Promo by Gillian Daniels
Juventas New Music Ensemble will be presenting an interpretation of Snow White this weekend, Polina Nazaykinskaya’s The Magic Mirror. Based on the version of the fairytale by Alexander Pushkin, the story is a classic that has been adapted for contemporary audiences. In this version of the tale, the seven dwarfs have been replaced with seven brothers and the Evil Queen’s perspective promises to be explored. Continue reading
presented by Blue Spruce Theatre
Act 1: “Goblin Market”
by Polly Pen and Peggy Harmon
Music by Polly Pen
Based on the poem by Christina Rossetti
Act 2: World Premiere of “The Rag Doll”
Music and Lyrics by David Reiffel
Book by Silvia Graziano
Directed by Jesse Strachman
Music Direction by Dan Rodriguez
Choreography by Kira Cowan
May 23-26, 2013
321 Arsenal Street
Watertown, MA 02472
Blue Spruce Theatre Facebook Page
Review by Gillian Daniels
(Watertown) Blue Spruce Theatre’s Faerie Tales has a bit of charm, some nice music, and an engaging visual style. None of these things, however, manage to carry the show on their own. This is very sad as there are elements in the play, like fairies and the importance of family, that I adore when utilized in other media.
Faerie Tales uses two different stories that overlap in theme. The first act is devoted to adapting Christina Rossetti’s poem, Goblin Market, to the stage. Laura (Teresa Winner Blume) and Lizzie (Abigail Clarke) are sisters who stumble on a magical fairy marketplace. Lizzie shies away from eating the market food and going near the animal-like creatures, but Laura is too taken with their strangeness and is immediately seduced into spending a night among the goblins. When her sister returns and begins to grow ill, Lizzie struggles to find a cure. Continue reading
With Austin Auh and Corianna Moffatt. Photo courtesy of Liars & Believers Facebook Page.
Presented by Liars & Believers
Directed by Faye Dupras
May 17 & 18, 2013 (Grab tickets while you can!)
Cambridge YMCA Theater in Central Square
Cambridge, MA
Liars & Believers Facebook Group
Gillian Daniels
Liars and Believers’ Icarus is a wobbly production, a Depression Era circus fable that limps when it pushes hard to soar. Like a small bird, the show is both endearing but weak. Its flourishes are strong: puppets, bluegrass, and robots. The result gives the audience a series of intriguing set pieces but nothing that really coalesces into a grand story.
Jason Slavick packs a lot into the show, the separate parts fluid and vibrant. The lead-up to the play itself includes burlesque and music, giving the centerpiece, Minnie Minoseczeck’s Menagerie of Marvels, a vaudevillean glamour. The trimmings for the circus are convincing, complete with posters promising a minotaur and a flying woman, Penny (Corianna Moffatt). Continue reading
Emily Casey, Sean Pfautsch, Matt Kahler, Ryan Bourque, Dana Omar. Photo by Evgenia Eliseeva
presented by American Repertory Theater
produced by The Hypocrites
by Gilbert & Sullivan
adapted by Sean Graney, Kevin O’Donnell
directed by Sean Graney
Review by Gillian Daniels
(Cambridge) The Hypocrites’ production of Pirates of Penzance is an absolute confection. Adapting the beloved Gilbert and Sullivan operetta to a quirkier, more contemporary stage, Sean Graney and Kevin O’Donnell infuse the original libretto and its score with banjos, bathing suits, beach balls, and a warmth that charms but never cloys. It’s energetic and just plain fun.
Premiering in New York in 1879, the original show has a long history of making audiences titter at lyrics like, “I am the very model of a modern major general.” The comic opera lampoons Victorian concepts of honor, piracy, politeness, the literary inconveniences of being a foundling, and, most importantly, duty. Continue reading
Presented by The Calliope Project
May 3, 4, 10, and 11th at 8PM
Green Street Studios Theatre
185 Green St
Cambridge MA
The Calliope Project Facebook Page
Review by the lovely Gillian Daniels
**EXPLICIT CONTENT INCLUDING RAPE AND VIOLENCE**
Some contemporary productions of Hamlet play with the ambiguity of the Prince of Denmark’s sanity. Is he seeking justice or satisfying a personal vendetta with the logic of a “ghost” to back him up, “mad north-north-west” or just vengeful? In Hamlet Asylum, this ambiguity is dismissed. Most of the play clearly takes place in the head of Bryan Bernfield’s Hamlet. A masked Greek chorus (Meghan Kelly, Amiel Bowers, and Samuel Guerin) speak in the voice of his father, his confidant Horatio, the gravediggers, and others, all in the guise of Hamlet’s repressed desires. It’s a clever idea. The result, though,
is a production both rich with symbols and dark with melodrama. Continue reading
Presented by World Music/CRASHarts
Thursday, May 2, 7:30 PM
Johnny D’s
17 Holland St Davis Square
Somerville, 02144
World Music/CRASHarts Facebook Page
Review by Gillian Daniels
(Somerville) “Let’s dance the dance of the Devil! One step forward and two step backward!” said Bruno “Sergent” Garcia through his thick French accent. It was right in middle of his performance at Johnny D’s this past Thursday and the audience, including the couples who had gotten up to dance, responded with a cheer. Then the Sergent and the Cumbiamuffin All Stars launched into their next, Caribbean, Afro-Columbian tinged
song. Continue reading
Presented by World Music/CRASHarts
http://www.sergentgarcia.com/en/
Thursday, May 2, 7:30 PM
Johnny D’s
17 Holland St Davis Square
Somerville, 02144
World Music/CRASHarts Facebook Page
Post by Gillian Daniels
On Thursday, Davis Square’s very own Johnny D’s will be hosting the Paris-based style-fusion artist, Sergent Garcia.
Bruno Garcia, originally a renowned, apparently hyperactive DJ, fuses the music gleaned from a European, punk upbringing in France with a passion for Latin and Caribbean rhythms. He combines jazz, reggae, hip-hop, and salsa for an energetic genre he has affectionately dubbed, “salsamuffin.” The “muffin” of “salsamuffin,” apparently, is a reference to “ragamuffin” or “dancehall,” a kind of reggae.
Garcia, himself, is named in homage to the sidekick of the fictional Zorro, Sgt. Demetrio Lopez Garcia. The musician is part of an effort by World Music/CRASHarts to bring diverse, one-of-a-kind voices and
acts to New England.
This will be Sergent Garcia’s Boston debut. He will be performing with the Cumbiamuffin All Stars at 7:30pm on May 2nd.
Omar Robinson, Johnny Lee Davenport*, and Johnnie McQuarley in the foreground, with Jesse Hinson* (Pericles) and the cast in the background.
Photo: Stratton McCrady Photography
Presented by Actor’s Shakespeare Project
by William Shakespeare
directed by Allyn Burrows
The Modern Theatre at Suffolk University
525 Washington St., Boston
April 17 – May 12, 2013
ASP Facebook Page
Review by Gillian Daniels
(Boston) It’s easy to see why Pericles, Prince of Tyre isn’t one of Shakespeare’s best loved plays. The plot is often as lost at sea as the titular character, who drifts from one melodramatic episode to the next on an unending voyage. Pericles’ journey begins with villainous incest and the threat of death and, after abandoning this thread, continues on to tragic storms, kidnappings, and brothels. Taking on this play means a potential mess. Continue reading
Kickin’it olde school. Photo by Evgenia Eliseeva
Presented by American Repertory Theatre
A songplay by Banana Bag and Bodice
Text and lyrics by Jason Craig
Music by Dave Malloy
Directed by Rod Hipskind, Mallory Catlett
Oberon
Cambridge, MA
April 16 – May 5
A.R.T. Facebook Page
Review by Gillian Daniels
(Cambridge) An aggressively weird audio feast, this Beowulf is a musical take on the millennia-old epic-poem. The dialogue performs the syntax gymnastics of Seamus Heaney’s translation while the songs are guttural and set to a frantic, pleasing percussion. Banana Bag and Bodice’s production, though, both honors the source material while dissecting it. Continue reading
With Jennifer OConnor, Mac Young and Lynn R Guerra; Photos by Chris McKenzie
Presented by Whistler in the Dark Theatre
by Timberlake Wertenbaker
directed by Meg Taintor
March 15-April 6th
The Charlestown Working Theater
Charlestown, MA 02129
Whistler in the Dark Theatre Facebook Page
Review by Gillian Daniels
(Charlestown) Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good is not about the importance of plays but the importance of fiction—dreams, ambitions, and fantasies—to the downtrodden. The convicts sent to the Australian penal colonies in 1788 have been dehumanized chiefly by circumstance. The play the officers have the felons put on gives them the dignity they could not find in lives led as thieves and prostitutes in England. The whole thing is an impressive meditation on how art fiercely alters perspective even if The Charlestown Working Theater’s production suffers peculiar pacing and lingering pauses. Continue reading
