BOSTON THEATER REVIEWS

Outstanding performances make 'The Elephant Man' worthwhile in an elegant but often austere production at New Repertory Theatre in Watertown, Mass....

Jeff loves Harry Potter and wants to provide an entertaining, yet accurate, recap of all seven of the novels. Dan, who is moderately aware that Harry Potter exists at best, just wants to have fun and play Quidditch. As the two bumble their way through the seven books, storytelling through puppetry, ...

Bridge Repertory Theater opens its first full season, in collaboration with Playhouse Creatures Theatre Company of NYC, with an ambitious production of Stephen Jeffreys' play about the life of 17th century poet John Wilmot. The complex story is overweight, but the acting is topnotch, as are the cost...

The Other Place by Sharr White, presented by the Underground Railroad Theater and the Nora Theatre Company at the Central Square Theater is about a middle-aged scientist faced with a crumbling marriage, an estranged daughter, and a mystery illness that she is trying to self-diagnose. The story is de...

Boston premiere of recent Broadway hit "One Man, Two Guvnors" at Lyric Stage Company is inconsistent when it comes to playing farce...

DRIVING MISS DAISY is a fitting capstone to the Gloucester Stage Company 2013 season. Benny Sato Ambush provides thoughtful, intelligent direction for the sublime acting talents of Lindsay Crouse, Johnny Lee Davenport, and Robert Pemberton....

Tony Award winner and Broadway star Faith Prince brought her cabaret-style act to Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport as part of Summer at Rockport 2013. With her Music Director Alex Rybeck on piano, they put on a dazzling program of classic show tunes, back stage stories, and Prince's "gracio...

The show is a new musical that follows two Scottish performers as they join together in music and try to make a name for themselves, all while exploring the destructive and alluring romance between them. The entire piece is told through story telling and constant rock music, as these two trace their...

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Director Lewis D. Wheeler and the Gloucester Stage Company mount playwright Kenneth Lonergan's THIS IS OUR YOUTH with a trio of talented actors displaying high energy and raw emotion. Jimi Stanton, Alex Pollock, and Amanda Collins are three privileged kids on Manhattan's Upper West Side trying to fi...

Anything is sweeter than this mother and daughter story....

Elements Theatre Company in Orleans kicks off a year-long tribute to William Shakespeare with an accessible A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM performed by a resident ensemble at Paraclete House at Rock Harbor. Their professionalism and commitment to their craft are unmistakable in this very solid production...

With this production of Much Ado About Nothing, Barrington Stage enters the ranks of Berkshire theatre companies that have proven their expertise with the most successful, and challenging, of all playwrights....

Les Miserables is arguably the most popular musical in history and after the successful 2012 motion picture version, its fan base has only continued to expand. Les Mis is hardly a musical, but rather, a movement. Next to tackle this show of epic proportions is the Reagle Music Theatre in Waltham, MA...

The Valentine Trilogy consists of three parts: Sal Valentino and the Melancholy Kid set in the wild, wild West, Curse of the Crying Heart in medieval Japan, and Valentine Victorious! in 1930s Boston. The stories all revolve around an epic hero, a masked vigilante with a heart of gold, and the tales ...

Given the insular and in-clubby world that is the New York cabaret scene (by nature, not by design), it can be a struggle for non-celebrity, out-of-town performers to generate an audience when they mount shows in Manhattan. One singer facing that dilemma is lovely, Boston-based Lynda D'Amour, a terr...

In MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN, Olympia Dukakis delivers a searing performance in its title role. Dukakis is more than just a masterful actor, she delivers a Mother Courage who is strong, sassy and simply astonishing in her complexity. The entire ensemble of sixteen actors raises the reputation ...

Titanic Theatre Company's production of Tony Award-winner Christopher Durang's WHY TORTURE IS WRONG, AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM takes you on a wild ride into a post 9/11 world populated by a suspected terrorist, a minister who produces porno movies, and loony agents of a shadow government. It's b...

One of America's most popular plays for summer theatres, SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR offers a light alternative in this summer in the Berkshires which is better known for serious classics, new musicals and cutting edge new plays....

In one of the most unusual musical stories since Sweeney Todd, we enter into the world of transgendered people living in the rural south and the lives they lead in a hostile environment. With country and bluegrass music the difficulties and challenges of becoming who you are is explored with both br...

Nearly thirty years after its world premiere at Gloucester Stage Company, Israel Horovitz's Pulitzer Prize-nominated play NORTH SHORE FISH presents a stark take on the local fish industry and remains relevant. Director Robert Walsh and the fine ensemble cast of seven women and two men inhabit the wo...

PAPER CITY PHOENIX aspires to show the world rising from the ashes of the explosion of an Internet overload in a future where law enforcement officials investigate misuse of information and disconnected people seek the security of community in a cult-like sect. Playwright Walt McGough tries to take ...

The book was a hit when published years ago, and THE CHOSEN on stage is no less wonderful in this adaptation written and directed by Aaron Posner. With a first rate cast at Barrington Stage, this tale of two fathers and their sons is both gripping theatre and food for thought....

Following fifteen-year-old Hank, the show addresses the growth of rap and hip hop in the 1980s, particularly in a suburban environment where it had not yet been accepted. Hank and his friends, Julian and Luann, struggle with stage fright, competition, unsupportive parental figures, friendship, accep...

At Shakespeare & Company the fusion of a classical concert with a dramatic story explores the relationship between Tchaikovsky and Mrs. von Meck. Much -though not all- is revealed in this story about the composer vis his letters, his music and the intertwining of theatre, music and dance....