Author Archives: Maegan Bergeron-Clearwood

Nov 23

Wrestling with empathy through documentary theatre: “SpaceBridge”

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The ensemble. Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk.

Presented by ArtsEmerson
Produced by Visual Echo & Irina Kruzhilina
Conceived and directed by Irina Kruzhilina
Written by Irina Kruzhilina and Clark Young
Cinematography by Aleksei Postnikov
Featuring Ellen Lauren, Alisa Shaverdova, Anastasia Skorobogach, Anna Skorobogach, Arina Skorobogach, Artem Skorobogach, Leon Ladia, Lily Borzenko, Mark Savin, Mars Markelov, Sasha Boikova, Sonia Tsatskina, Adele Nigrini, Alexis Edel, Drake Malave, Henry MacDowell, Isaac Stinson, Maisie Pickar, Nate Hatter, Sabine Gutenberg, Silas MacLean and Zora Graves

November 21 – 23, 2025
559 Washington St, Boston, MA 02111
Emerson Paramount Center
Tickets here 

Review by Maegan Clearwood

Recommended for ages 12+

BOSTON — If you’ve seen documentary theatre before, then nothing in SpaceBridge will surprise you: live movement is interspersed with statistics, news reports, and recorded interviews, split into chapters and stitched together with a framing device. The multimedia production elements are flashy and sophisticated, as one would expect from a piece spearheaded by Irina Kruzhilina, who, among other credits, co-founded the MFA program of the New School and is a resident artist at LaMaMa. 

But the true power of SpaceBridge comes from the storytellers themselves: 11 young Russian refugees, children of antiwar activists currently living in New York City shelters while seeking political asylum. With their eight American friends, they present the output of an intensive workshop program, telling story after story of fear, grief, compassion, and hope.  Continue reading →

Nov 10

Yearning for Connection Across Memory: “Summer, 1976”

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Laura Latreille, Lee Mikeska Gardner; Photo by Nile Scott Studios.

Presented by Central Square Theater
By David Auburn
Directed by Paula Plum
Featuring: Lee Mikeska Gardner, Laura Latreille

November 6 – 30th, 2025
Central Square Theater
450 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139

Critique by Maegan Bergeron-Clearwood

CAMBRIDGE, Mass — Summer, 1976 is an intimate play. It is literally small, with a cast of two, a runtime of just 90 minutes, and a cozy little set that brings the actors practically nose-to-nose with the audience. But more interestingly, it is a story about yearning: two women stumble headfirst into an unexpected friendship, underestimating how hungry they are for deep, heart-opening vulnerability. They also underestimate how terrifying that kind of connection can be.

David Auburn’s play transports us to Ohio during the American bicentennial. Offstage, the women’s liberation movement is in full swing. Onstage, at Central Square Theatre, we could be anywhere, anytime. The set (Kristin Loeffler) features two brightly colored dollhouse-like facades to indicate where different scenes take place, but nothing onstage screams 1970s, and the costumes (Sydney Hovasse) allude to a bit of hippy inspiration without throwing the audience back in time. Continue reading →

Oct 01

Magic in every corner: “The Fairy Tailor”

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Sarah Nolan and a friend.

Presented by Puppet Showplace Theatre
Created and performed by Sarah Nolen

Sept. 27 – 28, 2025
Brookline Puppet Showcase
32 Station St.
Brookline, MA 02445

Review by Maegan Bergeron-Clearwood

BROOKLINE, Mass. — The cozy stage at Puppet Showplace Theatre in Brookline is overflowing with trinkets and tools: sewing boxes and pincushions; an ironing board and dress form; satins, sequins, and silks. These every day, seemingly mundane objects are the source of resident artist Sarah Nolen’s magic as she transports us beyond her shop walls and into three fantastical fairy tale worlds.

Nolen plays the titular tailor, who desperately needs the audience’s help as she frantically prepares for a visit from her biggest, scariest customer in The Fairy Tailor. To calm her frayed nerves, she tells stories, each with a quirky, interactive twist (and plenty of puns). Continue reading →

Sep 05

Pushing the boundaries of genre and form: “Passengers”

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Photo by Alexandre Galliez.

Production by The 7 Fingers
Presented by American Repertory Theater
Co-produced by TOHU (Montréal, Canada) and ArtsEmerson (Boston, États-Unis)
Written, directed, and composed by Shana Carroll
Composition and music direction by Colin Gagné
Lyrics Colin Gagné, Shana Carroll
Lighting design by Eric Champoux
Projection design by Johnny Ranger
Featuring: Victor Crépin, Eduardo De Azevedo Grillo, Isabella Diaz, Marie-Christine Fournier, Téo Le Baut, Amanda Orozco, Michael Patterson, Basile Pucek, Santiago Rivera, Méliejade Tremblay-Bouchard

September 2 – 26, 2025
Tickets
Loeb Drama Center
64 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Review by Maegan Clearwood

This production contains haze and flashing lights. 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. –Since moving to Boston four years ago, I have been spoiled rotten by access to top-tier circus – from kitschy Halloween horrors with Boston Circus Guild’s Cirque of the Dead (now an annual tradition of mine) to a breathtaking showcase of talent from the instructors at Commonwealth Circus Center in Jamaica Plain. I am in awe of the twisty, bendy, flippy talent that’s on regular display here in my own backyard.  

Aside from this array of homegrown talent, Boston also has an ongoing love for Montreal circus troupe The 7 Fingers. The A.R.T. presented the ensemble’s spin on Pippin in 2012, and ArtsEmerson hosted Duel Reality last season, an irreverent twist on a Shakespearean classic. This fall, the troupe is back at The A.R.T. with its production of Passengers, which first premiered in Boston in 2019. Continue reading →

Jun 17

Queer pride through historical reimagining: “Bull in a China Shop”

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Karen Dervin as Dean Welsh and Linnea Lyerly as Woolley; Photo by Brian Higgins.

Presented by The Treehouse Collective
By Bryna Turner
Directed by Lisa Tierney
Lighting design by Dan Clawson
Set design by Britt Ambruson
Featuring: Linnea Lyerly, Heidi White, Karen Dervin, Anneke Salvadori, Hannah Young, Lena Vani

Abbott Memorial Theatre at Hovey Players
9 Spring Street
Waltham, MA 02451
June 13 – 29, 2025

Accessibility Note: There are a total of 13 steps to get downstairs to the theatre, with no elevator access.  

Review by Maegan Bergeron-Clearwood

WALTHAM – The most radical element of Bull in a China Shop is emblemized by its earliest visuals. Two women in early 20th century garb lounge on a bed together, tangled in each other’s arms. Everything is perfectly mundane: they discuss personal and professional dreams; they quarrel; they kiss. And they do explain their queerness to the audience. They simply exist in their historical moment, no excuses necessary.

Bull in a China Shop by Bryna Turner isn’t a perfect play, but it fits neatly into The Treehouse Collective’s ethos. Their seasons largely feature contemporary works that give voice to ahead-of-their-time trailblazers (particularly women and queer folks, although I hope their team will add some more racial diversity to their season selection in the future) whose stories have otherwise been silenced by the patriarchal, heteronormative archival machine. Continue reading →

Jun 10

A harmonious masterpiece that’s worth the trek: “Topdog/Underdog”

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Presented by Lanes Coven Theater Company
By Suzan-Lori Parks
Directed by Kadeem Ali Harris
Featuring Akilah A. Walker and Adrianna Mitchell

Windhover Performing Arts Center
257R Granite Street
Rockport, MA 01966
May 30 – June 15, 2025

Review by Maegan Bergeron-Clearwood

ROCKPORT, Mass. — Lanes Coven Theater Company sets up shop at Windhover Performing Arts Center, a picturesque campus of indoor and outdoor workspaces in Cape Ann, nestled away at the end of a trail of winding, seaside roads. The company’s current production of Topdog/Underdog is being staged in the Chapel, a tall, barn-like structure that reverberates from whatever elements are roiling outside, with just enough room for 50 or so intrepid audience members who are in on a secret: there’s some damn good theatre in the corners of New England if you’re willing to make the trek. Continue reading →

Jun 03

Bold, Brutalist Political Commentary: “Mrs. Warren’s Profession”

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In Photo: Melinda Lopez, Wesley Savick, Nael Nacer, Evan Taylor, Luz Lopez, Barlow Adamson, Photo by: Nile Scott Studios

Presented by Central Square Theater
By George Bernard Shaw
Directed by Eric Tucker
Featuring Barlow Adamson, Luz Lopez, Melinda Lopez, Nael Nacer, Wesley Savick, Evan Taylor

Central Square Theater
May 29 – June 22, 2025
450 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Review by Maegan Bergeron-Clearwood

Cambridge, MA — If there is one theme that director Eric Tucker drives home with his take on George Bernard Shaw’s once-controversial drama, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, it is greed. Scenes of domestic heartbreak play out in a sleek, modern boardroom; children and parents bicker from either end of a lengthy conference table; and overhead, capitalism’s unfeeling gaze surveilles the characters in the form of frenetically changing stock market numbers.

In theory, this modern approach should illuminate aspects of the play that feel trite by 21st century standards. The mere mention of Mrs. Warren’s profession (spoiler alert: she owns a brothel.) was controversial by late-Victorian standards, but the play’s truly radical nature lies in a question that remains just as pertinent today: Can genuine human connection survive when capitalism renders everything, even the most primal of relationships, merely transactional? Continue reading →

May 22

Unapologetic Joy, Bursting at the Seams: “Hello, Dolly!”

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The cast of “Hello, Dolly!” Photo by Mark S. Howard.

Presented by Lyric Stage of Boston
Music and lyrics by Jerry Herman
Book by Michael Stewart
Based on “The Matchmaker” by Thornton Wilder
Directed by Maurice Emmanuel Parent
Music direction by Dan Rodriguez
Choreography by Ilyse Robbins
Featuring Temma Beaudreau, Joshua Wolf Coleman, Max Connor, Aimee Doherty,
Kristian Espiritu, Mark Linehan, Michael Jennings Mahoney

May 16 – June 22
Lyric Stage Theatre
140 Clarendon Street, 2nd floor
Boston, MA 02116

Runtime: 2 hours and 30 minutes including intermission.

Review by Maegan Bergeron-Clearwood

BOSTON — Full disclosure: I am something of a Hello, Dolly! apologist. Sure, it’s Broadway at its hammiest, and I won’t pretend that it’s aged perfectly. But beneath its veneer of feathers and bows and heteronormativity, this is a musical about characters pushing against turn-of-the-century gender and class constraints, straining to express themselves as loudly and brassily as possible.

Jerry Herman, the composer-lyricist behind some of Broadway’s most fabulous characters (see Mame and La Cage aux Folles) knew what exactly he was doing here: Hello, Dolly! is queer joy incarnate, and you can’t convince me otherwise. Continue reading →

May 18

A Heartfelt Take on a Modern Classic: “The Light in the Piazza”

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The cast of The Light in the Piazza; directed by Loretta Greco; photo by Julieta Cervantes.

Presented by The Huntington
Book by Craig Lucas
Music and lyrics by Adam Guettel
Based on the novel by Elizabeth Spencer
Directed by Loretta Greco
Music direction by Andrea Grody
Scenic design by Andrew Boyce
Lighting design by Christopher Akerlind
Costume design by Alex Jaeger
Featuring Emily Skinner, Sarah-Anne Martinez, Joshua Grosso, William Michals,
Rebecca Pitcher, Alexander Ross, Rebekah Rae Robles

May 9 – June 15, 2025
The Huntington Theatre
264 Huntington Ave. Boston, MA 02115

Review by Maegan Bergeron-Clearwood

BOSTON – When The Light in the Piazza premiered on Broadway two decades ago, it was lauded as a quaint but refreshing return to style, and Adam Guettel’s delicate, almost operatic score became an instant classic. Compared to contemporary 2000s box-office smashes like Spamalot and Avenue Q, this intimate love story favors pathos over spectacle, sincerity over irony – on the surface, it’s as old school as a 21st Century musical can get.

Classic as it may look and sound, however, The Light in the Piazza is a weird little musical. It examines the idea of love through a myriad of refractions: passion, to be sure, but also power, possessiveness, and loss. It frequently shatters the fourth wall and its own idyllic veneer. At times, it is disarmingly funny; at others, profoundly sad. Continue reading →

May 06

A Cosmic Meditation on Hope: “Utopian Hotline”

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Theater Mitu; Utopian Hotline.

Presented by ArtsEmerson & Museum of Science
Conceived and developed by Theater Mitu
Produced in association with Octopus Theatricals
In partnership with SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, Arizona State University’s Interplanetary Initiative, and Brooklyn Independent Middle School
Directed by Ruben Polendo
Featuring Kayla Asbell, Denis Butkus, Michael Littig, Monica Sanborn

May 01, 2025 – May 18, 2025
Museum of Science, Planetarium
1 Museum of Science Driveway, Boston, MA 02114

Review by Maegan Bergeron-Clearwood

BOSTON — Theater Mitu squeezes a myriad of existential questions into its 45-minute Boston planetarium experience, Utopian Hotline: Is utopia possible? Do we exist alongside an infinite number of parallel universes? Is there life beyond our tiny speck of a planet? Is time linear, a social construct, or flat circle? What is the point of love and art when our lives are so cosmically insignificant?

Theater Mitu never fully grapples with any of these questions. Instead, it gently poses them, invites the audience to meditate on our internal responses, and lets them drift away into the ephemerality of human memory.

This experience parallels the NASA Voyager mission that inspired the piece. In 1977, scientists launched a golden record into space, offering a sonic glimpse into the human experience for whomever might discover them. There is no surety of these messages being heard again, but the act of creating them is an exercise in hope for our little green planet. Continue reading →