Category Archives: Drama

Mar 01

Astonishing, Acrobatic Adaptation of “Metamorphosis”

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Gisli Orn Gardarsson Photo Credit: Eddi

Gisli Orn Gardarsson
Photo Credit: Eddi

Presented by ArtsEmerson with Vesturport Theatre and Lyric Hammersmith Theatre

Based on the novella by Franz Kafka
Adapted and directed by Gisli Örn Gardarsson and David Farr
Featuring Music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis

The Paramount Center Mainstage
559 Washington St.
Boston, MA
ArtsEmerson Facebook Page

Review by Gillian Daniels

This production of Metamorphosis is imbued with a frantic energy. This is partially due to Gísli Örn Gardarsson, one of the directors and the main character of this adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel. Utilizing acrobatic skill and a set with plenty of footholds, Gardarsson plays Gregor Samsa.

Gregor’s family suffers after his transformation into a giant insect. In horror, they watch him crawl across the stage, aping a monster even though his human soul remains intact. Combining dark humor and a set split beautifully into two stages, this version of Metamorphosis is probably one of the most visually entrancing plays in Boston right now. Continue reading →

Feb 24

Melanie Garber’s Ephemeral Direction Of Dreams and Mysteries

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A Dream Play

Presented by Heart & Dagger Productions

By August Strindberg, Translated by Harry G. Carlson
Directed by Melanie Garber

February 22, 2013 to March 2, 2013
The Factory Theatre
791 Tremont Street, Boston

Directing Profile by Becca Kidwell

photo credit: Drew Linehan

photo credit: Drew Linehan

Melanie Garber has a dancer’s sensibility of direction with Heart & Dagger Productions’ A Dream Play, but this is not a surprise.  She has shown this intricate direction in Actor’s Shakespeare Project’s Medea, Fresh Ink Theatre Company’s Priscilla Dreams The Answer, and Heart & Dagger’s Crave.  Not only does Ms. Garber make words come alive, but she also brings life to words. From the initial moments of each of the productions, she chooses specific, distinct movements that create the environment of the play. Continue reading →

Feb 18

Everything is Possible and Likely: A DREAM PLAY

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Heart & Dagger Productions

presents

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Expecting the unexpected = sexy and you know it.

 

Heart & Dagger Productions plunge into their 3rd Season with A DREAM PLAY by August Strindberg.  The production opens February 22, 2013 at The Factory Theatre, Boston, MA.

Agnes, a daughter of the Vedic god Indra, descends to Earth to bear witness to problems of human beings. Following the logic of a dream in which characters merge, locations change in an instant and a locked door recurs obsessively-A DREAM PLAY is a potent mix of Freud plus Alice in Wonderland. “The characters split, double, multiply, evaporate, condense, dissolve and merge.”

Featuring:
Elizabeth Battey, Quentin James, Emily Kaye Lazzaro, Lauren Foster, Eric McGowan, Drew Linehan, Angel Veza, Michael Dix Thomas, Nicole Howard, Katie Drexel, Tony Dangerfield, Jenny Reagan, Erin Brehm, and Ryan Edlinger.

The world premiere of A DREAM PLAY was at The Swedish Theatre in 1907, six years after it was written. August Stringberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, painter, and poet.  He is the playwright of The Father, Miss Julie, and The Ghost Sonata.  During the 1890s he spent significant time abroad engaged in scientific experiments and studies of the occult.  Strindberg died in 1912 at the age of 63. Continue reading →

Feb 14

Wandering into the “Lunar Labyrinth”

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Based on “A Lunar Labyrinth” by Neil Gaiman
Directed by Steven Bogart
Music composed by Mary Bichner, Mali Sastri, John J. King, Phillip Berman and Jesse Amerding
Harp incidental music by Phillip Berman

Presented by Liars & Believers

February 13 @ 8pm (only one performance, alas!)
Club Oberon
Cambridge, MA
Liars & Believers Facebook Page

Review by Special Guest: Noe Kamelamela

(Cambridge) Lunar Labyrinth was truly a collaborative performance, a meeting of varied art forms.  A theatrical adaptation of a chilling story which Neil Gaiman specifically wrote for Liars & Believers, this production made for a night filled with nontraditional staged performance buoyed by the aide of formatted storytelling styles and brave performers. Continue reading →

Feb 11

Characters Takes Center Stage in “Glass Menagerie”

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photo credit: Michael Lutch

photo credit:Michael Lutch

Presented by American Repertory Theater

By Tennessee Williams
Directed by John Tiffany
Choreography by Steven Hoggett

February 2, 2013 to March 17, 2013
Loeb Drama Center
64 Brattle Street, Harvard Square

Review by Gillian Daniels

(Cambridge) In Tennessee Williams’s tragicomedy, The Glass Menagerie, my sympathy has often been with the antagonist, Amanda, here played by Cherry Jones.  Raised as a spoiled Southern belle given no higher goal than to be a wealthy wife, Jones’ Amanda has a sadly stunted maturity about her.  She isn’t prepared to deal with life outside the Antebellum South.  She’s at a loss when her children’s needs deviate so sharply from the accepted norms. Continue reading →

Feb 06

“Fire On Earth” and at the Stake

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Photo by Rebecca Bradshaw, with James Fay, Bob Mussett and Omar Robinson

Photo by Rebecca Bradshaw, with James Fay, Bob Mussett and Omar Robinson

Presented by Fresh Ink Theatre

Written by Patrick Gabridge
Directed by Rebecca Bradshaw

The Factory Theatre
Boston, MA
February 1-16, 2013
Fresh Ink Theatre Facebook Page

Review by Gillian Daniels

WARNING: Scenes of torture.

(Boston) I’ve always been skeptical of the “martyr” concept but enjoy it when it’s depicted well.  A martyr trades one life for an immortal one, living beyond death through the ideas he championed in life.  He’s not always a hero and he doesn’t always come from a selfless place, but he sacrifices himself all the same.

In Patrick Gabridge’s Fire On Earth, William Tyndale (Bob Mussett) works to translate the Bible into English.  It’s 1524, King Henry VIII is contemplating divorce from his first wife, and the Catholic Church has a stranglehold on the Latin Bible.  The Church decides when it’s read, who’s able to understand it, and what it means to the largely illiterate English masses.  Religion isn’t personal, it’s a business.  Mussett’s Tyndale, with a blissful naïveté in his face, opts to preach with his new translation.  Sir Thomas More and the bishops are not pleased. Continue reading →

Jan 27

Contemplative Sadness in “Family Happiness”

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Photo credit THEATRE-ATELIER PIOTR FOMENKO

Photo credit THEATRE-ATELIER PIOTR FOMENKO

Based on  the novel by Leo Tolstoy
Directed by Piotr Fomenko
Performances are in Russian with English subtitles

presented by Maestro Artist Management, in association with ArtsEmerson: The World On Stage

Cutler Majestic Theatre
Boston, MA
January 26-27, 2013

Maestro Artist Management Facebook Page

Review by Gillian Daniels

(Boston) Premiering at the Theater-Atelier Piotr Fomenko in 2000 in Moscow, and only in Boston for the weekend, Family Happiness tells the story of the ill matched marriage between Masha (Ksenia Kutepova) and Sergey Mihailovich (Alexey Kolubkov). The plot is a simple one and the pace is quiet, thoughtful, and slow for audiences with short attention spans. For everyone else, Leo Tolstoy’s Family Happiness is a somber prize. Continue reading →

Jan 26

An Aborted Liftoff: AS BEES IN HONEY DROWN

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Photo by Ross Brown.

Photo by Ross Brown.

presented by The F.U.D.G.E. Theatre Company

by Douglas Carter Beane
directed by Joe DeMita

January 24th – 27th, 2013
The Factory Theatre
Boston, MA
F.U.D.G.E Theatre Co Facebook Page

Review by Craig Idlebrook

(Boston) Sometimes, the most frustrating performance to watch is one where you can see the potential. F.U.D.G.E Theatre Company’s production of As Bees in Honey Drown has all the ingredients for a devastating critique on our fame-hungry society, but the individual parts of the show do not add up to a good production, and the audience is left to ponder what could have been. Continue reading →

Jan 24

“At the Mountaintop” Delivers Unexpected, Unwelcome Twist

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Presented by Underground Railway Theater

Presented by Underground Railway Theater

Produced by Underground Railway Theater

By Katori Hall
directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian

January 10 – February 3, 2013
Central Square Theater
450 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Central Square Theater Facebook Page

Review by Gillian Daniels

(Cambridge) Sometimes, there’s a moment in a show that can make or break it. When that moment comes, the audience will divide accordingly. Maybe this turn is cheesy, too scary, or just a little off-kilter with the rest of the story. When it happens in At the Mountaintop, and the audience will know when it does, it redefines the sort of narrative being watched. The show starts out smart but softens into a peculiar if interesting mess.

Katori Hall’s two-man play concerns the late and well-loved Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Maurice Emmanuel Parent) and his conversations with a hotel maid, Camae (Kami Rushell Smith). Like A Picasso by Jeffrey Hatcher, performed by The Salem Theatre Company last year, Central Square Theater’s At the Mountaintop concerns two personalities bouncing off each other in a contained space. Also like A Picasso, one happens to be famous and respected while the other, an intrigued woman, has slipped
through the cracks of history. Continue reading →

Jan 20

Wistful Grief: SHAKESPEARE’S WILL

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Seana McKenna as Anne Hathaway. Photo by Meghan Moore

Seana McKenna as Anne Hathaway. Photo by Meghan Moore

by Vern Thiessen
Directed by Miles Potter
Composed by Marc Desormeaux

presented by Merrimack Repertory Theatre

50 E. Merrimack Street
Lowell, Massachusetts 01852
January 10th – February 3rd, 2012
Merrimack Repertory Theatre Facebook Page

Review by Craig Idlebrook

(Lowell) William Shakespeare may have done more than any writer of his time to examine both internal and external human drama, but he ducked the fight when it came to his own family; so goes the premise of Shakespeare’s Will, the taut and layered production now playing at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre. The Bard may get the headlines in the play’s title, but it is his absence that is the singular event that shapes the life of his wife, Anne Hathaway, who is the only character in this beautifully lonely one-woman play. Through the brave performance of Seanna McKenna, we are reminded that even in the shadow of greatness the drama of everyday is enough to create volumes of literature. Continue reading →