by Richard Maltby, Jr and hereby directed and choreographed b...

The coming of age of America during the tumultuous 1960s is brought vividly to life in DOGFIGHT, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's exquisite little musical now being presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company of Boston. Set in San Francisco on the eve of President Kennedy's assassination, DOGFIGHT pits the inn...

With a book by Todd Almond, with music and lyrics by Matthew Sweet (from the latter's album of the same name plus songs derived from Altered Beats and 100% Fun) and originally produced by Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, CA, Girlfriend is now directed by Christopher Ostrom as it comes to WHAT...

Producing Artistic Director and Founder of Israeli Stage, Guy Ben-Aharon helmed a staged reading of Swedish-Tunisian playwright/author Jonas Hassen Khemiri's I CALL MY BROTHERS last night in Nordic Hall at the Scandinavian Cultural Center in West Newton. The first-ever theatrical performance at SCC ...

Everyone is familiar with the works of Stephen Sondheim, quite the musical genius himself: his contributions to everything from 'West Side Story' to 'Sweeney Todd' have really set him apart from others in the musical theater realm; his style is so eclectic, his music so beautiful, that any show whic...

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 fanc...

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 infatua...

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 ...

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...

Loosely based on the 1915 novel written by John Buchan, later made into the 1935 movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock and gradually turned into a staged comical farce in 2005 by Patrick Barlow, The 39 Steps is something quite wonderful to see when brought about by a gifted director and a very talented...

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 n...

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, loneline...

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 unsettlin...

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 ense...

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 t...

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 p...

There are quite a few advantages of getting old, despite what many people may believe: the well-worn worries of youth are whisked away in the leveled way more mature people live their lives, self-dictated rules and personal boundaries are set as people come into their own and emotions are at bay as ...

Presidential candidates are not the only ones taking to the debate stage these days. In Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, characters stand and challenge each other, far more diplomatically than our friends running for higher office, on a long list of mathematical, scientific, and philosophical theories. Chara...