Mar 17

“What Once We Felt” Feels Undercooked

Photo credit: Jake Scaltreto

Presented by Flat Earth Theatre
By Ann Marie Healy
Directed by Lindsay Eagle

March 14 – 22, 2014
The Davis Square Theatre
255 Elm Street
Somerville, MA
Flat Earth on Facebook

Review by Gillian Daniels

(Somerville) What Once We Felt is science fiction that distills contemporary anxieties into a thinly veiled future.  The bedrock of Ann Marie Healy’s dystopia, which premieres in Boston for the first time, is literary digitization, a bleak economy with a suppressed lower class, deplorable health care conditions, iPhone obsessions, and some unlikely but remarkable advances in artificial insemination. The play will make an excellent artifact of our age group.  Though the mask this society wears to disguise its relation to our own is transparent, so is the world-building and the logic behind a woman-only, caste-system culture.  The mechanics are questionable, but the anti-utopian horror that Flat Earth Theatre creates is sublimely creepy. Continue reading

Mar 14

Touch a Dead Bird, Wash Your Hands: THE SEAGULL

Photo T. Charles Erickson

Photo T. Charles Erickson

Presented by Huntington Theatre Co.
By Anton Chekhov
Translated by Paul Schmidt
Directed by Maria Aitken

March 7 – April 6, 2014
Boston University Theatre
264 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA
Hunting Theatre Co on Facebook

Review by Kitty Drexel

(Boston) Chekhov intended The Seagull play to be a comedy. He wrote a famous letter to his friend Suvorin on October 21, 1895 describing his intent and further elaborated that Seagull would defy the conventions of theatre. No kidding. It is a comedy for the same reasons Springtime for Hitler is a comedy. The one exception being that no Roger DeBris character arrives to save us from our sensibilities. To sum up, without Roger, The Seagull is a drama about people being terrible to each other while lamenting their own misery. In Russia. While discussing the theatrical arts. It isn’t very funny (unless you’re a sadist). What it is, is deeply depressing. Continue reading

Mar 10

For the Love of Bisexual Seahorses: BULLY DANCE

Photo by Brett Marks

Presented by Argos Productions
By David Valdes Greenwood
Directed By Sarah Gazdowicz

March 7-22, 2014
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
949 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
Argos on Facebook

 

Trigger Warning: Gunshots are used in this production. Sexual abuse of minors is discussed albeit not in detail.

 

(Boston) The events of Bully Dance are based on the events of a multiple homicide that culminated in a suicide on public transportation in 2006. This is not a light, fluffy or otherwise hope inspiring production. It must be emphasised that playwright David Valdes Greenwood is not attempting to recreate the tragic events. Rather, he has constructed imaginary scenarios that explore the emotional truths of the victims and the survivors. Like an allegorical morality play, this production examines the effects of horrific violence on the heart and mind of Man. Continue reading

Mar 03

Do the Research Before Enjoying: MAN IN A CASE

Presented by ArtsEmerson: The World On Stage
Adapted from Two Stories by Anton Chekhov
Adapted and Directed by Annie-B Parson & Paul Lazar/Big Dance Theater
Choreographed by Annie-B Parson
Featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov, Tymberly Canale, Chris Giarmo, Paul Lazar and Aaron Mattocks

February 25 – March 2, 2014
Emerson/Cutler Majestic Theatre
219 Tremont Street
Boston, MA
ArtsEmerson on Facebook
Baryshnikov Productions on Facebook
Big Dance Theater on Facebook

Review by Kitty Drexel

My apologies to ArtsEmerson, Big Dance Theatre, Baryshnikov Productions and anyone else I forgot to mention for the tardiness of this review. I was waylaid by illness this weekend and couldn’t complete my review.

(Boston) Man in a Case is effective theatre that turns Chekhov on its head while retelling the two classic stories “Man in a Case” and “Almost Love.” It does not bridge the 19th and the 21st centuries as advertised. It does, however, transport the viewer into an existential dreamspace/nightmare of meta and experimental theatre. Just in case one is mislead by my description, this was an interesting, thought-provoking performance but it’s not light fare for a family hoping to experience “culture” in the city. Man in a Case could be considered “weird” and weird theatre can be exquisite. It all depends on perspective. Continue reading

Feb 27

Sins of the Father: DEATH OF A SALESMAN

Photo by Mark S. Howard.

Photo by Mark S. Howard.

Presented by Lyric Stage Co of Boston (40 Years)
By Arthur Miller
Directed by Spiro Veloudos

February 14 to March 15, 2014
Boston, MA
Lyric Stage on Facebook

Review by Kitty Drexel

From the program notes: Robert N. Wilson, The Writer as Social Seer

“Willy’s failure is our failure, for we are also involved in the cult of success, and we, too, measure men by occupational attainment rather than by some sympathetic calculus of the whole human being. We are all partners in the American Dream and parties to the conspiracy of silence surrounding the fact that failures must by definition outnumber successes, given our cultural ground rules and or singular interpretations of the words ‘success’ and ‘failure’.”

(Boston) There is so much that The Lyric’s production of Death of a Salesman gets right. This is a fantastic production – the best of theirs I’ve seen all season, which is saying a lot for a theatre that regularly that creates solid art. It is the same cut and dried script that generations have come to love with a few spins that make it new and poignant.   Continue reading

Feb 17

Extraordinary But Not Unlikely: “Red-Eye to Havre de Grace”

Presented by ArtsEmerson
By Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental
Designed and Directed by Thaddeus Phillips
Choreography by Sophie Bortolussi
Music by Wilhelm Bros. & Co.
Created by Thaddeus Phillips, Jeremy Wilhelm, Geoff Sobelle, David Wilhelm, with Sophie Bortolussi

Running Time: 100 minutes with no intermission
February 14 – 16, 2014
Emerson/Paramount Center Mainstage
Boston, MA
ArtsEmerson on Facebook
Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental on Facebook

Review by Kitty Drexel

From the Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental Website:
“On September 27, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe set out on a lecture tour from Virginia to New York. Days later a train conductor saw Poe in Havre de Grace, Maryland, wearing a stranger’s clothing and heading south to Baltimore where he died on October 7.”

(Boston) Boston is the birthplace of E.A. Poe. He was born on Boylston St. not far from the Paramount Center Mainstage theater. The building is commemorated by a small plaque. It’s fitting then that Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental brought Red-Eye to Havre de Grace, a macabre but unique perspective into the abstraction of the writer’s brain, to Poe’s home. Continue reading

Feb 17

Violence and Its Aftermath Explored in “Interference”

Icarus

Presented by Liars and Believers
Directed by Steven Bogart
Created by Many Collaborators

February 12, 2014
Club Oberon
Cambridge, MA
Liars and Believers on Facebook

Review by Gillian Daniels

Does Interference work as a play?  No, but I’m not sure if it’s meant to cohere as the kind of story with a single start and finish.  Liars and Believers have created an immersive experience with mixed results, one that works well enough when staged at a fantastic venue like the Oberon.  Similarly to Lunar Labyrinth, though, the last effort I saw by Liars and Believers, Interference is a series of vignettes inspired by a single work.  Here, the theater group takes its cues from Pablo Picasso’s 1937 painting, “Guernica.” Continue reading

Feb 10

Clear the Room: “Absence”

http://www.bu.edu/bpt/files/2014/02/ABSENCE-BPT-2014-193.jpg

Photograph credit: Kalman Zabarsky.

Presented by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
Written by Peter M. Floyd aka PFlo
Directed by Megan Schy Gleeson

February 6 – March 2, 2014
Boston Playwright’s Theatre
Boston, MA
BPT on Facebook

Review by Noelani Kamelamela

(Boston) Absence, Peter M. Floyd’s first full length play, is a multi-layered and filmic production at Boston Playwright’s Theatre which was both a terror and a joy to see.

At a slim 90 minutes without intermission, it is finely focused on Helen, who in her 70s experiences the slowly squeezing hand of time on her body and mind, but not her soul.  Kippy Goldfarb, who stepped up when Joanna Merlin took ill, as Helen is a clear and self-possessed woman, and it is hard to believe that Helen could, in fact, be suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s at all.  Helen’s passion play is underscored by a serious exploration of how her family and herself must undertake to keep her as safe and as sane as possible.   Continue reading

Feb 07

Gamblers Are People Too: HANDICAPPING

handicappingimage

Photo Credit: Allison McDonough

Presented by Fresh Ink Theatre Company
Written by James McLindon
Directed by Tyler Monroe

January 31 – February 8
The Factory Theatre
Boston, MA
Fresh Ink on Facebook

Review by Kitty Drexel

With apologies to Fresh Ink Theatre Company. The Queen Geek was waylaid by illness and could not complete her review until now. 

(BostonHandicapping by James McLindon combines three heavy subjects into one script: gambling addiction, physical incapability, and the deep holes we dig ourselves when we deny reality. It is a short but effective play. From the moment the lights come up, with the help of the Fresh Ink crew, McLindon’s script relentlessly reveals the exacting scarcity that is his cast and plot. There is no hope for the denizens of the betting booth. There is hope for the audience. Continue reading

Feb 03

“Two Wrongs” is Too Forgiving

Photo credit: Brown Box’s Facebook page

Presented by Brown Box Theatre Project
By Scott Caan
Directed by Kyler Taustin

Boston: January 31 – February 9, 2014
Atlantic Wharf
290 Congress Street
Boston, MA

Ocean City: February 14 – 17, 2014
Ocean City Center for the Arts
502 94th Street
Ocean City, MD

Brown Box Theatre on Facebook

Review by Gillian Daniels

(Boston) The Brown Box Theatre Project’s Two Wrongs is a comedy-drama that concerns the tenuous, complex nature of doctor/patient relationships and the temptation to abuse authority.  It’s an entertaining show, but it never interrogates its wrongdoers too sharply.  Its tone is ultimately one of sympathy, perhaps a little too gentle. Continue reading