Category Archives: Other

Dec 18

Williamstown Theatre Festival Releases “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Photograph 51” on Audible.com

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Williamstown Theatre Festival 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/wtfestival
Insta: www.instagram.com/wtfestival
Twitter: www.twitter.com/wtfest

Audible/theater titles
Facebook: www.facebook.com/audibletheater
Insta: www.instagram.com/audibletheater
Twitter: www.twitter.com/audibletheater

Reviews by Kitty Drexel

AUDIBLE.COM — In April, the Williamstown Theatre Festival announced that it was presenting its seven productions planned for its 2020 season in partnership with Audible, the Amazon streaming service. Below are reviews for A Streetcar Named Desire and Photograph 51.

Additional reviews of Animals by Stacy Osei-Kuffour and Chonburi International Hotel & Butterfly Club by Shakina Nayfack will post next week.

Happy Streaming!

A Streetcar Named Desire
By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Robert O’Hara
Assistant directed by Nicholas Polonio
Sound design by Lindsay Jones
Dialect coaching by Dawn-Elin Fraser and Deborah Hecht
Intimacy direction by Claire Warden

Featuring: Joel Reuben Ganz (Doctor), Joe Goldammer (Steve Hubbell), Carla Gugino (Stella Kowalski), Carmen M. Herlihy (Eunice Hubbell), Sullivan Jones (Harold Mitchell), Brian Lucas (Young Collector), Audra McDonald (Blanche DuBois), Stacey Raymond (Nurse), Cesar J. Rosado (Pablo Gonzales), and Ariel Shafir (Stanley Kowalski)

Disclaimer: This review contains spoilers for a play that first premiered on Broadway in 1947. We assume that readers will have a working knowledge of this Tennessee Williams classic.

This radio drama version of Streetcar requires a listener to engage with it. It’s not something to listen to while driving or finishing a project. The listener will miss out on the actors’ subtleties and new takes on this classic. Audra McDonald, Carla Gugino, and Ariel Shafir use their voices as instruments. They fill silence with artistic nuance. Doing anything more complicated than idle hobby work will take away from the experience of their performances. Continue reading →

Dec 14

Tweeting Truth to Power: How Far Has Cyrus Come?

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Presented by Fort Point Theatre Channel and Boston Cultural Council
By Cyrus McQueen

Tuesday, Dec 1, 2020, 7 PM
Streamed Live via Youtube
Boston Cultural Council on Facebook
FPTC on Facebook

Review by Diana Lu

YOUTUBE–Cyrus McQueen used to be just your everyday standup comedian of Last Comic Standing fame. In the Age of Trump, he’s also become Twitter-famous as a cultural critic, offering race and politics analyses and wisecracks 280 characters at a time. He’s developed his experiences over the last four years into a first book, Tweeting Truth to Power: Chronicling our Caustic Politics, Crazed Times, & The Great Black & White Divide, which is supposed to be equal parts memoir and political discourse. Continue reading →

Sep 16

Have Pitch, Will Podcast: New Radio Drama for the Pandemic-Age

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Orson Welles, 1938. Shown in rehearsal, standing, center background: director Orson Welles; seated, right: composer Bernard Herrmann NB: directing his Mercury Theatre of the Air troupe, such as created panic on the CBS radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, October 30, 1938

Article by Kitty Drexel

The pandemic has sparked a greater interest in radio drama.

In May, the New York Times shared a great article by Alexis Soloski that named multiple Broadway podcast radio shows called “For Your Ears Only: Broadway’s New Stage Is a Mic.” It references the Great Depression (as we head into another recession), quotes recording actors like James Monroe Iglehart, and then details their podcast projects.

Kelli O’Hara, Annaleigh Ashford, Iglehart, and others answer pertinent questions such as “How do you develop a character using just your voice?” Their answers are excellent advice to actors making podcast theatre during the pandemic. It’s a good read. Continue reading →

Aug 14

Burning Down the Establishment One BIPOC Critic at a Time: A Profile of Pascale Florestal

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Florestal, image from www.pascaleflorestal.com

Profile by Kitty Drexel

BOSTON/ZOOM — Boston’s theatre journalism scene is a barren wasteland of white maleness. The desperate cries of BIPOC performing artists and designers for accurate representation are carried by winds off of the Atlantic ocean to diversity-parched cities and towns across New England: where are the critics of color?

Critiquing and reviewing circles have remained steadfastly white for the last few decades. Out of the current eleven members of the Boston Theater Critics Association, six are white men, five are white women.

The Front Porch Arts Collective launched the Young Critics Program in spring 2019 in partnership with WBUR the ARTery. It is the only independent training opportunity specifically geared towards young BIPOC journalists in New England. Boston-based director, dramaturg, educator, writer, and collaborator Pascale Florestal is the woman in charge. Continue reading →

Jun 25

“Corteo”: What Circus Dreams May Come

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Presented by Cirque du Soleil 
Directed and Created by Daniele Finzi Pasca and Line Tremblay
Music Composed and Directed by Jean-Francois Cote, Phillipe LeDuc, and Maria Bonzanigo

June 19th – June 30th, 2019
Agganis Arena
925 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
Corteo on Facebook

Review by Gillian Daniels

(Boston, MA) Mauro, the Dreamer Clown, tells the audience, “I dreamed of my funeral.” Except it’s no dream; this character is actually on his deathbed. A funeral becomes a party and the party becomes a circus. Angels fly on wires above, shoes walk across the stage on their own, and our narrator relives childhood memories while he’s fitted for wings. The somber frame narrative balances the rest of the show, which is cheeky, saccharine, and full of dream imagery that seems to have been cut, raw, from a sleeper’s mind. Continue reading →

May 22

Geeks Read Books: TCG Play Reviews

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(Somerville, MA/NYC) Occasionally the New England Theatre Geek is invited to review plays. Theatre Communications Group (TCG) provides gratis paperback copies to NETG in exchange for objective reviews. The opinions stated here are not shared by TCG and are the author’s own. Continue reading →

Dec 10

Tossing Your Cookies, and Having Them Too: Cirque Dreams’ HOLIDAZE

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Presented by Cirque Productions
Created and directed by Neil Goldberg
Associate director: Heather Hoffman
Music & lyrics by Jill Winters & David Scott
Additional music by Lance Conque, Tony Aliperti

Shubert Theatre
Boston, MA
Cirque Dreams on Facebook

Review by Kitty Drexel

(Boston, MA) Holidaze is a Cirque du Soleil like production. It’s a “holiday” circus show with Christmas as it’s primary focus. Token nods are thrown briefly at Hanukkah and New Years. The focus is still on Christmas.  Please note: Cirque Dreams is not Cirque du Soleil. It is a production operated by company Cirque Productions, and a direct competitor of Cirque du Soleil. Cirque Productions are more… earthy. Continue reading →

Nov 09

And Now We Fight.

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fight

Dearest Readers for Whom the Election Results have brought Trauma,
Now it is more important than ever to be the change you wish to see in the world. Do not crumble. Fight.

We, the Geeks of NETG, wish our readers great love, convicted passion, and steadfast courage. We can make this country a better place by fighting for it. Art can heal. Art can teach. Art can protect. If you don’t like the election results, make it your goal to change the battlefield on which politics are fought. Commit yourselves to a greater good.

Thank you for voting. The next steps, among others, include ensuring that Arts funds aren’t slashed to smithereens.

Be Well, and All My Love,
The Queen

What Now? A Sampling
Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/11/how_to_preserve_the_ideals_of_liberal_democracy_in_the_face_of_a_trump_presidency.html
Bustle: https://www.bustle.com/articles/194209-what-to-do-now-donald-trump-is-president-elect-your-america-no-longer-looks-the-same
Huff Po: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/queer-america-donald-trump-president_us_58230451e4b0d9ce6fc015e6
New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/us/politics/donald-trump-won-now-what.html

Oct 22

Geeks Read Books: “John” by Annie Baker

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John by Annie Baker
Published by TCG (NYC) in June 2016
$14.95 paperback
$30.00 hardcover
www.tcg.org

Review by Kitty Drexel

I was given a gratis copy of John by TCG in return for my review. My opinions are my own. Anyone who thinks otherwise can fight me.

TCG summarizes the play thusly, “the week after Thanksgiving. A Bed & Breakfast in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A cheerful innkeeper. A young couple struggling to stay together. Thousands of inanimate objects, watching.” The truth is much creepier than that.

Elias and Jenny are traveling through Gettysburg on a mini-vacation. They are a textbook example of pre-breakup behaviors: they don’t value each other’s struggles or input. They are distant to the point of unintentional neglect. They are staying at Mertis’ freezing cold bed and breakfast. Mertis has awkward boundaries. She doesn’t read between the lines. Neither do they. As the play unfolds, the couple is forced to confront their self-absorbed assumptions regarding each other. Everything and nothing is a metaphor for their experiences. Continue reading →

Jul 30

Geeks Read Books: “Sotto Voce” by Nilo Cruz

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Cover design by Lisa Govan.

Cover design by Lisa Govan.

 

 

 

“If the sea were to shout,
we would all be deaf.”
– Carlos Fuentes, “Destiny and Desire”

 

 

 

 

 

“Sotto Voce: A Play”
Nilo Cruz
TCG Books
Theatre Communications Group, New York, 2016
$14.95
Available: http://www.tcg.org/; https://www.amazon.com/; and other purveyors of fine dramatic literature.

Review by Kitty Drexel

(New York, NY) Sotto Voce is a three person (two women, one man) play about the ways we harness our fears to confront the past and understand our consequential future. Playwright Cruz’s prose lilts off the tongue like a lover’s kiss. His character interactions sweep the stage of the imagination like poetry: gentle, unrushed but intense. Yet, his script is not without its thematic and dynamic problems. With the exception of two German characters revealed in flashback, these individuals manipulate each other with little compassion. Continue reading →