Boston Theater Reviews
BWW Review: WORLD LINE at TC Squared Theatre Company
by Andrew Child - July 18, 2020
TC Squared's Volume Up series of virtual one act plays is posed to convince audiences they are up for the task of taking their programs to the digital realm for the time being. After logging in to their YouTube stream, one is met with a smooth, animated countdown set to a quiescent techno beat by Ka...
BWW Review: WOMEN BEHIND THE CURTAIN by Asian American Theatre Artists Of Boston
by Andrew Child - July 01, 2020
In Women Behind the Curtain, Michael Lin weaves a narrative about a French spy, Renee, on a mission in Cold War Moscow. When a suspiciously-invested secretary, Aleksandra, joins her in her covert travels, the two are set on an action-packed journey through mistrusted informants, double agents, and s...
BWW Review: Arlekin Players' STATE VS NATASHA BANINA: Live Theater on Zoom
by Nancy Grossman - May 18, 2020
Fresh on the heels of a solid showing at the virtual 38th Annual Elliot Norton Awards, where the Boston Theater Critics Association recognized their achievements during the abbreviated 2019-2020 season with ten nominations and four wins, the Arlekin Players Theatre boldly launches a new production i...
BWW Review: KIND THING; NICE THING at Homesick Play Project
by Andrew Child - May 10, 2020
My immediate response to this reading of the play, which had its premiere at Tufts University unfortunately canceled, is that I would love to see how it would change were the actors cast actually artists who use they/them pronouns in their lives....
BWW Review: BELOVED KING: A QUEER BIBLE MUSICAL at Oberon
by Andrew Child - May 07, 2020
The score is catchy, folksy, and declamatory in a way that fuses rock sounds with medieval sensibilities, and Kaedon Gray as the prophet, Samuel, begins the show with an expository narration worthy of a mystery play. The stage is set and we launch into the familiar story of King Saul, Jonathan, Davi...
BWW Review: TORREY PINES at ArtsEmerson
by Andrew Child - May 07, 2020
Beginning in darkness with the sounds of the sea, we launch into a film that directly serves as a companion to a well-constructed soundtrack. Seattle-based director and creator Clyde Petersen opens the autobiographical work with a delightfully familiar reimagining of a coming-of-age story cliche....
BWW Review: THE CHILDREN: Cleaning Up Our Own Mess
by Nancy Grossman - March 03, 2020
The Boston premiere of Lucy Kirkwood's 2018 Tony Award-nominated play THE CHILDREN at SpeakEasy Stage Company is an affecting drama, thanks to a combination of the playwright's excellence at her craft, Director Bryn Boice's focus, and the trio of Elliot Norton Award-winning actors whose portrayals c...
BWW Review: REVOLUTION: DANCE ON THE EDGE at Boston Ballet
by Andrew Child - March 02, 2020
Boston Ballet's rEVOLUTION: Dance on the Edge features three works by pivotal choreographers which stretch the label 'contemporary' to its breaking point. The three pieces, which all premiered between 1957-1987 may trace through the timeline of progress for commercial ballet in America, but I questi...
BWW Review: THE TREASURER at Lyric Stage Company of Boston
by Andrew Child - March 01, 2020
For playwright Max Posner, sitting down to write The Treasurer must have been a feat of de-centering oneself. The narrative takes a dusky, balmy look back at the relationship between his father and his grandmother, a wealthy, New York socialite who lived with dementia in her old age. While the story...
BWW Review: WOLF PLAY at Company One Theatre
by Andrew Child - February 24, 2020
For a long time within their history, Company One has cornered the market in Boston for selecting those cutting-edge new works that are able to effectively spark conversations and juxtaposing them against each other in ways that are both productive and incendiary. Hats off to Director of New Work, I...
BWW Review: 10 X 10 NEW PLAY FESTIVAL at Barrington Stage Company Offers A Little Something for Everyone.
by Marc Savitt - February 17, 2020
With costumes by Trinity Koch, lighting by Lucas Pawelski, sound by Alex Sovronsky, stage management by Rachel Lynne Harper, and line production by Nora Zahn, ten new plays presented by six fine performers under the guidance of two strong directors, the 10 x 10 NEW PLAY FESTIVAL continues at Barrin...
BWW Review: HAMLET 360: THY FATHER'S SPIRIT at Commonwealth Shakespeare Company
by Andrew Child - February 15, 2020
It is interesting to look at the history of art and entertainment by analyzing the innovations which have been deemed exclusively novelties and written off as fleeting trends by their contemporaries. For film, color and sound were both considered by many to be cheap gimmicks that would quickly fade ...
BWW Review: MEAN GIRLS at Citizens Bank Opera House
by Jan Nargi - February 09, 2020
With friends like The Plastics, who needs enemies? That's the basic premise for the surprisingly fresh and sometimes scathingly funny high school musical MEAN GIRLS written by Emmy Award winner Tina Fey based on her 2004 hit film. Treading the familiar teen angst territory of cafeterias, locker room...
BWW Review: DETROIT RED at ArtsEmerson
by Andrew Child - February 07, 2020
In David Mamet's book On Directing Film, he breaks down the way a linear narrative can be conveyed by placing images in direct contrast to each other. a?oeThe dream and the film are the juxtaposition of images in order to answer a question.a?? Certainly, with a majority of the action taking place up...
BWW Review: AN EVENING WITH SUTTON FOSTER at Celebrity Series Of Boston
by Andrew Child - February 04, 2020
Sutton Foster, since her Tony Award-winning break through as the title role in Thoroughly Modern Millie, has been one of the select leading ladies who have held a decades-spanning monopoly on Broadway's biggest musicals. Foster holds the distinction of being one of the gawkiest, most palatably quirk...
BWW Review: KING JOHN at Praxis Stage
by Andrew Child - February 01, 2020
Why isn't this show an impersonation of cool even if it falls into some trappings of the dreaded 'regional theatre' scene? I think it's because Praxis Stage is, at its heart, genuinely concerned with the prospects of theatre that every other theatre in this city needs to purport to care about in ord...
BWW Review: HUNDRED DAYS: Every Song Tells a Story
by Nancy Grossman - January 28, 2020
HUNDRED DAYS and the intimate Black Box at the Umbrella Stage Company in Concord are a perfect match, not unlike Abigail and Shaun Bengson, the couple whose true story of their romantic and musical journey is told in this original song cycle. Staged like a concert before a few cabaret-style tables a...
BWW Review: BRIGHT HALF LIFE at Actors' Shakespeare Project
by Andrew Child - January 27, 2020
Queer couples in the greater Boston area: if you are looking for a mushy, warm, romantic gay love story with a backbone and plenty of heartbreak that will make you want to cuddle up with your partner between now and Valentine's Day weekend, you couldn't do much better than Actors' Shakespeare Projec...
BWW Review: LAST CATASTROPHIST: Don't They Know, It's the End of the World?
by Nancy Grossman - January 26, 2020
David Valdes has seen the future and it doesn't look good. If you're already losing sleep over the onrush of climate change, if the rollback of environmental regulations makes your blood boil, and if you fret about the steady departure of actual scientists from government agencies, Valdes' play LAST...
BWW Review: BOOM at Wellesley Repertory Theatre
by Andrew Child - January 25, 2020
Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's boom was the most produced American play of 2010. 10 years later, Wellesley Repertory Theatre has brought it back, directed by artistic director, Marta Rainer, armed with the proverbial program note toting its enduring relevance. In a way, it seems to wittily comment on the 'N...
BWW Review: SMOKED OYSTERS at TC Squared Theatre Company
by Andrew Child - January 22, 2020
One of the inescapable pillars of the human condition is the universal narcissism with which we consume media. Entirely incapable of existing within a vacuum with the narratives presented to us, we search films, theatre, books, songs, and television for those personal implications we are certain the...
BWW Review: THE CAKE: Two Brides, One Conundrum for North Carolina Baker
by Nancy Grossman - January 20, 2020
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court handed a narrow victory to a Christian baker from Colorado who refused for religious reasons to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. Hailing from a conservative North Carolina background, playwright Bekah Brunstetter is personally familiar with people like Della, the...
BWW Review: A BRONX TALE at Hanover Theatre In Worcester, MA
by Jan Nargi - January 19, 2020
If you like your coming-of-age-on-the-mean-streets stories served with an extra side of red sauce, then Chazz Palminteri's semi-autobiographical A BRONX TALE is for you. Featuring characters with names like Rudy the Voice, Eddie Mush, Jojo the Whale and Frankie Coffeecake, this musical adaptation of...
BWW Review: PASS OVER: Poetic, Profane, and Powerful Drama of Search for a Promised Land
by Nancy Grossman - January 17, 2020
SpeakEasy Stage Company presents the New England premiere of Antoinette Nwandu's PASS OVER, in a co-production with The Front Porch Arts Collective. In this intense drama performed without intermission, two young Black men represent the lives of countless others like them who have dreams of reaching...
BWW Review: MAYTAG VIRGIN: Folding Laundry, Mending Hearts at Merrimack Rep
by Nancy Grossman - January 14, 2020
MAYTAG VIRGIN is a slice of life, character-driven romantic comedy about two forty-something school teachers, both widowed, who meet cute in their connecting yards in a fictional town in Alabama. Good fences make good neighbors and their lack of one leads to many challenges, but they are both warm p...
