David Wilson News

EQUUS by Peter Shaffer will have its Theatre Rhinoceros premiere for a limited engagement - 17 performances only - 3 weeks! The show plays Nov. 25 - Dec. 10, 2016.

New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) has announced an additional benefit performance of Othello, directed by Tony Award winner Sam Gold (Fun Home), on Thursday, January 12, 2017, at 6:30 pm. Proceeds from the evening will go to benefit NYTW's education and engagement programming across the 2016/17 season, providing thousands of students, teens, artists, and local residents access to some of the most exciting new voices and leading theatre artists of our time.

Moonbox Productions, nominated for numerous IRNE and Elliot Norton Awards, will soon present acclaimed playwright Peter Shaffer's brilliant Tony Award winning production Amadeus, November 25th - December 17th at the Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theatre, 539 Tremont Street, Boston.

A friendly reminder! Tickets for Othello, the second production of the New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) (Artistic Director James C. Nicola and Managing Director Jeremy Blocker) 2016/17 Season, will go on sale tomorrow beginning at 12pm EST.

New Repertory Theatre presents the Boston area premiere of the final component of Richard Nelson's four-play cycle. Weylin Symes, the producing artistic director of Stoneham Theatre, returns to the helm with the stellar six-member cast of Joel Colodner, Laura Latreille, Karen MacDonald, Paul Melendy, Bill Mootos, and Sarah Newhouse. The actors are the strength of the production, providing a master class on working as an ensemble. REGULAR SINGING is a feel good drama, but, at two hours, less would be more.

New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) has announced performance and ticket on-sale dates for OTHELLO, directed by Tony Award winner Sam Gold (Fun Home). OTHELLO will begin previews on Tuesday, November 22and open on Monday, December 12 at New York Theatre Workshop (79 E. 4th Street New York, NY 10003) for a limited run through Wednesday, January 18, 2017.

The stage version of THE EXORCIST, which first debuted at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles in 2012, will make its UK debut just in time for Halloween.

Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston brings back the original sets, costumes, and choreography for its fourth production of the 1992 Tony Award-winner for Best Musical. CRAZY FOR YOU could be subtitled "Gershwin's Greatest Hits," with eighteen musical treats splendidly played by a 15-piece orchestra conducted by Music Director Dan Rodriguez. Broadway veterans and Reagle audience favorites Kirby Ward (Director) and Beverly Ward star and give a song-and-dance master class that will have you tapping your feet right along with them. CRAZY FOR YOU is a classic 1930s musical comedy, full of energy and optimism. It's just what the psychiatrist ordered!

New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) just announced full casting for the first two shows of the 2016/17 season, NAT TURNER IN JERUSALEM and OTHELLO.

Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston opens its 48th season with its first-rate production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic CAROUSEL. A triumvirate of women - Jennifer Ellis, Jessica Kundla, and Leigh Barrett - give sparkling performances, augmented by Broadway veteran Ciaran Sheehan, but Rachel Bertone's choreography makes this one of the best rides for the summer season.

Part 2 of Theatre Rhino's Noel Coward Celebration will have its Theatre Rhinoceros premiere for a limited engagement - 25 performances only!

The Cape Cod Theatre Company, home of the Harwich Junior Theatre, has decided to step away traditional staged storytelling and try something different with its newest "jukebox" production of Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash. Created by Richard Maltby, Jr and hereby directed and choreographed by Pamela C. Wills, with Nina K. Schuessler serving as Producing Artistic Director, Ring of Fire is a story within and through a performance, and this production has the unique ability to depict the lives of Johnny Cash and June Carter, complete with interchangeable characters and interspersed moments of chronological storytelling, in a way I could image they would have approved of themselves: simple, straightforward and even stark (how fitting that word is) in its presentation but so oddly appropriate for the unadorned but deeply affecting way Cash's music hits you. Those on stage are not "acting" to portray these music legends, but instead almost seem to hand themselves over to the audience's belief that this is not a presentation or something that is purely meant to entertain; they are there to tell a story, and with a wonderfully eclectic mix of songs played in the background, there is something so beautiful in the rawness of this entire production.

Susan Hendrix is working hard to become self-reliant, having lost her sight fairly recently in a car wreck.  It's no easy task--but things are about to get a whole lot harder, as her apartment is invaded by some ruthless thieves, in Jeffrey Hatcher's adaptation of the Frederick Knott thriller Wait Until Dark, beginning its 5-week run at Stage West on Thursday, May 26. 

Cape Cod Theatre Company's production of Little Women: The Broadway Musical is really something special. As I couldn't give you a visceral explanation of what it made me feel, this is a story who's truest depth and exquisiteness - its true emotion - is to be found once the journey is complete, and even then does a new beginning have the means of springing forth. Both the story and the way it was performed on stage, with music to bring out what is nothing less than extraordinary about four average girls and what their lives amount to, has such a spark to it as only CCTC can make happen - not only with this but with every show the group chooses to do.

The New England premiere of Robert O'Hara's BOOTYCANDY at SpeakEasy Stage Company is based on the author's own experiences of growing up black and gay in America. Similar in structure and tone to THE COLORED MUSEUM, it is a series of loosely connected vignettes that rely on humor and satire to confront racial, sexual, and cultural stereotypes. Summer L. Williams directs an outstanding cast of five actors who portray nearly two dozen characters.

From tonight, March 12, to April 9, 2016, SpeakEasy Stage Company will present the New England Premiere of BOOTYCANDY, a shockingly funny and saucy spin on race, sex, and sexuality, written by award-winning playwright and director Robert O'Hara.

Stoneham Theatre stages the third installment in Richard Nelson's four-play series with the director, design team, and cast intact from the earlier entries. They are a cohesive, well-oiled team, but while SORRY gets deeper into the personalities of the characters, it fails to deliver the political goods that we would expect from its setting on Election Day, 2012. Of course, no fiction could match the histrionics of the real life 2016 election-year campaign.

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has assaulted the fourth wall and countless racial stereotypes in his funny and audacious new play AN OCTOROON. Adapted from an 1859 melodrama titled "The Octoroon" by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault, Jenkins' piece weaves a biting contemporary narrative within Boucicault's stock storytelling to turn familiar antebellum tropes into jarring racial commentaries. Imagine "Gone with the Wind" down the rabbit hole and you get the idea.

From March 12 to April 9, 2016, SpeakEasy Stage Company will present the New England Premiere of BOOTYCANDY, a shockingly funny and saucy spin on race, sex, and sexuality, written by award-winning playwright and director Robert O'Hara.