Boston Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 35

BWW REVIEW: Dames Add Heat to Lyric's CITY OF ANGELS
by Jan Nargi - May 02, 2015

CITY OF ANGELS, Larry Gelbart, Cy Coleman, and David Zippel's musical romp through the seedy underworld of Hollywood via film noir, would be nothing without its dazzling dames. The same holds true for the production soon ending its run at Boston's Lyric Stage. Without the humor and heat brought by t...

BWW Reviews: Swept Away by THE OUTGOING TIDE
by Nancy Grossman - April 30, 2015

Artistic Director Charles Towers is stepping down after fourteen seasons at the helm of Merrimack Repertory Theatre. He leaves the audience with one final moving drama by playwright Bruce Graham, written with impeccable honesty and directed with the finest attention to every emotional detail....

BWW Reviews: An Evening of Short Plays at Brown Box's BOXER SHORTS
by Alex Lonati - April 29, 2015

Boxer Shorts is a ninety-minute night consisting of four short plays from three classic 20th century playwrights (Beckett, Pinter, and Williams) and one contemporary playwright (Raznovich)....

BWW Reviews: Finding Jeremy Jordan
by Nancy Grossman - April 27, 2015

The real Jeremy Jordan took to the stage at the Sorenson Center for the Arts on the campus of Babson College in his Boston concert debut, JEREMY JORDAN: BREAKING CHARACTER. Known for iconic roles on Broadway, television, and film, his appreciative fans discovered that Jordan is an interesting charac...

BWW Reviews: ULYSSES ON BOTTLES : Top Shelf
by Nancy Grossman - April 17, 2015

Israeli Stage, in association with ArtsEmerson: The World on Stage, presents its first full production with the North American premiere of Gilad Evron's ULYSSES ON BOTTLES in the Jackie Liebergott Black Box at the Paramount Center. Producing Artistic Director and Founder of Israeli Stage Guy Ben-Aha...

BWW Reviews: Fish Out of Water on NEVILLE'S ISLAND
by Nancy Grossman - April 15, 2015

NEVILLE'S ISLAND is a fish out of water story about four guys trying to bond and survive on a corporate team building excursion gone awry. Strong performances from Jim Loutzenhiser, Alexander Platt, Brooks Reeves, and Brandon Whitehead can't rescue them from playwright Tim Firth's overlong comedy tr...

BWW Reviews: THOROUGHLY MUSLIM MILLIE Thoroughly Mirthful
by Nancy Grossman - April 14, 2015

Ryan Landry and the Gold Dust Orphans mash-up THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, and the politics of oil and the Middle East in their latest side-splitting musical, THOROUGHLY MUSLIM MILLIE. Scott Martino's to-die-for costumes and scenic design aesthetic are on display, along with a cast ...

BWW Reviews: COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA Marked by David Cromer's Magic Touch
by Nancy Grossman - April 12, 2015

Huntington Theatre Company presents William Inge's sixty-five year old classic American drama, but it is nowhere near ready to be retired. Under the direction of David Cromer, it is a first rate production with incisive writing, design realism, and honest, raw performances....

BWW Reviews: GOD BOX: Desperately Seeking Pandora
by Nancy Grossman - April 07, 2015

New Repertory Theatre concludes the Second Annual Next Rep Black Box Festival, celebrating the powerful voices of women theatremakers, with GOD BOX, Antonia Lassar's seriocomic solo show directed by Christine Hamel. When the quintessential Jewish mother discovers that her recently-deceased daughter ...

BWW Reviews: KIMBERLY AKIMBO: I Won't Grow Up
by Nancy Grossman - April 06, 2015

Moonbox Productions stages David Lindsay-Abaire's black comedy about a sixteen-year old girl with a rare disease that ages her rapidly. Allison Olivia Choat directs a cast of five who humanize these quirky, dysfunctional characters and allow us to feel how they live with the specter of doom hanging ...

BWW Reviews: GOD'S EAR: Cries and Whispers
by Nancy Grossman - April 01, 2015

Actors' Shakespeare Project takes a break from the Bard to stage the first Boston area production of Jenny Schwartz's linguistically-rich play GOD'S EAR. Thomas Derrah directs and draws authentic, heartbreaking performances from Tamara Hickey and Gabriel Kuttner as a married couple grieving the trag...

BWW Reviews: Hub Theatre Company Puts Its Money on LOOT to Start Season Three
by Nancy Grossman - March 30, 2015

Hub Theatre Company of Boston starts its third season with LOOT, an irreverent, dark comedy by British playwright Joe Orton (WHAT THE BUTLER SAW, ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE) at the First Church in Boston. Daniel Bourque directs a cast of six live actors and one dormant dummy that is handled with reckle...

BWW Reviews: STRONGER THAN THE WIND: A Mother Prevails
by Nancy Grossman - March 27, 2015

Playwright/performer Alice Manning tells cathartic, deeply personal family story with humor and pathos, but always moving toward the light and, ultimately, choosing love....

BWW Reviews: FROM THE DEEP: Captivating New Play from Cassie M. Seinuk and Boston Public Works
by Nancy Grossman - March 26, 2015

Boston Public Works Theater Company, a playwrights' collective, presents its second production, the east coast premiere of FROM THE DEEP, Cassie M. Seinuk's award-winning play about two prisoners in existential captivity. A young Israeli soldier and a Boston University student share the space for tw...

BWW REVIEW: BIG FISH Now Spins Its Tale on a Smaller Scale
by Jan Nargi - March 24, 2015

Creators of the recent failed Broadway musical BIG FISH are testing the waters of regional theater with a more intimate, scaled back version of their splashy father-son story now premiering at Boston's SpeakEasy Stage through April 11....

BWW Review: LIFERS Showcases Award-Winning Fringe Companies
by Nancy Grossman - March 22, 2015

Argos Productions and Happy Medium Theatre collaborate to present a cast of experienced fringe actors in LIFERS by John Shea and Maureen Cornell. A comedy about change set in a family restaurant in the summer of 2004, one week before the no smoking law goes into effect in Massachusetts, the slice of...

BWW REVIEW: THE COLORED MUSEUM Celebrates and Skewers Black History
by Jan Nargi - March 17, 2015

It feels like it could have been written yesterday, but THE COLORED MUSEUM, now in a rollicking revival at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston, Mass., was actually first produced in 1986. Written by the estimable Broadway playwright and director George C. Wolfe (Jelly's Last Jam, Angels in Amer...

BWW Reviews: THE AMISH PROJECT Haunting, Yet Hopeful
by Nancy Grossman - March 10, 2015

New Repertory Theatre's second annual Next Rep Black Box Festival celebrates the work of women theater artists, starting with Jessica Dickey's THE AMISH PROJECT. A fictionalized account of the 2006 shooting of Amish schoolgirls in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, the one-woman show features Danielle Kell...

BWW Reviews: SHOCKHEADED PETER: A Series of Twisted Tales
by Nancy Grossman - March 09, 2015

If you like Edward Gorey and Tim Burton, then Company One's SHOCKHEADED PETER is for you. With musical mayhem provided by Walter Sickert and The Army of Broken Toys, the New England premiere at Suffolk University's Modern Theatre is dark, twisted, funny, and never dull. It is not for the faint of he...

BWW REVIEW: Danger Lurks Beneath the Surface in OCEANSIDE
by Jan Nargi - March 08, 2015

The gripping undertow of a turbulent past threatens to drown the three main characters in OCEANSIDE, a searing new play by Nick Gandiello currently in its world premiere at Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell. Taut, terse and unrelenting, the play ebbs and flows with a deceivingly gentle rhythm un...

BWW REVIEW: The Con Is on in KING OF SECOND AVENUE
by Jan Nargi - March 06, 2015

New Repertory Theatre in Watertown revisits Yiddish Theatre with Robert Brustein's new Klezmer musical comedy THE KING OF SECOND AVENUE....

BWW Reviews: INTIMATE APPAREL Worn Close to the Heart
by Nancy Grossman - March 06, 2015

INTIMATE APPAREL is one woman's story of courage and resilience set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing America in early 20th century New York City. Under the direction of Summer L. Williams, who also directed Lynn Nottage's BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK at the Lyric Stage Company, INTIMATE APP...

BWW Reviews: THAT HOPEY CHANGEY THING: Calling Tina Fey
by Nancy Grossman - March 05, 2015

The first of four APPLE FAMILY PLAYS to be staged in collaboration between Stoneham Theatre and Gloucester Stage Company, THAT HOPEY CHANGEY THING has six quality Boston area actors who will stay with the project for the duration, but one hopes that the nutritional value of the plays going forward ...

BWW Reviews: GROUNDED Achieves Liftoff
by Nancy Grossman - March 03, 2015

Celeste Oliva gives a riveting, tour de force performance as The Pilot in George Brant's GROUNDED at the Nora Theatre Company, under the astute direction of Artistic Director Lee Mikeska Gardner. George Brant's play examines the life of one woman, prohibited from flying due to an unexpected pregnanc...

BWW Reviews: Six-Time Tony Award Winner Audra McDonald Returns to Celebrity Series
by Nancy Grossman - March 02, 2015

Audra McDonald has picked up two more Tony Awards since her last appearance at the Celebrity Series of Boston in 2011. Accompanied by her music director Andy Einhorn on piano, Gene Lewin on drums, and Dave Phillips on bass, McDonald gave the sold-out Symphony Hall audience an evening of stars, moon...