Presented by The National Center of Afro-American Artists https://blacknativity.org/
Executive Producer and Director: Voncille Ross
Choreographer: George Howard
Ballet Mistress: Desiree Springer
Choral Director, Children of Black Persuasion: Marilyn Andry
Choral Director, Voices of Black Persuasion: Milton L. Wright
Stage Manager: Brion-Michael Rock
Board of Directors – Margaret Burnham and Vivian Johnson, Co-Chairpersons, Kafi Meadows, Frances Bernat, Denzil D. McKenzie, Melissa Nobles, Amy Olatunji, Honorable Milton L. Wright
December 2 – 18, 2022, weekends, with matinees at 3:30 pm and evening shows at 8 pm
Robert J. Orchard Stage
Paramount Center
559 Washington Street
Boston, MA 02111
Review by Craig Idlebrook
BOSTON, Mass — There are competing ideas in the narrative of the traditional Christian nativity story – that the son of God is born and that a young woman who is temporarily homeless gives birth to a child in a barn and the child is loved. One of the most profound aspects of Black Nativity, a long-running production of Langston Hughes’ holiday show, is that it deftly gives equal weight to both.
The poet Hughes, who wrote the book and utilized traditional Christmas carols for this musical, first staged Black Nativity off-Broadway in 1961. Less than a decade later, in 1969, the play was first performed in Boston. The Boston production has become a beloved, if sometimes overlooked, holiday tradition here for more than a half century, and taking part in the cast has become an intergenerational endeavor for some Black families in the area. Continue reading →
November 25 – December 11th, Wednesdays Through Sundays, various times
Boch Center – Wang Theatre
270 Tremont St
Boston, MA 02116
Review by Craig Idlebrook
BOSTON — If you are an aspiring fiction writer in whatever genre and have a good idea for a Christmas-themed show, I suggest you pursue it. If our 365-day lust for Hallmark Christmas movies is any indication, there is always a need for more content, and, frankly, most of the ideas that are out there are mediocre at best.
Of course, as an honest critic, I should always take my own idiosyncrasies into account, and how it might differ from the viewpoint of others. I like a low-key Christmas season, and many people don’t, and this difference can color our perspectives on yuletide spectacle. Continue reading →
Rehearsal for “The Rise and Fall of Holly Fudge.” Photo by Meghan Moore/Megpix
Presented by Merrimack Repertory Theatre By Trista Baldwin Directed by Courtney Sale Cast: Kristian Espiritu, Karen MacDonald, Eliza Simpson, Milicent Wright
Age Recommendation: 14 and older. Some adult content/language.
Review by Kitty Drexel
Video-On-Demand — The copious productions of The Christmas Carol that come around every year are for mainstream Christmas celebrators. The Rise and Fall of Holly Fudge is a Christmas production for the rest of us. It’s intersectionality feminist. It passes the Bechdel Test. It’s under two hours, and you can drink rum-nog the entire time from your own home. Cheers!
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house… Carol (New England darling Karen MacDonald) was stirring because her daughter Holly (Kristian Espiritu) was finally coming home to Brockton, Mass.! This year Holly is bringing her special friend Jordan (Eliza Martin Simpson). Worlds, politics, and identities collide when Holly reveals to Carol that Jordan is more than just her Jewish, progressive liberal friend from Portland.
Milicent Wright plays the online Zumba cueing, comestible baking, excellent listener and BFF neighbor Chris. I would take Zumba class with Chris/Millicent any day. She seems fun. Continue reading →
Get Thee Behind Me, Santa: An Inexcusably Filthy Children’s Time-Travel Farce for Adults Only Presented by Maximum Verbosity Produced by FringePVD Written and performed by phillip andrew bennett low
My sincere apologies to low re: review tardiness. The pandemic kills productivity like a mother.
ZOOM — Maximum Verbosity presents a holiday allegory to beat that tired one told every single Christmas. Get Thee Behind Me, Santa features cursing, sexuality, blasphemy and other microaggressions.
Get Thee Behind Me, Santa is an exceedingly fast-paced holiday allegory with an occasional rhyme scheme that pulls no punches. Jesus of Nazareth, Saint Nick, two angels with a greater appreciation for the physical form and a cast of other characters are determined to live in a better timeline, a timeline without a Santa cult.
It makes fun of the Da Vinci Code but it’s more similar to the popular 2003 mystery novel than it isn’t. GTBM,S jumbles together art, religion, science fiction, film noir, and other seemingly incongruent references into one tale. Therein lies the intended humor.
In humorous narratives of this ilk, the jumble of references is the point. Lists are par for the course. Except, GTBM,S is told at such breakneck speed that we aren’t able to absorb all of phillip andrew bennett low’s puns and scenes. They aren’t funny if we can’t savor them. The image of elves with super soakers is funny but, with low’s telling, blink and you’ll miss it. The same goes with many of the other clever bits concerning the Bible, popular soft drinks, and the Mayan civilization.
The funniest moments of GTBM,S are when low pauses after a character’s one-liner. Jesus said, “Howdy-do?” Low gave us time to react, so I did; I laughed.
Someone said (I couldn’t catch the character’s name), “I am amazed at how useless I find your vowels.” Low paused again; I laughed again.
I was able to respond in real-time to low’s work. It felt amazing. Audiences of artists want to respond to an artist. Please let us.
Theatre shouldn’t be a race to the finish… Unless it is. If the point of GTBM,S was to impress the audience with how quickly and how much low can spit a monologue, low succeeds. But, we couldn’t tell that this was his goal. He needs to indicate this to us.
Some of this can be excused by the medium of Zoom. A one-person show without an audience is torture for an artist. We create with the presumption that an audience will share the room when we perform. Without the audience, we fly by the seat of our pants. It’s anyone’s guess how things will turn out. We can only hope for the best.
Based on the GTBM,S trailer from the 2019 Minnesota Fringe, I’m going to make an educated guess that low’s speed is intentional. If low’s intent truly was to tell a convoluted story overflowing with references across modern and archaic world history while ripping Christianity a new one, he needs to slow down so the audience can receive the story.
Storytelling can be as alinear as the space time continuum but, if it’s for an audience, it also has to be available to that audience. Artists need to perform at the same speed that an audience listens. Anything else is masturbatory.
Next performance of Get Thee Behind Me, Santa: Friday 7/24 at 9:00pm
FestivalPVD runs July 19 – August 1, 2020 Information about the 2020 festival HERE FringePVD on Facebook
IBWC National Tour Company. Jeremy Daniel Photography, 2017. *Includes Makayla Joy Connolly
Presented by Work Light Productions Based on the 1954 film “White Christmas by Norman Krasna, Norman Panama, and Melvin Frank Music and lyrics by Irving Berlin Book by David Ives and Paul Blake Directed and choreographed by Randy Skinner Music directed by Michael Horsley
(Boston, MA) Irving Berlin’s White Christmas is the secular, heteronormative Christmas musical I didn’t know I needed to see the season. I was in a grumpy mood when last night. I was feeling so grinchy that I could have abandoned my theatre plans to don a furry, green unitard and guide an empty sleigh drawn by a single, overworked pup into the Boston streets. My mood was foul when the curtain rose. But, by the time the curtain went down, I was chipper with the holiday spirit. The dancing and singing in Irving Berlin’s White Christmas is so infectiously charming that I had no choice but be swept into a better mood. Continue reading →
(Boston, MA) The CBS television special A Charlie Brown Christmas, which premiered in 1965, has long been a holiday favorite of mine. Before I understood its sophisticate themes or even its dialogue, the adorable cartoons, slow jazz, and children’s voices were instinctively and irresistibly soothing. Decades later, Charlie Brown’s dark horse demeanor and romantic ideals still hold up as a paragon of optimism in a world that makes it so easy become disenchanted and give up our hopes and dreams.
Presented by Troika Entertainment, LLC Book by Thomas Meehan Music by Charles Strause Lyrics by Martin Charnin Based on the “Little Orphan Annie,” a comic strip by Harold Gray which was based on the 1885 poem “Little Orphant Annie” by James Whitcomb Riley Directed by Martin Charnin Choreographed by Liza Gennaro Music directed and conducted by Keith Levenson Animals wrangled by William Berloni
(Boston, MA) I’m a stoic deeply bruised by current events, but Annie at the Wang is such an uplifting show that I was able to smile and think of happier times. This production is a fast-paced, clean cut piece of theatre. Escapism isn’t always productive, but this particular dose isn’t doing anyone any harm. Continue reading →
Return of the Winemaker: An Irish Christmas Comedytakes the piss out of two beloved institutions: Ireland and Christmas. It is not for the artistically insistent or the prudishly religious. In it, God sends his only begotten son to Ireland, of all places, to try again. Continue reading →
Banner image borrowed from https://paramountboston.org/
Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity Dec. 2, 2015
Presented by Emerson College and National Center of Afro-American Artists
Book by Langston Hughes
Music & Lyrics chosen by Langston Hughes
Based on text from the Gospel of St. Luke
Executive Producer and Director: Voncille Ross
Assistant to the Director for Music: Stephen Hunter, Sr.
Choral Director for Children: Marilyn Andry
Choral Director for Adults: Milton L. Wright
Ballet Mistress: Desiree Springer
Dec. 4 – 20, 2015
ASL interpreted performances: Dec. 4, 6, 12, 13, 19, & 20, 2015
The Paramount Theater
Boston, MA
Paramount Theater on Facebook Black Nativity Boston on Facebook
Review by Kitty Drexel
Performances are open to the public beginning on Friday, Dec. 4. I was invited to a dress rehearsal. This review will be based on the wonderful performance the NCAAA so graciously allowed me to attend on Dec. 2, 2015.
(Boston, MA) Jesus was a Jewish man from Israel. Israel shares a border with Egypt which is in Africa. His birthplace, Bethlehem, is approximately six miles from Jerusalem. It takes about five hours to get to Be’er Sheva from Bethlehem if you catch the right bus (thank you Googlemaps). From there, you could get within the borders of Africa if you really wanted to but the journey would be pointlessly rough. I mention this to prove a point: given the physical location of Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem on a map, it is highly unlikely that Jesus was the blonde haired, blue eyed, white man that Christians enjoy depicting today. You’d have to travel on foot through Lebanon, then Syria and finally Turkey, or voyage across the Mediterranean Sea to Greece or Italy before hitting any majority of white people… And that’s in 7-2 BCE. Good luck finding an agent willing to sell you travel insurance. Continue reading →
Presented by Wellesley College Theatre
Written by Paula Vogel
Music by Daryl Waters
Directed by Nora Hussey
November 18 – 22
Ruth Nagel Jones Theatre
Wellesly, MA
WCT on Facebook
Review by Danielle Rosvally
Christmas theatre is a very specific genre that requires a very particular mix to make effective (or even palatable). The recipe starts with good old-fashioned holiday cheer; add a dash of nostalgia, a hint of history, a generous helping of family values, and (of course) finish with a generous sprinkling of festive music. Paula Vogel’s A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration has all the necessary ingredients for the Christmas genre, but actually performing it requires a special touch. The piece’s simplistic dialogue which features such tropes as characters telling you who they are before they begin to speak (“In the West Wing of the White House, President Lincoln’s maid was cleaning the floor…. Hi, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show tonight?”) that have the danger to edge this play towards the realm of children’s theatre cheesiness, or satirical campiness. Continue reading →
