Boston Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 33

BWW Review: 'A New Argentina' Has Risen with Cape Rep's EVITA
by Kristen Morale - August 17, 2015

When Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice came together to write Evita, they probably didn't realize how big a splash they would be making the realm of musical theater; with its dynamic and rather challenging score, its continuous demand for the sung word (trademark of many Lloyd Webber pieces) and ...

BWW Review: Let There Be No Prejudice Here
by Kristen Morale - August 13, 2015

It is safe to say that Monomoy has done a spectacular job staging Austen's work: from the chosen cast, the beautiful period costumes and the way in which it just felt like the novel should feel, there is really nothing bad to say about this production. The set was beautiful, and without moving more ...

BWW REVIEW: Audra McDonald Dominates WTF's A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN
by Jan Nargi - August 12, 2015

There's no mistaking who's in charge in the Williamstown Theatre Festival's crackling production of A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN now running through August 23. As Eugene O'Neill's indomitable Josie Hogan, six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald stomps, kicks, shoves and brandishes a big stick as she...

BWW Reviews: Andris Nelsons Takes Command in Tanglewood Mahler 8
by Erica Miner - August 13, 2015

Subtitled "The Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert" in homage to Bernstein...

BWW Reviews: MOTHER OF THE MAID at Shakespeare & Company
by Karen Bovard - August 12, 2015

Imagine:  you're a peasant woman in 15th century France, and your teenage daughter has taken strange.  It seems she's having visions of St. Catherine, who's instructed her to lead the French army to victory over the invading English. In pants. And armor. Yep:  you call her Joanie, but we know her as...

BWW Reviews: WONDERFUL TOWN: A Nice Place to Visit
by Nancy Grossman - August 12, 2015

Katie Anne Clark and Jennifer Ellis are dynamite as the dynamic Sherwood sisters in the Reagle Music Theatre production of WONDERFUL TOWN, an old-fashioned musical comedy with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Clark's comedic flair, Ellis' luminous voice, an ens...

BWW Reviews: Majesty At Its Peak at Harwich Junior Theatre
by Kristen Morale - August 11, 2015

As part of a very impressive sixty-forth summer season, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon makes its Cape Cod premiere with Harwich Junior Theater's current production…and what a clever idea it was to bring such a heartwarming story to its stage! Written by Grace Lin, adapted by Jeannine Coulombe and...

BWW Reviews: A Trio of TALKING HEADS at Elements Theatre Company
by Nancy Grossman - August 10, 2015

Elements Theatre Company selected three of the 12 monologues in Alan Bennett's TALKING HEADS for their summer production which concluded its brief run this past weekend at Paraclete House at Rock Harbor in Orleans. Ordinary, albeit quirky, characters were brought to life in extraordinary performance...

BWW Reviews: Monomoy's SPELLING BEE Spells Success!
by Kristen Morale - August 10, 2015

What would happen if one were to switch the first few letters of "amazing" to form a new, exciting word that only certain minds could quickly figure out? Actually, who cares! As long as each of you knows the word's definition and what it implies, there can only be synonyms of the word used to descri...

BWW Reviews: Tanglewood Celebrates 75 Years of Koussevitzky's Dream
by Erica Miner - August 06, 2015

The world's most gifted young music students study with esteemed members of the Boston Symphony...

BWW Reviews: 'OH MY!' to Cape Playhouse's MY FAIR LADY
by Kristen Morale - August 06, 2015

My Fair Lady is truly of the most perfect testaments of a musical success there ever was; from a plot filled with witty little criticisms to rather verbose songs about the triumphs of the human will, Lerner and Loewe's classic has captured the hearts of many since its premiere more than half a centu...

BWW REVIEW: Who Could Ask for Anything More of Ogunquit's NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT?
by Jan Nargi - August 02, 2015

You won't be slipped a Mickey Finn, but Maine's Ogunquit Playhouse will knock you off your feet with its 'delishious' production of NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT running through August 15. Chock-a-block full of bootleggers, playboys, dancing girls and temperance leaders, NICE WORK is a non-stop musica...

BWW Reviews: A WONDROUS TALE Of GUYS AND THEIR DOLLS
by Kristen Morale - August 02, 2015

The Chatham Drama Guild, established eighty-four years ago and boasting one of the only truly volunteer managed community theater groups on the Cape, continues its summer season with Guys and Dolls, the well-known tale of gamblers-by-trade Nathan Detroit, Sky Masterson and their 'dolls' in the midst...

BWW REVIEW: Coolidge Ends Run in SAVING KITTY 8/2 in Cambridge
by Jan Nargi - August 01, 2015

Stage, film and television star Jennifer Coolidge ends her acclaimed run in SAVING KITTY at the Nora Theatre Company in Cambridge, Mass., on Sunday, August 2. Coolidge stars as the devastatingly funny Kate Hartley, a smart but frustrated society matron who is bound and determined to save her daughte...

BWW Reviews: A Knight of a Night at APA'S MAN OF A LA MANCHA
by Kristen Morale - July 28, 2015

What is interesting about Quixote, though, is that he is not a knight at all, but a man soon considered by the masses to be delusional - a complete lunatic to believe that knights are still in existence and can be of some heroic use amongst men when such people seem hopeless causes for which to figh...

BWW Reviews: THE NEW ELECTRIC BALLROOM: Same Dance, Different Day
by Nancy Grossman - July 27, 2015

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 ...

BWW REVIEW: BELLS ARE RINGING Forces the Comedy in the Berkshires
by Jan Nargi - July 23, 2015

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...

BWW Reviews: COLOSSAL Blurs the Line Between Sport and Art
by Nancy Grossman - July 22, 2015

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...

BWW Reviews: Get the Wine! Cape Playhouse Presents WOMEN IN JEOPARDY
by Kristen Morale - July 20, 2015

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...

BWW Reviews: Magic Really Exists in HJT'S ALADDIN
by Kristen Morale - July 20, 2015

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...

BWW Reviews: Monomoy Theater's LEND ME A TENOR
by Kristen Morale - July 16, 2015

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...

BWW REVIEW: Stellar Cast Wanders OFF THE MAIN ROAD in Williamstown
by Jan Nargi - July 15, 2015

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...

BWW Reviews: HERSHEY FELDER AS IRVING BERLIN: A NEW MUSICAL PLAY
by Nancy Grossman - July 12, 2015

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...

BWW Reviews: DROWSY We Are Not!
by Kristen Morale - July 12, 2015

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...

BWW REVIEW: Ogunquit's VICTOR/VICTORIA Says Vive la Difference
by Jan Nargi - July 08, 2015

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...