BOSTON THEATER REVIEWS

Superlative acting, intense staging, and timeless themes are the hallmarks of THE NEW ELECTRIC BALLROOM, Enda Walsh's 2010 Obie Award-winning play now receiving its New England Premiere at Gloucester Stage Company under the direction of Interim Artistic Director Robert Walsh. Its setting in a small ...

Berkshire Theatre Group's revival of BELLS ARE RINGING starring Broadway's charming husband and wife duo Graham Rowat and Kate Baldwin can be described in two words: sensory overload. Director Ethan Heard and his entire creative team have worked the 1956 kitsch so hard that the physical elements ove...

Three summers ago, Company One Theatre converted the Roberts Studio Theatre into an authentic wrestling arena for its acclaimed production of The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, Kristoffer Diaz's satire of the faux violence and bright lights of the show biz world of professional wrestling. C1's se...

This is one show for which it is imperative that someone yells "Don't forget the wine!" so that each character is mentally prepared for what mess is to come. Now that that has been said and everyone has been sufficiently warned, the audience is give a trio of middle-aged, divorced women who spend t...

Ever since I attended my first production at the wonderful Harwich Junior Theater a few months ago, I have consistently been amazed by what has appeared on that stage then and thereafter. The shows never disappoint, and I never cease to be impressed by how talented the involved actors of all ages pr...

Directed by Francesca James, Lend Me a Tenor is beyond brought - it is more like jolted to life in Monomoy's current production of Ken Ludwig's Tony-winning comedy, and to say that it is anything but brilliant this time around is a severe understatement. It is one of the only productions I have seen...

Small-town life is anything but a picnic in William Inge's newly discovered, previously unproduced play OFF THE MAIN ROAD currently receiving its decades-delayed world premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in the Berkshires. This dense and diffuse melodrama meanders through a forest of darkn...

ArtsEmerson: The World on Stage presents the East Coast Premiere of HERSHEY FELDER AS IRVING BERLIN: A NEW MUSICAL PLAY at the Emerson/Cutler Majestic Theatre. Performances have been extended through August 2nd for this feel-good evening of just over two dozen selections from Berlin's vast catalogue...

Now, to continue in the tradition of giving each of us the theatrical experience we truly relish and yearn for this time of year (if not always!), the Playhouse brings a stellar production of five-time Tony Award Winner The Drowsy Chaperone to a Cape Cod audience, and let me just put it out there no...

VICTOR/VICTORIA's gender-bending exploration of sexual identity and orientation may have seemed fresh, even daring, in 1982, but by the time it hit Broadway in 1995 it was already a bit tame. Today in a 20th anniversary production at Maine's Ogunquit Playhouse, it feels downright quaint when compare...

...there is musical professionalism amidst the madness....

So saying, the plot of John Patrick Shanley's Outside Mullingar shows just disheartening it is when four characters are discovered to have been strangers for so long due to those undisclosed feelings that have eaten away at their souls for so long; when the time for changes arises, the obstacles whi...

In THOREAU, a world premiere play written by and starring Berkshire Theatre Group's David Adkins, the renowned author, philosopher and activist returns to Walden in search of peace but can't escape his own inner anguish over the horrors of slavery and the execution of abolitionist John Brown....

Harwich Junior Theater, a group that boasts productions of ten plays and musicals each year, numerous community outreach and educational programs and a variety of other annual events, is sure to amaze audiences with its current production. Performing such a well-known musical work and presenting it ...

A lot may seem familiar in Disney's Broadway musical NEWSIES now on tour in Boston, but the dancing chorus of a dozen or so able-bodied newsboys makes this production soar....

When I sit down to write a review of a show I've recently seen, I am more often than not tempted to write about the profound storyline of that show, or perhaps the added depth a playwright might add to his plot to make it rather abstract and therefore open to mass interpretation by audiences. I conf...

Three abandoned but not lost souls find strength in each other in A. Rey Pamatmat's quirky but penetrating comedy EDITH CAN SHOOT THINGS AND HIT THEM at Company One in Boston....

Happy Medium's production of DYING CITY by Christopher Shinn was the first hyper realistic piece I've seen in the private home of those performing....

How does one go about explaining what playwright Eric Coble describes as "the speed of the end?" Assuming a person knows what the end looks like and how it will come about, the mere realization that each of our lives will someday end and that we must deal with the complete decay of who each of us on...

Boston Public Works Theater Company's production of THREE, a new play by Emily Kaye Lazzaro...

The Boston Gay Men's Chorus annual Pride concert on Sunday at Symphony Hall featured Special Guest Laura Benanti, the Tony Award-winning singer/actress, also known to television audiences for her roles on "Nashville" and "The Good Wife." In a program with selections ranging from musical theater grea...

Director Nick Kenkel has made lightning strike a second time at North Shore Music Theatre with his dazzling and definitive production of DREAMGIRLS. Blessed with a dream design team and a tremendously talented cast of triple threats, Kenkel has dug beneath the glitz and the glamour of the American m...

Boston theatrical royalty brightens Lyric Stage Company's LIGHT UP THE SKY, Moss Hart's classic comic valentine to the divos and divas of the stage....

Celebrating sixty four years since Betty Bobp founded a group which would come to welcome theater aficionados of all ages to join and take part in the beauty of the dramatic arts, followed by Producing Artistic Director Nina Schuessler's dedication to creating a year-round educational venue on the C...

Gloucester Stage opens its 36th season with the second play of Richard Nelson's four-part American epic collectively known as THE APPLE FAMILY PLAYS. Collaborating with Stoneham Theatre, each company will produce two of the plays between this year and next under the direction of Stoneham's Producing...