RHODE ISLAND THEATER REVIEWS

In Tim Firth's Calendar Girls, now being performed by Pawtucket's Community Players, an unlikely group of women bares it all for a charity calendar a?" and learns what each of them is made of in the process....

Angelique Kidjo shines in Providence, RI....

Despite the fact that Norman Jewison's AGNES OF GOD has existed as both an award-winning play and later film, it doesn't seem to have been produced very often.  That's all the more reason to rush out and see Epic Theatre's well-executed version of a play that is strange, fascinating and heartbreaki...

With its stellar performances and resourceful staging, the Burbage Theatre Company's gutsy, vigorous production of Edward II invites audiences to thrill at Edward's brashness even as we cringe at his excess....

Joshua Harmon's ADMISSIONS is a play that wants to challenge well-meaning white people to reconsider how they seek to lift up people of color.  That may make it seem like it's a slog, or like it's a bitter pill one should swallow, but thankfully the biting dialogue and exceptional performances all ...

Tanya Saracho's FADE is a witty and insightful look into work/life power dynamics. What makes this particular story so interesting is the manipulation of status as a minority in the workplace--against another person of the same minority group. Our two characters--Lucia (Elia Saldana) and Abel (Dan...

Nowadays, it seems that everything old is constantly being rebooted, updated, adapted, reimagined, etc. etc., so on and so forth. Any time something is re-imagined or adapted into something else, such as the many new Broadway musicals based on Hollywood movies, it can be a risky proposition. In the ...

At its most fundamental, theater is a group of people coming together to tell a story in front of an audience. In its earliest days, that's all it was, basic and pure, without any need for today's technological lights and sounds (not that there's anything wrong with those). Contemporary Theater Comp...

Playwright Clare Barron has a keen eye and a gift for seamlessly blending the mundane and the weird. The Wilbury Theatre Group's stellar production of her 2015 Obie-winning play 'You Got Older' powerfully captures Barron's charming oddball pathos....

On the morning of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, there were a lot of other planes in the sky that had to be re-routed and emergency landed wherever pilots were able to find a runway. Thirty-eight of those emergency landings took place in the tiny town of Gander, Newfoundland's quiet airp...

Friedrich Nietzsche said, 'He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.' In Dance Nation, currently running at The Wilbury Theatre Group, the hopeful young dancers put everything they can into learning and perfecting ho...

First of all, I am a sucker for Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL. I like the Alistair Sim version that you might find close to the holiday. I like the Bill Murray version, Scrooged, set in the present day in the television industry. I like the Muppets' Christmas Carol. How many of you have seen Mr. Magoo'...

Nearly six years after opening on Broadway and 27 years after appearing as a beloved animated Disney film, the national touring cast of the musical ALADDIN soars into the Providence Performing Arts Center. This version of the story contains many callbacks to the original 1992 film, but also adds man...

When it comes to United States history, it can be easy to gloss over the period between the early 1800s to the cusp of the Civil War. The generation who lived during this forgotten era, however, faced no less tumultuous times than we do in modern times. Aaron Posner's play, JQA, specifically looks a...

The Contemporary Theater Company has mounted a dazzling production of Shakespeare's tale of tragic retribution, with an outstanding cast, deft and innovative direction, and a stunning set. Get thee to Wakefield, and quickly, too, to see this brilliant show....

Samuel Beckett's classic play, WAITING FOR GODOT, opens the Wilbury Theatre Group's 2019/2020 Main Series with a production that gets to the heart of the text a?" at equal turns funny, philosophic, and sad....

Ignore the New York reviews. 'Escape to Margaritaville,' the Jimmy Buffett musical which opened its national tour at the Providence Performing Arts Center this week, is two hours of wry, high-energy fun. The music, of course, is a delight, but the book is also full of clever moments and the cast --...

Whether you love Buddy, hate Buddy, love to hate Buddy, or hate that you love Buddy; there's plenty to love about The Prince of Providence....

One doesn't usually seek out sequels at live theatre, and when Ibsen finished his masterpiece A Doll's House in 1879, one can only assume he thought the interesting part of the story was over.  So the pressure on this play to prove why it should even exist is almost like another character watching ...

The Spectrum Theatre Ensemble has mounted a vivid, stylish production of Dale Wasserman's play that captures the spirit of Ken Kesey's novel in a powerful evening of theater....

Big wow moments at Saturday Night Fever at Theatre By the Sea, Matunuck, R. I....

Based on the classic children's story of the same name, this stage production of THE SECRET GARDEN tells the story of the orphan Mary Lennox forced to move from India to a distant relative's Yorkshire England estate when a cholera outbreak decimates her family. This stage adaptation sticks very clo...

Have you heard of a little musical called HAMILTON?  Considering how much attention this show has gotten for the past three years, it almost seems impossible for it to be as good as people say it is.  Surely people are just caught up in the hype and the moment? I'm happy to say that that's not the...

Inspired by the actual newsboys strike of 1899, Disney's NEWSIES is a slightly updated stage version of the 1992 film of the same name.  Despite the movie's lack of success at the box office, it became a cult favorite, and bringing it to Broadway in 2011 seems like a no-brainer. The source material...

Head Trick Theatre opens their 2019-2020 season, "In War With Time," with Jennifer Dick's small cast adaptation of the play QUEEN MARGARET, which takes a closer look at Margaret of Anjou. A character in several of Shakespeare's "history plays," she is finally given her time in the spotlight, with a ...