BOSTON THEATER REVIEWS

WITNESS UGANDA explores the American impulse to change the world. It is an electrifying production that combines stellar design elements, breathtaking choreography, and an ensemble of energetic young artists committed to telling their story. Artistic Director Diane Paulus again shows her flair for g...

Moonbox Productions moves upstairs to the Roberts Studio Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts for a large scale musical with Stephen Sondheim's COMPANY. Exploring friendship, love, commitment, and marriage through the eyes of a 35-year old bachelor, the vignettes resonate, but the songs really ...

Boston Playwrights' Theatre season concludes with Peter M. Floyd's ABSENCE, a witty and poignant exploration of a 76-year old woman's decline and the impact on her family relationships. Understudy Kippy Goldfarb stepped in and stepped up on the opening weekend for ailing Joanna Merlin and knocked it...

NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH, prolific British playwright Alan Ayckbourn's opus #75, is a dark comedy satire and a cautionary tale which serves as a chilling reminder of recent events in our own country. Director David J. Miller's cast of four men and four women form a cohesive ensemble and find the humor in...

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Playwright Matthew Lopez uses the Passover Seder as a framing device, paralleling the escape of the Jews from bondage in ancient Egypt with the freeing of American slaves at the end of the Civil War. A Jewish Confederate soldier returns home to navigate the new world order with two former slaves in ...

Celebrity Series of Boston celebrates its 75th Anniversary Season and brings in Tony Award-winning baritone Brian Stokes Mitchell for his third appearance. With the virtuosic accompaniment of Tedd Firth on piano, Stokes plays a cast of characters from a range of Broadway musicals, from CAMELOT to CA...

INSIGNIFICANCE is a slight play populated with four iconic characters that have held great significance in American culture. Director Daniel Gidron draws impressive performances from his cast without resorting to caricature or imitation. Stacy Fischer is worth the price of admission....

Company One and ArtsEmerson collaborate to present the New England premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury's play WE ARE PROUD TO PRESENT A PRESENTATION...about the little known genocide of the Herero of Namibia by German colonialists early in the twentieth century. According to the playwright, "The play ...

Broadway smash and 2012 Tony Award nominee for Best Play VENUS IN FUR is in its Boston premiere at the Huntington Theatre Company. Director Daniel Goldstein and actors Chris Kipiniak and Andrea Syglowski deliver the goods from the mind and pen of playwright David Ives. Venus has come a long way sinc...

The blues may be cool, but Miche Braden and the music are hot in this lively production of playwright Angelo Parra's THE DEVIL'S MUSIC: THE LIVE AND BLUES OF BESSIE SMITH at Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell. Even if you don't know much about Smith, you'll walk out of the show feeling as though ...

A panto, I have learned, is a British tradition of a winter musical comedy for the whole family, incorporating a well known children's story, musical numbers, and vaudeville humor. This production, conceived and directed by Matthew Woods, told the story of Rumpelstiltskin, but focused more on the ev...

Based on the Alice Walker novel of the same name, The Color Purple spans over thirty years, following a young African-American woman named Celie and her struggles with gender roles, violence, accepting love, and exploring her relationship with God....

Convicted swindler Bernard Madoff squares off with a fictional victim of his Ponzi scheme in Deborah Margolin's controversial play in New Rep's Black Box Theater. Under the direction of Elaine Vaan Hogue, on Jon Savage's stunning set, Jeremiah Kissel, Joel Colodner, and Adrianne Krstansky tell this ...

Stephen Schwartz musical based on Studs Terkel's 1974 mega-tome has been updated to reflect changes in occupations, but continues to tell the stories of the everyday laborers, the unsung and invisible workforce that powers our nation. The eclectic, moving score gets the attention it deserves from Il...

Over two weekends in December, the Elements Theatre Company in Orleans employed a panoply of sensory stimuli in a Readers' Theatre form of John Mortimer's adaptation of Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL. With vivacity unexpected in a staged reading, Director Sr. Danielle Dwyer and her talented ense...

Playwright David Farr, inspired by TWELFTH NIGHT, AS YOU LIKE IT, and his own two daughters, has written a nature-infused feminist version of the legend of Robin Hood. Icelandic Director Gisli Örn Gardarsson and his creative team have conjured up an athletic, revolutionary staging brought to life b...

This story of a king's obsession with obtaining a male heir is not one of Shakespeare's commonly produced works, but the Actor Shakespeare Project's production was beautifully familiar and accessible....

NOT JENNY is not a holiday show, but its pay-what-you-can admission policy is Bridge Repertory Theater of Boston's gift to the city. MJ Halberstadt's world premiere play is a dark comedy with characters who would be at home in an Edward Albee or Tracy Letts vehicle....

Ryan Landry and the Gold Dust Orphans mash-up GREY GARDENS, Mrs. Grinchley, and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE for a new holiday musical parody that is sure to earn its wings. Clever sets, delicious costumes, creative choreography, and new stars join the Orphans regulars to put on a show that is anything but...

The miracle in MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET is the ability of Kris Kringle to infuse the holiday with the true spirit of Christmas in the face of raging commercialism, harried shoppers, and cynical doubters. Adapted from the beloved 1947 film, the play at Stoneham Theatre does not fare as well in its stag...

Tony and Olivier Award-winning director Maria Aitken once again brings her deft touch to Boston's Huntington Theatre Company with a taut and tangy production of THE COCKTAIL HOUR, A.R. Gurney's quasi-autobiographical expose of the bitter truths lurking beneath one well-bred WASP family's carefully p...

New Repertory Theatre's revival of Lerner and Loewe's 1961 Tony Award-winning musical places the emphasis where it belongs, on the passions of the star-crossed lovers. It evokes an era of youth, hope, and possibility that was embodied in the administration of President John F. Kennedy, whose assassi...

Singing and dancing extravaganza based on the beloved stories of Jean Shepherd gets the eccentric tone just right in this funny and affectionate remembrance of the simple joys of Christmases past....

Be prepared to be enraged, enlightened and deeply moved by the Zeitgeist Stage Company's riveting production of Larry Kramer's autobiographical drama....