Tag Archives: 2026

Aug 19

An Ode to 80s Youthful Excess and Idiocy: ROCK OF AGES

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Photo by Paul Lyden

Presented by North Shore Music Theatre 
Book by Chris D’Arienzo
Direction by Kevin P. Hill
Music direction by Peter Leigh-Nilsen
Choreography by Sara Andreas

August 12 – August 23, 2026
North Shore Music Theatre
54 Dunham Rd. 
Beverly, MA 01915 

Review by Craig Idlebrook

BEVERLY, Mass. — You have to hand it to Chris D’Arienzo, the creator of Rock of Ages: he doesn’t shy away from the wincing sexual politics of late-80’s hair metal. A successful production of this play must do more than wink about it; it must embrace it, much like strong productions of Grease did before it.

For better more than for worse, the North Shore Musical Theatre production bearhugs the raw sexuality of this boy-meets-girl story set within the raunchy confines of L.A.’s Sunset Strip in the late 80’s. The skin and the gyrations on stage were enough for the somewhat stoic North Shore Music Theatre to provide a content warning beforehand, before giving the audience permission to sit back and let one’s big hair down. Continue reading →

Aug 10

It’s a Gift to be Phallic: “Pitbull’s Party at the End”

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Presented by Fork & Shoe Theatre Co-op
By Talia Rodriguez
Directed by Leo Leal

August 6-9, 2026
Chelsea Theatre Works

Critique by Kitty Drexel

The show runs approximately 95 minutes with a 15-minute intermission. Venue opens 30 minutes before the show.

TLDR: It’s complicated. There’s good; there’s not great. Keep going.

CHELSEA, Mass. — Pitbull’s Party at the End was an ambitious project debuted by Fork & Shoe Theatre Co-op at Chelsea Theatre Works on Aug. 6. Unfortunately, it closed early due to COVID. We offer our sincere condolences to the cast and crew. Y’all deserve to feel proud of the work you’ve done. Successfully producing an independent show is a minor miracle in these dark times.  

Pitbull’s Party at the End’s summary on the Fork & Shoe website: It’s 2042 and a hurricane threatens to wipe Miami off the map. Meanwhile, Mr. Worldwide (Carlos Fruzzetti, charismatic and funny) is performing his last ever New Year’s Eve concert, the Phallic brothers (David Feit Mann, Scott Schaeffer, Eli Bondar) are planning the business deal of a lifetime, and an intergenerational Cuban-Jewish family (Paola Ferrer, David Kleinman, Sophia Yael Koevary, Audrey Molina) must bridge their differences to survive the apocalypse.

Pitbull’s Party suffers from too many storylines and too many messages carrying equal importance. This one 95-minute play is about the ethnic cleansing of multiple societies, our global climate disaster, Jewish Cuban culture, billionaires’ atrocities, intergenerational queer identity, anticapitalist philosophy, and the Grammy-winning American rapper, singer, songwriter, and “actor” Armando Christian Pérez, aka Mr. 305, aka Mr. Worldwide, aka Miami’s bald zaddy, Pitbull. Carrying that many subplots in one play requires careful threading.  Continue reading →

Aug 05

We are all just prisoners here of our own device: “M: Refractions from an Evil Act”

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Grant and Hertzberg in “M.” Photo credit: Morganna Becker.

Presented by Exiled Theatre Company 
Written by James Wilkinson
Directed by Joe Juknievich
Starring: Julia Hertzberg, Sydney Grant, Tim Hoover and Peter Tone

July 31-Aug 9, 2026
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre

Critique by Kitty Drexel

TLDR: M is a work in progress; the acting is top-notch.

BOSTON — M: Refractions from An Evil Act includes English and French dialogue. There are no subtitles. (My French is abysmal.) My impression is that we aren’t meant to understand the French dialogue in M. This helps us sympathize with M, the character… And hopefully anyone thrust into a hairy situation involving language skills they don’t possess. Including ourselves.

Playwright Wilkinson creates a comprehensive world within a David Lynchian hotel in which his characters eke out their fraught existence. He shows and tells its rules through consistent repetition. Then, à la Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, Wilkinson shows us what happens if characters don’t obey those rules: Characters collapse, disappear and reappear, alcohol is replaced with more alcohol… and the maid still comes to vacuum the guest room.  Continue reading →

Aug 05

Techno Escapism in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

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Brooks Reeves (Robin Starveling), Michael Broadhurst* (Francis Flute), Paul Melendy* (Nick Bottom), Karen MacDonald* (Petra Quince), Alex Leondedis (Snug), and John Kuntz* (Snout). Photo Credit: Nile Scott Studios.

Presented by Commonwealth Shakespeare Company
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Steven Maler
Choreography by John Lam
Featuring: De’Lon Grant, Nora Eschenheimer, Nick Cearley, Paul Melendy, Meghan Carey, Annika Burley, Jaime José Hernandez, Jack Greenberg

July 22 – August 9, 2026
Commonwealth Shakespeare Company
Free on the Boston Common

Critique by Maegan Clearwood

BOSTON — I have been a Shakespeare on the Common groundling since moving to Boston four years ago. Summer after summer, I am drawn to the romanticism of outdoor theater: the quieting transformation from dawn to dusk, the unpredictable interference of the natural world, the crowd of Bostonians from so many walks of life, all gathered on the Commons for an evening of free art. Continue reading →

Jul 30

Celebrating Chaotic Growth: “Jagged Little Pill”

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Presented by The Company Theatre
Lyrics by Alanis Morissette
Music by Alanis Morissette and Glen Ballard
Book by Diablo Cody
Co-Directed by Zoe Bradford and Sally Ashton Forrest
Musical Direction by Robert McDonough

July 24-August 16, 2026
The Company Theatre
 30 Accord Park Dr.
Norwell, MA  02061

Review by Craig Idlebrook

NORWELL, Mass. — I had some misgivings as I sat down to watch the musical Jagged Little Pill at The Company Theatre in Norwell. Both the theater and the play were new to me, but I knew the source material for the show as well as I knew the feel of a slightly oversized flannel shirt.

Alanis Morissette’s album of the same name came out during my second year in college, and its raw, unapologetic songs gave many the permission to express their rage, joy, and grief in a way few other works of art had. Listeners were drawn in by Morissette’s unabashed honesty and anger, as she tried to make sense of adulthood after a youth spent as an almost-famous Canadian pop star. The songs themselves were so good because of their unpolished spontaneity (Morissette and songwriting partner Glen Ballard often wrote each song in under an hour). How would that translate onto the stage? Would the songs be reduced to a hodgepodge jukebox musical? Also, would the production take shortcuts with the script and end up in melodrama? Continue reading →

Jul 25

Activism and Elitism are Kissing Cousins: “A New Era”

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Front – Patrice Jean Baptiste and MaConnia Chesser. Cast in background. Photo by Ken Yotsukura

Presented by Company One Boston
By Miranda Austen ADEkoje
Directed by Summer L. Williams
Dramaturgy by Lizzy Cooper Davis

July 18 – Aug. 8, 2026
The Strand Theatre
Online Playbill 

Critique by Kitty Drexel

Seating is general admission. This performance runs approximately 2 hours, including one 10-minute intermission.

TLDR: New plays are imperfect. Production under duress signifies resilience, fortitude, and mastery of one’s art.

DORCHESTER, Mass. — A New Era is a teaching play. It teaches us about the trailblazing careers of historical freedom-fighting Black women who accomplished great feminist works in Boston. The C1 website for A New Era tells us that this play was originally commissioned and developed for the National Park Service by Plays in Place as part of its Suffrage in Black & White series. This means A New Era was first developed to communicate many facts to an audience via dialogue in a short amount of time. It shouldn’t be judged by the same standards as another historically-based play about women’s voices such as, say, The Crucible. They are different genres with the same medium. Continue reading →

Jun 26

Slapstick reverie: “Death and the Fool: A Tarot-Inspired Medieval Folly”

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Photo via Happenstance Theater.

Presented by Puppet Showplace Theater
Devised by Happenstance Theater
Artistic co-direction by Mark Jaster and Sabrina Mandell
Featuring Gwen Grastorf, Mark Jaster, Sabrina Mandell, Sarah Olmsted, and Thomas and Alex Vernon

June 22-23, 2026
Puppet Showplace Theater
32 Station St, Brookline MA 02445

Critique by Maegan Clearwood

BROOKLINE, Mass. – Medieval Europe places quite low on my time travel wish list, but there is nothing like the magic of theatre to reshape one’s imaginings of a time and place. Happenstance Theater’s Death and the Fool: A Tarot-Inspired Medieval Folly sweeps audiences away from the 21st century and into a 15th century dreamland – all the simple, sweet joys of welcoming the harvest, set against a soundscape of old-timey string instruments, no boils or bubonic plagues in sight.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Death is a central figure in this world, and its presence haunts the otherwise worry-free Fool. Characters regularly drop dead at the mere sight of the cloaked, scythe-wielding figure, and the play doesn’t shy away from the grotesque, often absurd, parts of this inevitable cycle. One of the most entrancing vignettes, in fact, follows the decomposition of three bodies, from rotting flesh to rebirth, told simply through physical movement and sound effects. Continue reading →

Jun 12

A Swan Lake Superfan Peeled Like a Grapefruit, Stepping Out of Her Skin: “Black Swan”

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The “Black Swan” gala or the “Phantom” gala? We may never know. Photo Credit: Hawver and Hall.

Presented by American Repertory Theater
Based on the Searchlight Pictures Film “Black Swan,” with story by Andres Heinz
Book by Jen Silverman
Music, Lyrics, and Orchestrations by Dave Malloy
Directed and Choreographed by Sonya Tayeh

May 26 – July 12, 2026
Loeb Drama Center
64 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Content Warnings: This production depicts characters experiencing mental health crises and physical violence/body horror. It contains intense strobe, flashing lights, haze, fog, and loud noises. They are frickin’ cool as heck. The lighting, sound, and illusion design departments know how to throw a creepy party. 

Recommended for ages 16+.

Critique by Kitty Drexel

TLDR: Dance = good. Everything else = iffy.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The A.R.T.’s Black Swan is based on the award-winning 2010 Darren Aronofsky film of the same name. It should be noted that the musical is not a strict remake of the film, and the musical makes several swift departures. Patrons can appreciate the musical without intimately knowing its source material. I found a rewatch of the film helpful before attending, as it gave me context for the musical’s more abstract psychological moments. It also reminded me when to expect a potential scare, because I’m an inappropriate giggler. Depending on one’s personal preferences, it may be better to watch the film later. 

If you don’t want to watch the movie, you can get by on reading the Wikipedia summary. Writing of which, this article contains spoilers. You have been warned.  Continue reading →

Jun 06

We Welcome Your Unique Perspective: “Eureka Day”

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The cast. Photography by Liza Voll.

Presented by The Huntington 
Written by Jonathan Spector 
Directed by Margot Bordelon

May 28 – June 28, 2026
The Huntington Theatre
264 Huntington Ave. 
Boston, MA 02115

Review by Kitty Drexel

“If my son can’t bring a peanut butter sandwich to school, then you can’t bring your unvaccinated child.”
 – Elizabeth Cleveland, vice president/planning director of The Martin Agency

BOSTON — Watching Eureka Day at The Huntington is like seeing British philosopher Philippa Foot’s Trolley Problem play out in real time. Foot’s moral dilemma positions the survival of many against the survival of one via violent train death. It’s Sophie’s choice but with trolleys. In the case of Spector’s play, this choice plays out within a private school’s code of operation.

Foot’s philosophical conundrum doesn’t take into account the individuals tied to the track, the engineer steering the trolley, nor the real-life violence represented by the trolley. The Trolley Problem, taken at face value, is relatively simple. Human beings are complicated. When you combine complications such as parenting culture, offensively open-minded liberalism, and antivaxxer pseudoscience with the Trolley Problem, you get the backbone of Eureka Day. Continue reading →

Jun 03

Laughing at the Horror of it All: “The Mystery of Irma Vep”

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Paul Melendy & Gabriel Graetz. Photo: Maggie Hall Photography.

Presented by Central Square Theater
By Charles Ludlam
Directed by David R. Gammons
Cast: Gabriel Graetz (Jane Twisden, Lord Edgar Hillcrest, et al), Paul Melendy (Nicodemus Underwood, Lady Enid Hillcrest, Alcazar, et al)

May 28 – June 21, 2026
Central Square Theater
450 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02139

Review by Craig Idlebrook

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Theater is full of silly mashup plays that provide ample opportunity for cartoonish violence and rapid costume changes, but few, I would argue, can help us laugh at the terror of our times as well as the 1984 comedy of The Mystery of Irma Vep, expertly staged at Central Square Theater in Cambridge. The play bear-hugs the penny dreadful genre, with homages to creature features of Victorian vampires, mummies, werewolves, departed former wives and more. Nods to Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde (and probably 15 other references I didn’t catch) are thrown in for good measure. Continue reading →