Boston Arts Review

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Classic All Singin’ All Talkin’ Baseball By Beverly Creasey

2012-03-06T10:19:00.000-05:00

What comes to mind when you think of Boston? World class music? The Red Sox? What if you combined the music and the grand slams? A nation that loves baseball has memorialized the game in song since the 1800s.From Take Me out to the Ball Game to Where have you gone Joe DiMagio, we’ve celebrated the national pastime in song. No so for football…Not hockey….Not basketball…Not even golf!

Just about a month from today, Fenway Park will turn 100 years old. American Classics had the inspired idea to plan a concert called FABULOUS FENWAY around the event – and they had the genius to call the poet laureate of the Red Sox, Dick Flavin, to join them.

You may remember Flavin from his days as resident wag on WBZ-TV or you may know that his play about Tip O’Neill won the Independent Reviewers nod for best new play. With countless broadcasting awards and accolades for his witty “Round Table” writing, Flavin shows off his wry style – and considerable comic chops acting it out – in his paean to Ted Williams (based on the famous Casey at the Bat, now called Teddy at the Bat. He winds up, twisting his body into a whirlwind. He calls the batters out with flailing arms. He echoes the crowd. He’s a one man band!

Flavin’s rewrite of Charlie on the MBA lampooning last year’s team is a palpable hit. He sends up the fried chicken- and-beer-in-the-dugout mentality and slays them with the naughty lyric “Did they finish the race? No, they fell on their face. At floppin’ they were tops. The revoltin’ news is the bums were losers. The 2011 Red Sox.”

If that weren’t enough, American Classics serenades the new coach with the nostalgic oldie Stay, Valentine, Stay. Then we are treated to sparkling medleys from 1912 when mayor Honey Fitz threw out the very first pitch at Fenway. American Classics co-founders, Ben Sears and Brad Conner, performed a jaunty Those Were the Days with (of course!) additional lyrics by Flavin and Cynthia Mork lifted a jazzy Blue Skies into the stratosphere. A coquettish Caroline Musica made a corny song like My Little Baby Bumble Bee seem positively profound and Eric Bronner lent his gorgeous tenor to Along Came Ruth.

Flavin debunked the legend that Ruth was traded to the Yankees to finance No, No, Nanette and the ensemble hit one out of the Longy with the hilarious baseball scene from William Finn’s Falsettos. We even got CrackerJax pitched into the audience. And we stood and sang the national anthem! I have to say, American Classics’ FABULOUS FENWAY tribute was more fun than – well – baseball!

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Ars Longa, Vita Brevis By Beverly Creasey

2012-02-29T15:22:00.000-05:00

The art adjudicator in BAKERSFIELD MIST (at New Repertory Theatre through March 18^th) quips that you can’t carbon date a Jackson Pollock. Authentication has to be in the eye of the beholder. In this very real case, the eye belonged to superstar, ex- Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Hoving. Stephen Sachs gives him another name, of course, in his play about a contested flea market “treasure” (to protect the innocent playwright, no doubt).

Would be Pollocks, it turns out, pop up from time to time needing verification. The Boston College Art Museum hosted an exhibit a few years back centering around a painting discovered by the heirs of Herbert Matter, an artist and friend of Pollock. The two men traded ideas and canvases and among his possessions was a likely drip painting. Problem was: both of them experimented with drips!

Alas, Maude Gutman’s serendipitous $3 purchase in the story (based on actual events) has no such connection to attract the attention of the art world. We meet her in her cramped trailer awaiting a visit from a very expensive hired authenticator. The two of them battle for supremacy in far more than that expert opinion.

Ken Cheeseman captures Hoving’s hauteur to the letter but director Jeff Zinn unnecessarily pushes the character of the expert into slapstick (in the up close, north-south-east and west examination of the canvas and in his wild ecstasy over art history). Paula Langton as Maude, to my mind, should be controlling the comedy.

Zinn inexplicably plunks both of them down on the couch where the painting has been propped so that their respective backs rub against it. The expert certainly would know better, fresh from the world of velvet ropes and security guards–and she wouldn’t want to harm one glob of paint on her cash cow, would she? It’s really a small complaint since the rest of the play is engaging and Langton and Cheeseman connect with sparks. It’s a pity the play ends with the “decision” because there’s a lot more to the story of what happens to Maude and that now famous (the play and a film) work of art!

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Extreme Close-up By Beverly Creasey

2012-02-26T12:54:00.000-05:00

In Woody Allen’s Bananas, a pushy Howard Cosell thrusts a microphone into the face of a Central American dictator who’s been fatally shot and asks the man how it feels to be dying. The absurdity of such an impolite (to say the least) intrusion into a person’s final moments gets a big laugh.

What was funny in 1971 isn’t a joke anymore. It’s become accepted practice now…in order to bear witness? To shed light on atrocity? To prick the conscience of those miles from harm’s way? It’s now de rigeur for photojournalists to capture the face of a human (or animal) as the poor creature expires. Does it move nations to cease inhumane practices? Does it spur John Q. Public to action? Most people have become inured to the images. Some can’t watch the news because they’re not.

Playwright Donald Margulies debates the practice of up close and personal journalism from a domestic perspective in his play, TIME STANDS STILL. A journalist and a photographer, both stateside to recover from battle scars, wrestle with whether they’ll get married, leave risk behind or return to the war. She questions her own motives, fearing she’s been “living off the sorrows of strangers.” He would be just as happy out of the fray, trying to live like everyone else for a change.

Director Scott Edmiston’s smart production (playing at the Lyric Stage through March 17^th) engages us with passion. Surprisingly enough, it’s not in the character of the brave, wounded photojournalist (Laura Latreille). The most passionate characters turn out to be her journalist/partner (Barlow Adamson in a tour de force defending their relationship) and the very young, naïve wife (a delightful Erica Spyres) of an old friend (Jeremiah Kissel) who lectures her jaded elders on the beauty and joy to be found in the world.

If only it weren’t the case but life has imitated art in the death of American foreign correspondent Marie Colvin who died in Syria alongside French photojournalist Remi Ochlik. In her dispatches to the British Sunday Times, she described a scene almost identical to one Margulies wrote for Latreille’s character in TIME STANDS STILL.

Does it stand still or does it just repeat itself over and over? Will the killing ever stop?

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Chez Zeitgeist By Beverly Creasey

2012-02-17T13:20:00.001-05:00

You may have heard of site specific performances where, say, a play set in a laundromat is performed in an actual laundromat (all the rage a few years ago). Well, the ever resourceful David Miller has transformed the Zietgeist space at the BCA into a patisserie/café—with the most delicious desserts ever to tempt a sweet tooth AND right in front of your little café table, a restaurant play! Zagat would rave over the décor, the pastry and the stellar service!

Since Zagat doesn’t yet rate theater, I say it’s always a treat to see any Alan Ayckbourn play (and we’ve been showered of late with first rate productions, from The Norman Conquests at Gloucester to Season’s Greetings at Wellesley to Zietgeist’s My Wonderful Day). TIME OF MY LIFE (playing through March 3^rd) is recent Ayckbourn, and although he gives us the requisite family behaving badly, a bottomless well of material to be sure, it’s not the wild farce of his early work. It’s entertaining to witness outrageous behavior but there’s tragedy lurking behind this little comedy of bad manners.

The well off Stratton clan has gathered at their favorite restaurant for mother’s birthday and mother (Maureen Adduci), like Queen Victoria, is not amused: by her husband, by her children, certainly not by their gifts and definitely not by her favorite son’s “inferior” choice of girlfriend. Adduci oozes disapproval as the family disintegrates with every sip of the free flowing liquor.

Michael Steven Costello has an especially comic slide into despair as he discovers unpleasantries he’s rather not know. Glen Moore and Margarita Martinez as the painfully off again/on again son and daughter-in-law manage to elicit our sympathy, knowing what mother thinks of them. Evan Sanderson is delightfully bumbling as the son with the “nerve” to bring a hairdresser to mother’s party. Ellen Soderberg gives a sweet performance as the cheeky girl with the multi-color hair.

For my money—and because I love the tricks in the old Ayckbourn plays—it’s Gene Dante who steals the show in a million different guises (in hilarious hair and costumes by Fabian Aguilar) as waiters, the Maitre D, owner of the restaurant and as one hair-netted, opinionated old geezer who looks exactly like an elderly Italian woman I know!

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Wandalust or How a Daydreamer Learns to Leave Home and Follow Her Bliss by Beverly Creasey

2012-02-05T22:07:00.000-05:00

It’s reason to celebrate when a new theater has as its mission the support of new plays! Argos Productions is one of the heroes willing to produce local playwrights. (You can count the others on the fingers of one hand.) It’s fitting that Argos’ WANDALERIA is up at the venerable Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.

David Valdes Greenwood’s quirky, feel good comedy of manners plays through February 11^th. Director Brett Marks gives the sweet, oddball script a peppy production, sparked by Kate deLima as the homebody-Pollyanna who corresponds with prisoners and fantasizes about winning prizes and finding romance. In case Flannery O’Connor comes to mind, not to worry. This “good man” was easy to find.

Greenwood isn’t buying into the predator phenomenon which we’ve been conditioned by “television journalists” to expect. Peter Brown gives a charming performance as Rocky, the well intentioned “plant poacher” who flees Florida for Alaska to see Wanda.

DeLima and Brown get great support from Caitlyn Conley as the space cadet who takes the plant man’s advice to turn her life around, too, from Terrence Haddad and Craig Houk as myriad fantasy men (and one fantasy woman!) and from Shelley Brown as Wanda’s tough but tenderhearted roommate.

The only hole in the script, in my opinion, is the roommate’s quick assent to Rocky’s visit. I just don’t think she would trust a stranger so readily. Perhaps if she had a line about sleeping with a shotgun /or keeping a pistol by the tub, then I wouldn’t have been so apprehensive about her “bath” plans, leaving Wanda alone with the ex-con downstairs. At that point in the script, I wasn’t entirely sure he was a good guy. (Just a thought from an old play doctor.)

That one point aside, Wandaleria is a delightful play about, as Rocky says, “dressing up” life a bit. Greenwood writes catchy dialogue and gets clever laughs from spoofing tongue in cheek television shows like JUSTIFIED . “Put that orchid on the ground,” prison guard Craig Houk snarls at Rocky – just one of the smart ways Greenwood pokes fun at our media driven culture.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW The Wonderful Wizard and Toto, Too By Beverly Creasey

2012-01-30T16:42:00.000-05:00

The Wheelock Family Theatre has been producing exceptional work for thirty years. Where else can you see children and professional actors working together on the same stage, looking just like us: all sizes, all colors, all ages and all abilities…all enriching every production!

Producer Susan Kosoff and managing director Jane Staab (snarling as Wicked Witch in their current production of THE WIZARD OF OZ) have done the impossible. They’ve kept ticket prices low enough ($15 to some performances) so that the whole family can experience the wonder of live theater. And should your children itch to be on stage, they offer myriad classes and programs. Many of their charges have gone on to the professional stage – like their Dorothy in this production.

Katherine Leigh Doherty performed on Broadway with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. Now she’s back sharing the Wheelock stage with the most adorable Toto I’ve ever encountered and a Wizard who “if ever, oh ever, a wiz there was” he’s the genuine article. Sofia Pilar Villafane as Toto and John Davin as the title character spark the production to life.

Some sound glitches and a few distracted performances on opening weekend couldn’t keep the audience of mostly children from drinking in every moment. The kids I asked all knew the movie by heart so they were anticipating every scene, every line.

It’s not easy to outshine some of Boston’s finest actors, but put Sofia Villafane in a tiny dog costume (by Melissa Miller), watch her sniffle, whimper, waddle and sit – and you can’t take your eyes off her! (Frankly, she’s the one to watch in some of the overlong production numbers like the Jitterbug scene, wisely cut from the MGM movie.) When the Tin Man (Shelley Bolman) says goodbye to Toto and the Lion (Timothy John Smith) shakes her paw, that’s when the real sentiment kicks in.

You know what they say about children and dogs. (W.C. Fields hated appearing with either because he said no one would pay attention to him.) Well, put them together in one delightful package, in a little actress whose belief in magic transforms her from human to canine, and you have the best reason to see director James P. Byrne’s THE WIZARD OF OZ.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Brits Move Next Door By Beverly Creasey

2012-01-21T12:56:00.000-05:00

British playwright Peter Shaffer is best known for his international success with Equus and Amadeus. His LETTICE AND LOVAGE (playing @ Next Door Center for the Arts through Jan. 28^th) is a lesser, dare I say fustian work made famous by Maggie Smith as the flamboyant tour guide with a penchant for wild embellishment. (FUSTIAN is the name Shaffer gives to the historic home on the National Preservation tour.)

Lucky for Next Door, director Brian Milauskas has two formidable actresses to play off each other to “enlarge, enliven and enlighten” the languorous script. Shana Dirik gets the plum role of Lettice, the larger than life, self proclaimed authority on all things historical. She’s simply delightful as Sarah DeLima’s charismatic nemesis.

As head of the Preservation Bureau, DeLima’s Lotte frowns on historical embroidery but in the course of the play she is transformed by Lettice and the two join forces – perhaps a little too forcefully. Milauskas gets charming performances, too, from Angela Smith as Lotte’s fussy mouse of a secretary and from Michael Levesque as the flabbergasted attorney retained when a reenactment literally gets out of hand.

The play may wander in fits and starts but the cast (and some stirring Vivaldi) keep it humming.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW ART for Art’s Sake By Beverly Creasey

2012-01-17T15:11:00.000-05:00

What is art? Who decides? For one thing, it’s a hilarious play getting a first rate production at New Repertory Theatre (through Feb. 5^th). Yasmina Reza’s ART, in a witty translation by Christopher Hampton, deliciously riffs on the eye of the beholder.’

The arguments for and against modern art could go on forever. Critics are still debating Marcel Duchamps’ toilet “ready-made” almost a century later. Reza’s ART places a totally white painting center stage. Then she creates a serious rift in a long time friendship over its merits.

The arguments pro and con could devolve into eye glazing academics were it not for Reza’s clever dialogue, the wonderfully comic character of the mediator and director Antonio Ocampo-Guzman’s delightful, energetic production for New Rep.

Robert Walsh is the self absorbed art collector who cannot believe his ears when his friend of fifteen years dismisses both his painting and his taste in one crude fell swoop. His surprise is palpable (and pretty funny, to boot). Robert Pemberton is the condescending friend who considers himself the voice of reason. Both of them behave like schoolboys on the brink of fisticuffs.

Best of all is Doug Lockwood as their poor, benighted, about to be married chum. The last thing he needs, finding himself in the middle of a feud with his almost mother-in-law, is to referee this melee. His monologue recounting his impending marital woes is the highlight of the New Rep production and when Walsh and Pemberton turn on him, it’s farce at its silly best. Having seen a more serious version of the play, I much prefer Antonio Ocampo-Guzman and company’s comic take.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Donuts to Dollars By Beverly Creasey

2012-01-13T19:12:00.000-05:00

The Lyric Stage Company is giving Tracy Letts’ crowd-pleaser, SUPERIOR DONUTS, a smart, sweet glaze. I can’t imagine a more talented cast. Spiro Veloudos’ production makes every moment pop. (These DONUTS should sell like hotcakes through Feb. 4^th.)

Letts’ script is peppered with snappy one-liners and enough oddball characters to keep a nifty little comedy bubbling along – but Letts doesn’t stop there. He interweaves recollections of the Viet Nam era through monologues and introduces a serious threat in Act II (and a manipulative fistfight which has the audience cheering on violence, much to my pacifist chagrin.) Most importantly, Veloudos and company make all the detours work.

Despite the somber turn, DONUTS stays true to its sentimental core. Will Lebow is sensational as the disillusioned bakery owner brought to his senses by Omar Robinson as the fast talking, charismatic new hire. Robinson is perfection as the hilarious antidote to Lebow’s lethargy. Steven Barkhimer is thoroughly amusing as the Russian video store owner who infuriates De’Lon Grant as the Star Trek loving cop sent to investigate a break-in. His partner (Karen MacDonald) is turned to mush in the presence of the donut purveyor (and visa versa) providing some funny bumps on the road to romance.

Beth Goda makes the quirky AA lady a loveable regular and Christopher James Webb and Zachary Eisenstat provide the sinister touch. In the “making a small part count” category, Steven James DeMarco has one of the loveliest moments in the play when he offers Goda’s character his hand.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Fire in the Belly By Beverly Creasey

2012-01-09T15:11:00.000-05:00

I always hope that a theater production will thrill me, or any work of art, for that matter. I’ve seen paintings that have. Years ago I saw the Rothko works which Harvard was about to shut away forever to stop the colors from deteriorating. Faded or no, they thrilled.

Now SpeakEasy Stage Company has thrilled me with their remarkable production of the celebrated Mark Rothko play called RED (@ BCA through Feb. 4th). John Logan’s Tony Award winning drama finds Rothko in the late 1950s struggling with the famous Seagram commission. (Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson imagined their ground breaking building with a sumptuous restaurant ringed in Rothko murals.) Is he selling out? Improving on the architecture? Educating the rich who will be its only diners? Or can he teach them a sardonic lesson by making the paintings uncomfortable to view?

While Rothko wrestles with the morality of the commission, he wrestles with a young painter whom he hires as his assistant, a young man who represents the death (or at least the eclipse) of abstract expressionism. Rothko isn’t pleased that the likes of Frank Stella and Andy Warhol have overshadowed him (although in my opinion Stella is far closer to Rothko than to the pop/op superstars Logan lumps all together).

Logan’s research is breathtaking: He uses Rothko’s own words (which were prolific) to teach his upstart employee about art history. Rothko was not silent about his work…or his detractors. Logan captures “the tragedy in every brush stroke” with depth and dialogue. Thomas Derrah captures the man with every breath, every step. He charges like a rhino, whose legs are too close to the ground to evade predators. He uses his arms and hands like the rhino uses his horn, forcing people out of his way. He slaps his assistant’s chest and thumps his head as if to knock in “thinking,” viewing the entire world with disdain.

Karl Baker Olson gives an extraordinary performance as the “employee,” moving from toady to surrogate son to future rebel. The chemistry between the two is palpable. Derrah’s tour de force erupts from within. His Rothko is a bully and a genius and he lets us see the torture behind the tough defenses, the fear that one day “Black will swallow red.”

Rothko was prescient about light. He painted in dim spaces without natural light. “Light hurts [the paintings], he tells his assistant metaphorically. He didn’t know then that sunlight would literally decay the commercial (house) paint he preferred to artist’s pigment. Logan’s play resonates in even more ways. He’s writing about creation – and in a coup like no other I’ve seen, he allows us in when we watch the two men prime a canvas. It’s a spectacular moment. Do not miss the fire and crackle director David R. Gammons and company ignite with RED.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Merry Mayhem By Beverly Creasey

2012-01-07T12:27:00.000-05:00

I’m an unabashed Alan Ayckbourn fan. (THE NORMAN CONQUESTS are my favorite comedies.) Now I have a second favorite. SEASON’S GREETINGS (up at the Wellesley Summer Theatre Company through Jan 29^th) covers the same treacherous familial territory but the circumstances in his holiday play are skewed sideways when a handsome writer is invited for the festivities by one hopeful sister and pursued shamelessly by two others. Ayckbourn is at his best, creating the quintessential British mix of hysteria and understatement.

The men of the family would rather be anywhere else than assisting their women. Ed (Danny Bolton) would rather read comic books. Neville (Will Keary) would rather tinker in his workshop. Bernard (Derek Stone Nelson) would rather stage puppet shows and Uncle Harvey (Ed Peed) would rather watch chase movies. In short, the men are simply hilarious. Not that their women are completely compos mentis, mind you.

One is pregnant, one is potted, one is out of her depth and one can’t wait to plunge into the deep end. It’s the stuff of legendary family gatherings. Each misunderstanding, each misstep leads to comic gold. Ayckbourn’s set-ups are as delightful as their denouements. We watch Belinda (Ashley Gramolini) eagerly eyeing the writer (Dan Roach) but our hearts are with poor, benighted Rachel (Christine Hamel) as she sabotages her own chances for romantic success.

We sympathize with pregnant Patty (Sarah Barton) but we fully understand why Ed retreats. Charlotte Peed as Phyllis gets immense laughs long before she even enters, via Bernard’s blow-by-blow descriptions of her culinary injuries. Then she does and we can’t stop the giggling. Director Shelley Bolman and company make merry perfection, right down to Nelson’s show stopping Three Little Pigs. Do not miss this gem.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Cry Uncle By Beverly Creasey

2011-12-30T12:12:00.001-05:00

Pre-revolutionary Mother Russia was Chekhov’s metaphor for all his plays: the loneliness of an endless landscape, the vast national disappointments and the overwhelming resignation of her people to a life of suffering. UNCLE VANYA (playing at Apollinaire Theatre Company through January 15^th) is considered one of Chekhov’s best works, with its unhappy, mismatched couples and its doomed ideals.

Vanya faces the realization he’s been passed by. He can no longer tolerate the myopic status quo … and he is especially appalled by the presence in his house of a beautiful woman who cannot be his. UNCLE VANYA is full of characters confronting their futility.

Vanya’s niece has to face the fact that the doctor she adores does not return her affection. The doctor only has eyes for the “professor’s” young wife and passion only for nature, which he sees ravaged by “progress.” (Craig Lucas’s quirky adaptation turns the doctor into a late 19^th century Al Gore, warning everyone about pollution and global warming. And Lucas tarts up the language so that characters speak in 21^st century epithets. I’m not so sure it works exactly but it doesn’t do any lasting harm. The emotional struggles are what make UNCLE VANYA percolate.)

Artistic director/production director Danielle Fauteux Jacques had the brilliant idea of staging each act in a different part of the Chelsea Theatre Works so that when the characters move to a new locale, so does the audience. The first act is set in the garden so we are treated to a backdrop of breathtaking birches, painted by set designer Nathan Lee. His interiors, too, are so authentic that we feel we have been taken on an intimate tour of the twenty-six room estate. One of the salons is lit only by candlelight (again the genius of Fauteux Jacques), reminding me of the gorgeous orange glow Stanley Kubrick achieved without artificial light in Barry Lyndon.

John Kuntz as Vanya seems Russian to the bone, his magnificent desperation simmering just below the surface. (You fear it may erupt at any moment.) Ronald Lacey is thoroughly charming as the doctor whose feelings for birches and beasts, not people, somehow ennoble him. Marissa Rae Roberts manages to make the privileged young wife (to Bill Salem’s pompous windbag) eminently sympathetic, while Erin Eva Butcher captures the tragic hopelessness of willing sacrifice.

Even the smaller roles speak volumes in the hands of remarkable actors like Kevin Fennessy and Ann Carpenter. All the elements fuse to make this UNCLE VANYA especially memorable.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW All Those Christmas Carols, God Bless Them, Every One By Beverly Creasey

2011-12-19T16:54:00.000-05:00

I think I’d seen them all (but one): The Huntington’s, New Rep’s, North Shore’s A Christmas Carol: Each wonderful in its own way, all honoring Dickens’ genius. And now I’ve experienced the Hanover Theatre’s sumptuous production. Troy Siebels’ adaptation abounds with musical treasures and technical wizardry. Marley flies in to warn Scrooge! Thick fog pours onto London’s crowded streets. Menacing clouds churn and spark with lightening for ghostly effect.

Olde English carols fill the Hanover Theatre with song…and best of all is the organ. I was smitten even before the play began. There it was, centerstage, gleaming white with golden fleurs des lises… gilding the lily, so to speak. I thought I had been transported to the 1940s when Wurlitzers graced every theater and movie house. Music director Timothy Evans played lively dances from The Nutcracker ballet on that magnificent instrument and I was sold. Then it magically descended from view so the show could begin.

The Hanover production celebrates spectacle and the children in the audience respond to it. Not a peep, did I hear from even the smallest onlooker. For the grownups, Siebels’ version boasts some immensely clever touches, like the brothers of Christmas Present. The ghost always mentions them but I’ve never seen them before! And the surprise ending is a delight, as well. The Hanover production telescopes the action so that several scenes have been jettisoned. I didn’t miss Dickens’ lighthouse chapter but I did wish we had seen more of Fan and Belle. (And I wish the sound technicians could eliminate the unfortunate reverb.)

Dale Place as Scrooge undergoes a joyous reclamation after a harrowing night with the spirits: John Davin as the ferocious, airborne Marley, Tori Heinlein as the sweet voiced Ghost of Christmas Past, Peter Adams as the munificent Ghost of Christmas Present and the scary, silent Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, accomplished with frightening organ chords, swirling smoke clouds and Eric McGowan on stilts.

The Hanover Christmas Carol has many a pleasure, the Fezziwig party being one, with Ilyse Robbins’ spirited reels and Steve Gagliastro’s effusive wassailing to spur on the revelry. Micah Tougas, too, gives a memorable performance as the heartbroken Belle. Ross MacDonald makes a daunting Fred and Sean Patrick Hopkins a fine Cratchit. Bill Mootos, Meredith Stypinski, Laura DeGiacomo et al conspire to make this version unforgettable.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW BIG RESERVATIONS By Beverly Creasey

2011-12-19T16:52:00.001-05:00

This is just my personal opinion. I’m sure many would disagree with me. BIG is the Maltby/Shire musical (with book by John Weidman based on the Tom Hanks film) about a kid who gets his wish at 12 to be bigger. It’s the be-careful-what you-wish-for kind of story. If the musical were more whimsical, it might be charming but as is, when a 12 year old boy starts canoodling with a 33 year old woman, to me it’s just plain creepy. So he turns 13. Big deal. So she doesn’t know his real age. Even so, the “ick” factor kept me from appreciating the songs. And since I’m carping, Saddam Hussein jokes aren’t funny anymore, now that he’s been executed.

On the plus side, Turtle Lane Playhouse has a hero in Mark Estano who stepped in to the “bigger” Josh role at the very last minute when the show lost its lead. He and Sebastian Hoffman (as his best friend) provide the sparks in the TLP production. Hoffman’s “Little White Polish Boy from Jersey Talkin’ Rap.” song is simply delightful.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Rifling through Christmases Past By Beverly Creasey

2011-12-13T23:50:00.000-05:00

I don’t think Jean Shepherd’s A CHRISTMAS STORY could have a more delightful dramatization than New Repertory Theatre’s. Director Diego Arciniegas’ witty production (playing at Arsenal Arts through Dec. 24^th) makes Philip Grecian’s adaptation pulse with naughty nostalgia: It’s a look back at the good old days through a wiser, slightly sardonic lens.

Barlow Adamson is perfection as the narrator fondly recalling those “festering years of childhood.” We all recognize the bullies at school, the dreadful gifts from maiden aunties and the embarrassing parents. We’ve been there. A CHRISTMAS STORY cleverly manages to be totally charming even as it pokes fun at life in the Midwest in1950. Life anywhere in 1950 was bizarre. (I speak from experience!)

Bless them, Arciniegas and company mine humor from the nooks and crannies of the story, in addition to the comedy built in to the script: Take Santa for instance. Gerard Slattery as the scary Mr. Claus has a Sweeney Toddesque barber chair perched atop a department store mountain of snow. For a split second Santa contemplates pitching the children into the abyss below. Just for a second. Not to worry.

Owen Doyle, too, delivers deliciously caustic pronouncements as father. Poor man, even back in the ‘50s, women ran the show. Stacey Fischer is hilarious as the power behind (and in front of) the throne. Margaret Anne Brady, as well, gets extra mileage from her comic turns. I don’t know which is funnier: her undulating English teacher or her stint as a hardboiled Christmas tree vendor. Even Andrew Cekala, as young Ralphie, steals laughter by the carload as he ogles (and caresses) the shapely gam at the base of father’s prized lamp.

All the children are marvelous, from Cekala’s cheeky Ralphie, determined at all costs to get that official Red Ryder air rifle; to David Farwell’s obstreperous little brother; to Charlie Brodigan’s benighted Flick, lisping adorably after the incident with the light pole. Shepherd would be so pleased. Don’t miss out.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Jolly Roger! By Beverly Creasey

2011-12-11T08:59:00.000-05:00

In case you haven’t felt the loss, I should tell you that Gilbert & Sullivan hasn’t been performed “often” in Boston in recent years – so a production of THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE anywhere is reason to celebrate. You only have to travel to Dedham to see the revival (of both the production and the producer, Fiddlehead Theatre) It’s a semi-professional collaboration with seasoned singers in the leads and a chorus of community theater regulars as pirates, police and pretty maidens.

If you’re not a Savoyard, you may have come to G&S via the movie, a comic tour de force starring Kevin Kline as the loveable, dotty Pirate King. Most productions I’ve seen since the movie have borrowed Kline’s “simpleminded” shenanigans. Since all art is “borrowed” to some degree, one might as well steal from the best. The Fiddlehead production does, but curiously, not for the King’s first appearance and his signature song! Better Far to Live and Die [a Pirate King] is sung, alas, without shtick. But once the talented Samuel Perwin embraces the fact that his character is a bit dense, he gallops away with the show. (I just would have preferred to see him with a running start.)

“Take heart,” as Mabel would say. After a shaky first scene (with pirates bumping into each other to grab their sherry) the Fiddlehead production gels and the company of eighteen manage to coexist on the postage stamp stage without looking trapped. They even dance on the head of a pin in Kristin Kuznezov’s clever, telegraphed choreography. The singing is solid and Brendan Shapiro’s orchestra is a delight, right down to Renee Hagelberg’s impressive trumpet contributions.

My favorite number, the exquisite Hail, Poetry is indeed a divine emollient in a mostly winning production. Director Margaret Fofonoff has first rate comic actors as the Major General (Ray O’Hare), the Police Sergeant (David Schrag) and the piratical maid of all work (Jo Jo Karlin). These accomplished comedians know how to get a laugh without mugging to the audience.

As the lovers, Michael S. Dunavant and Heather Karwowski sing beautifully (although Karwowski’s powerful “operatic” coloratura obscures Gilbert’s lyrics some of the time). Fiddlehead also gets remarkable work from Omar Najmi as the King’s first mate and from Melanie Leinbach, Margaret Plouffe and Maya Murphy as three of the Major General’s countless daughters. Experience it for Sullivan’s gorgeous melodies and for the wittiest libretto and lyrics Gilbert ever wrote.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW HIGH Society By Beverly Creasey

2011-12-08T11:07:00.000-05:00

Reason enough to see Matthew Lombardo’s HIGH (at the Cutler Majestic through Dec. 11^th) is Kathleen Turner as a foul mouthed nun at war with the world and her faith. Add to that the stellar performances of Timothy Altmeyer as the director of a Catholic treatment center and the astonishing Evan Jonigkeit as the addict who doesn’t want the nun’s help.

The material in HIGH follows the same sensationalistic formula you’ll find on television’s CSI dramas. You know Sister Jamie will unravel all the lurid details behind young Cody’s addiction like a dogged forensic investigator but what sets HIGH above television fare is her unorthodox approach. Lombardo wraps the story around issues of faith. “Fear of the unknown,” Sister tells the boy, “is the ultimate rush.”

Although the nudity and violence in Act I seemed out of character and gratuitous to me, Act II has a number of clever revelations and a thought provoking ending. Turner has a lovely prayer in Act II in which she bullies and bargains with God to “meet [her] half way.”

Alas, the acoustics at the Cutler Majestic made hearing a bit difficult when Turner walked to the opposite side of the stage. I wish I had heard all of the witty dialogue but the laughter on the other side of the audience and the silence on mine meant we missed that delicious delivery and some of Lombardo’s redemptive humor. Hopefully the powers “on high” at the theater can adjust the sound for the rest of the run because you don’t want to miss one second of that famous honey and molasses, sultry, world weary voice.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Rooms with a Viewing By Beverly Creasey

2011-12-03T10:19:00.000-05:00

Jeffrey Hatcher has strung together three clever monologues connected by death, or rather by a particular funeral home (and mourners familiar to all three of the deceased). His play THREE VIEWINGS (at New Repertory Theatre through Dec. 18^th) begins with an acerbic little piece about an undertaker who takes a real estate agent under his wing not for financial, but for personal profit. It’s a rather creepy practice whereby the agent can hand out her business card to the vulnerable bereaved …a sort of “Sorry for your loss: I can get you top dollar for your mother/father’s house now that she/he’s gone” arrangement.

Joel Colodner plays the funeral director so effectively that he makes us understand his desperate motives (He’s in love with the woman), something the second piece almost achieves but doesn’t quite. Christine Power plays a jewel thief who works wakes. She approaches an open casket, leans in to kiss the departed and off come the rings and brooches. Hatcher would like us to laugh as if it were Grace Kelly heisting a diamond necklace in To Catch a Thief. Granted, Power does have that cool, sophisticated demeanor down pat but Hatcher’s dialogue makes her crass and the ghoulishness of the whole operation can’t be undone, in my opinion, by a shocking revelation at the very last moment.

The third monologue has Mafioso jokes galore (not to mention a spam casserole) for the amusement of the audience but I didn’t feel that the mounting problems of a widow (Adrianne Krstansky) left destitute by a “wheeler-dealer” husband were to be taken seriously, given all the shtick. On the plus side, director Jim Petosa’s cast certainly keeps us interested and the hour and a half (without an intermission) zips by.

I’ve been thinking about THREE VIEWINGS and its subject matter. I saw the show at a matinee with an audience full of senior citizens who were not laughing at the “elderly” humor. Not at all. The younger members of the audience laughed heartily at the joke about rushing a cremation, for instance. I cringed. Maybe the closer you are to death, the less funny it seems. Maybe the more wakes you attend, the more appreciation you have for their power to comfort. Then again, I find Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One hilarious. Go figure.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Wide Awake for this SPRING By Beverly Creasey

2011-11-07T09:50:00.000-05:00

The F.U.D.G.E. Theatre Company has a hit on their hands. They’re currently presenting a smart and highly amusing production of the 2007 Tony Award winning (Best Musical) SPRING AWAKENING (playing at the Arsenal Center thru Nov. 12^th). The Broadway tour wasn’t nearly this funny—and come to think of it, the orchestra was so loud on the tour that you couldn’t hear the lyrics!

The Steven Sater/Duncan Sheik musical is based on an 1891 play by Frank Wedekind which shocked audiences for its depiction of the sexual awakening of 19^th century European teenagers. Even in 2011, the musical is shocking by Broadway standards, with its blunt, punk lyrics and its sardonic, explicit, sensibilities. Believe it or not, my favorite song is the hilarious “Totally F***ed,” the latter word rhyming niftily with “destruct.” The musical is best when it cuts loose (and loses the conventional musical format) and its characters all join in the exuberant frenzy, even the adults, who are for the most part unhelpful or downright despicable to the struggling teenagers.

Director Joe DeMita has a fine young cast, especially in Alaina Fragoso and Jared Walsh as the young lovers and in Ben Sharton as their tortured compatriot…and on the grownup side, in Linda Goetz and James Fitzpatrick as all the misunderstanding adults. DeMita places a majestic tree (of knowledge, of forbidden fruit etc.) upstage with ropes to entwine it and entangle the adolescents, to fetter them with old world values, with shame, with doubt. The metaphor works, thanks to the chorus who manipulate the ropes and amplify the scenes with gestural movement and dance.

Music director Steven Bergman gets fine vocal work from the entire cast and best of all, he maintains a perfect balance of orchestra and singing so each and every lovely lyric can be heard. Bravo!

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Soho and Gomorrah By Beverly Creasey

2011-11-05T15:10:00.000-04:00

Theatre on Fire certainly does have a way with British plays. Their cheeky production of Jez Butterworth’s MOJO (at Charlestown Working Theatre thru Nov.19^th) will have you cringing and laughing at the same time, when a band of overeager underachievers try to muscle in on the emerging British rock scene. (MOJO won a slew of awards in London for Butterworth. He also penned last year’s Tony Award winning JERUSALEM.)

If David Mamet were English he might have written MOJO, not AMERICAN BUFFALO. Instead of Mamet’s rare nickel, the coin of the realm in MOJO is a pop singer the schemers think will make them all rich. Their colossal ineptitude is what makes these small time operators dangerous (and funny). Their brains are so scrambled from liquor and pills that they’re sidetracked at every juncture, turning on each other at the drop of a hat. Director Darren Evans gets that balance of menace and mirth exactly right.

MOJO reminded me of the film SNATCH for its sardonic humor and easy violence…and for its outrageous characters. (You may recall Brad Pitt’s brilliant, incomprehensible turn as the scrappy bare-knuckles fighter.) If you’ve seen SNATCH or any of the gritty British street films, you’ll remember that it takes a good ten minutes or so to accustom your ear to the working class dialect. MOJO, too, will have you treading water in the fist scene, as two wannabes fantasize about the fame they’re about to taste. Not to worry. The actors are so skilled that the gist is transmitted physically. Brian Bernhard and Keith Michael Pinault can hardly contain themselves, whirling about the stage in a frenzy of anticipation. It’s a tour de force. Even without benefit of language comprehension, there’s no mistaking that something is up.

What’s up includes mayhem and murder, something these penny ante toughs hadn’t anticipated. Butterworth wrings considerable humor from their puny attempts to deal with it. Greg Maraio is hilarious, morphing from gofer to mover and shaker, all because of a key. Gerard Slattery as their boss is wound tighter than a drum and Andres Rey Solorzano delivers the cameo role of the rocker at the center of the power struggle. All hell breaks loose when a local crime boss wants a piece of the action. Adam Siladi nails the role of the club owner’s crazy son (Not an easy task when everyone on stage is certifiable. He’s just a wee bit off their brand of crazy.)

Since MOJO (a nod to Muddy Waters?) references rock legends of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, Evans sets up a live band to the rear of the playing area. They supply the rock background in the script and, to the delight of the audience, they perform Buddy Holly, Elvis, Little Richard and Billy Lee Riley tunes before the show and at intermission. Come a half hour early to hear their kickin’ licks. If you’re a fan of films like IN BRUGES or LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS, then you’ll get your mojo working at Theatre On Fire.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW MOCKINGBIRD HILL By Beverly Creasey

2011-10-28T10:56:00.000-04:00

High School students are the toughest audiences there are. They’ll let you know in a flash if a show isn’t working. You could hear that proverbial pin yesterday morning at Marshall Hughes’ miraculous production of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD at Roxbury Community College. The Roxbury Repertory Theatre’s production of the Harper Lee classic held that audience in thrall for over two hours (which sped by, by the way) and they gasped, cheered and cried (yes, hankies came out all over the auditorium, including mine) in exactly the right places.

The most surprising aspect for me was that MOCKINGBIRD no longer seemed dated. I’ve seen dozens of static productions but Hughes and company solved the prickly problems which usually make me cringe, chiefly the “white man as savior” focus. This time, Atticus Finch and the neighborly narrator seem all of a piece of the story’s fabric, not elevated paragons of “white” wisdom. This production has been so carefully thought out – and carried out – that every line registers and Harper Lee’s shimmering words linger in your brain. I heard speeches I had forgotten were even in the book. Every character now stands out in relief and the whole work resonates so soundly that you can’t help but think of the innocents on death row in 2011.

Every element meshes, from Mirta Tocci’s homage to the original book jacket (that gnarled tree branch) to Hughes’ ingenious direction (students are invited on stage to be spectators during the trial!) to the lovely performances, each and every one remarkable, especially the children in the cast. Some parts are double cast so at my performance I saw Jawel Zimbabwe as Scout’s courageous brother and Lee Carter Brown as the kindly narrator. Alexa Niziak lights up the stage as little Scout and Josh Sussman and Zimbabwe create lots of laughs as the adventurous boys. Cliff Blake makes the father/attorney less stiff than most actors do, so he’s instantly more human than icon, more father than disciplinarian. What a coup!

Another coup is Jeffrey Chrispin’s Tom. He certainly is a victim of the racist justice system in our country… but he doesn’t portray him like a cowering victim. Chrispin gives him an inner strength and in doing so, he makes Atticus’ explanation at play’s end practically sear into the ether (that Tom was “fed up with white mens’ chances”).

From Walter Driscoll’s thoughtful country sheriff to Lida McGirr’s addled old lady to Ron Murphy’s righteous, soaring voiced preacher to Emil Kreymer’s ominous, tortured villain to each and every character, this MOCKINGBIRD lets the story truly sing…and finally does Lee’s novel justice.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW GAGGING FOR JOY By Beverly Creasey

2011-10-28T10:51:00.000-04:00

We’ve come a long way since the Boston premiere of Christopher Durang’s SISTER MARY IGNATIUS EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU. You may remember that the Catholic Church dispatched picketers to protest Durang’s “scathing” portrait of nuns and cried “sacrilege” in their Sunday sermons. They had no idea what scathing satire would be in store for the church. Enter a million productions of NUNSENSE and now THE DIVINE SISTER (not to mention countless serious works skewered in SISTER).

The music is awfully loud. The humor is awfully raw. The story is over ze top, wiz a German hit nun stalking an unsuspecting mother superior. It could only be Charles Busch’s THE DIVINE SISTER (at SpeakEasy Stage Company through Nov. 19^th).

Aside from the lame jokes and religious potshots, what THE DIVINE SISTER has going for it is the fabulous Varla Jean Merman (aka Jeffery Roberson) in the superior role. The plot is merely there so Varla Jean can slay us with her delectable double entendre and seductive, lingering double takes. When it’s funny, it kills. When it isn’t (during set-ups for more plot twists), you’re anticipating the next gag (please take that literally) and wishing there were more shenanigans for director Larry Coen’s hilarious cast.

I could tell you why Sister Acacius (Paula Plum) melts down like a demented movie star or why Sister Walburga (Kathy St. George) is gunning for Mother Superior or why Mrs. Levinson (Ellen Colton) abhors nuns. “I could,”…as Mother Superior famously demurs, “But I won’t!”

QUICK TAKE REVIEW FELONIOUS FLIM FLAM By Beverly Creasey

2011-10-23T11:20:00.001-04:00

Never mind Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. Bob Fosse put CHICAGO on the map. Maurine Dallas Watkins’ play is the least important element in the blockbuster Kander and Ebb/Fosse “musical” vaudeville. The story (“Murder in Chicago is a form of entertainment”) merely knits the snappy production numbers together and showcases Fosse’s flamboyant footwork.

Karen Fogerty directs and choreographs the spunky METRO STAGE production of CHICAGO (running through October 29^th) and it does look like Fosse for the most part, with his signature splayed hands, inverted knees, slumped shoulders and suggestive pelvic thrusts.

Kander and Ebb outdid themselves with CHICAGO. Almost every song is a showstopper and METRO has a solid cast to deliver the goods. Right from the get go Lauren Gemelli hits “All That Jazz” out of the park as the gorgeous double murderer, Velma Kelly. Her competition for favors from Mary O’Donnell’s tough prison matron is Monica Abdel-Azim as the enterprising, two-timing Roxie Hart. Gary Ryan as Amos turns Roxie’s long-suffering husband into a sweet, albeit “invisible” schlub.

What lifts the METRO production into the stratosphere is Ben DiScipio’s entrance as the razzle-dazzle lawyer, Billy Flynn. (DiScipio looks just like a seasoned Boston pol, confidant down to his spiffy, three piece suit and his million dollar swagger.) His “All I Care About [is Love]” noticeably ratchets up the excitement on stage.

Never mind the uneven sound (some of the performers project and some don’t) and the mugging during the trial scene (a crime for pulling focus away from Billy), do pay a visit to METRO’s CHICAGO for DiScipio, for the lethal Cell Block Girls and for Gemelli, who can electrify a song, backflip, click her heels together in midair and not miss a breath. Now that’s murder!

QUICK TAKE REVIEW IF AND Or, BUT By Beverly Creasey

2011-10-21T14:19:00.000-04:00

Historically, Aphra Behn was the first major female playwright of the English stage. Her work was written and performed during the Restoration (of the crown and of the theaters which were all closed by Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans) but, alas, not today. She lies buried in Westminster Abbey with all the male literati (whose work is read and remembered but that’s a discussion for another day and another article).

Liz Duffy Adams’ tribute to Behn and the political intrigue afoot in the 1660s is provocatively called Or, (playing in a smart production at the Lyric Stage through Nov.6^th). “Power needs poets and poets need money,” Adams quips but her historical comedy is best when it approaches farce. Adams has the eager playwright trying to finish a script while being besieged by interruptions. At one point she finds herself with an ex sequestered in a cupboard, a lover waiting in the next room, the King relegated to her bed chamber and a servant eavesdropping at the door.

One actress (the lovely Stacy Fischer) portrays Behn but two actors perform all the other characters – and sometimes simultaneously! Ro’ee Levi plays both King Charles and his Scottish rival who enter and exit so quickly you think you will see them side by side. (Shakespeare was famous for his “bed tricks” but the Lyric pulls off a nifty closet trick!) Theatrical heaven for farce lovers.

Hannah Husband portrays the canny actress Nell Gwynne (historically one of King Charles’ mistresses) as well as Behn’s loyal maid and an imperious theatrical producer (the actual Lady Davenant who inherited her husband’s theater company). Adams composed a hilarious, never ending soliloquy for Lady Davenant which Husband delivers triumphantly.

Director Daniel Gidron and company wring all the delightful humor they can from Adams’ script. It’s absolutely charming when the actors break out in rhyming couplets or barrel back on stage after a lightening fast quick change. Plotting and planning and getting caught is delicious fun BUT Or, just doesn’t have enough of it for me.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW WARPED AGAIN By Beverly Creasey

2011-10-16T10:27:00.000-04:00

If you’re itching “to go to a late night picture show” you’re probably a fan of the ROCKY HORROR phenomenon. If you don’t know about the cult midnight movies (where audiences yell and hurl objects at the screen), where have you been?

Stage versions of THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW are up all over town right now. The Turtle Lane production of Richard O’Brien’s adaptation plays through October 30^th and stars Tim McShea as the voluptuous Dr. Frank ‘N’ Furter. O’Brien’s version submerges the central narrative (it helps if you know the movie) but this isn’t Shakespeare. The songs and antics more than make up for the plot confusion. (Fans of the movie will find the pace of the live musical uneven without film editing to keep it zipping from scene to scene.) That said, when it cooks, it kills.

Here are my faves: Andrea Giangreco kick starts the show with her high voltage, take-no-prisoners “Science Fiction.” Brad and Janet (Kyle Carlson and Nicole Vander Laan) are sweet and adorably naïve but let’s face it, it’s the freaks who throw the show into high gear. McShea and cohorts Giangreco and Devon Greenbaum ratchet up the volume, nobly assisted by a ghoulish David Lucey as an alien Igor and Harry McEnerny as a mad German scientist (is there any other kind?). But it’s Harry Rothman as the wacky, wide-eyed narrator who’s the icing on the cake, out-dancing the gorgeous young ghosty things in “The Time Warp.”

Julie Ann Lucchetti’s choreography is hilarious, right down to the tiger claws in her warp, as are Richard Itczak’ cheeky costumes. Director Richard Repetta’s cast (for the most part) keeps the action hopping. Here’s a quandary. Some of the actors react to the hecklers in the audience. Some do not. In my opinion it works better when they acknowledge the insults. It’s a matter of rhythm, I suppose. Music director Matt McGrath would have something to say about that. His band (especially Cam Wharram on wailing sax) rocked the roof off the stately TLP building. It’s high time they did that time warp!

PAGETURNER By Beverly Creasey

2011-10-12T11:32:00.000-04:00

If you want to see what the New Repertory Theatre does better than anyone else, do not miss their astonishing production of Donald Marguilies’ COLLECTED STORIES (through October 30^th). New Rep can take a small story and create a perfect storm where consummate acting, stellar directing and an elegant set (not to mention light, sound and costumes) come together to breathtaking effect. No matter where you sit, you are immersed in the stunning intimacy of the play. The unassuming title of Marguilies’ brilliant little morality piece belies its power and depth of emotion.

This seemingly simple story about a professor and a student will engage you in Act I with its witty banter and leave you aghast at the betrayal in Act II. COLLECTED STORIES has all the excitement of a high stakes showdown…with just two characters and the written word! Not since Abby Hoffman’s cheeky Steal This Book, has larceny paid off so well.

Marguilies sets the scene right from the getgo: Art, the professor/mentor tells her eager charge at their first session, is the exaggeration of truth…to which you add a crisis. With that crisis, Marguilies dynamites the touching relationship between Bobbie Steinbach (in a tour de force as the older woman) and Liz Hayes (in a horrifying turn as the student).

Even though one might classify COLLECTED STORIES as one of those “ripped from the headlines” plays, it never feels like it. Your mind may reflect for a second on the many actual instances you’ve read about but the story immediately draws you back. The credit for that must go to director Bridget Kathleen O’Leary for the delicate, sensitive bond between these two women…and of course, to Steinbach and Hayes for the clarion emotional tether they share. Steinbach’s exquisite pain is palpable when Hayes’ character “crosses the line.”

Jenna McFarland Lord’s gorgeous, floor-to-ceiling book filled set tells you all you need to know about the eccentric professor’s lifestyle (and nails the decade, as well). Tyler Kinney’s hip, New York, “unstudied” costumes, especially for the darker Act II (when Deb Sullivan’s evocative lighting tells us something is wrong) fit like a glove with David Reiffel’s undulating jazz. In short, all the elements merge to tell the story.

Transforming The BEE By Beverly Creasey

2011-10-09T23:54:00.000-04:00

I’ve always thought the William Finn/Rachel Sheinkin musical THE 25^th ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE was lightweight at best. The Broadway tour didn’t persuade me otherwise. Nor did the countless revivals I’ve reviewed. Ugh.

BUT DAWN BREAKS. I now see the light. THE 25^th ANNUAL you-know-what is a darned good musical…and all because I saw the Next Door Center for the Arts’ luminous production (which will be hop, skipping and jumping through Oct. 22^nd.) DO NOT MISS OUT!

Every song, every turn of plot, every flashback works! The Next Door BEE casts a (dare I say) spell of sweetness and has a depth of emotion I didn’t know was there. Director James Tallach layers the script with ingenious (but never over the top) comic finesse. His BEE doesn’t rely on the broad characterizations you usually see. (If you are unfamiliar with the piece, grown actors portray the young spellers.) The contestants in Tallach’s BEE are so completely vulnerable, you can’t keep yourself from feeling genuine affection and disappointment when one by one they’re eliminated from the competition.

Shall I mention the audience volunteers? (I really disliked that part of the show in the past.) I don’t know how they managed it at Next Door, but now it’s delightful. We couldn’t get enough of the poor gentleman, such a good sport, who hung in there and tried his best to keep up with the actors.

Why does it all work? The joy on stage is infectious. From Kendra Alati’s tour de force as the BEE hostess with the mostest to Ronny Pompeo’s surprisingly sympathetic turn as a nasal drip, from Keil Coit’s adorably wacky misfit to Sarajane Mullins’ sad, shy introvert to Mike Levesque’s hilarious comfort counselor, each and every character shines. Music director Brendan Kenney gets a big sound from the three piece orchestra and lovely singing all around.

Who wouldn’t love a show where Kendall Hodder as the stodgy vice principal invokes Freddie Mercury to illustrate a word! Who knew? Well, I do now!

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Not So TINY KUSHNER By Beverly Creasey

2011-10-08T13:48:00.002-04:00

To call the Zeitgeist Stage’s collection of short plays by Tony Kushner “tiny” is a bit of a misnomer, although in Kushner years, at two and a half hours it probably is. His monumental ANGELS IN AMERICA (which is my favorite play, hands down) is a lot longer than TINY KUSHNER (playing at the BCA Through Oct. 22^nd).

Where ANGELS IN AMERICA is elegant, eloquent and epic, these short plays are not. They’re mostly musings on famous or forgotten historical figures from another perspective, without the sweep of righteousness you feel in ANGELS. (More than a couple of lines will remind you of Roy Cohn and the angel(s) whisk you immediately back to Kushner’s masterpiece.)

The first little play has the promise of a high strung culture clash. An American beauty queen and an actual Queen meet up in the afterlife (on the moon!) but alas, Kushner chooses vaudeville over Sturm and Drang to wrap this one up. (This and one of the therapist pieces started out as riffs on obituaries for the N.Y Times Magazine year end edition.) Maureen Adduci is marvelously regal as the abdicated Queen of Albania and Kara Manson is deliciously loopy as the self absorbed, multi-tasking pageant winner. Director David J. Miller plays up the fiery chemistry between the two actresses but it’s all undercut by Kushner’s turn to song and dance.

Two vignettes stem from Kushner’s fascination with psychoanalysis (with an emphasis on the psycho). In one a patient who has just been terminated (the wonderful Craig Houk) begs his doctor (an exasperated Manson) to take him back. The irrelevancies of life have set him adrift (I must confess I felt we in the audience were adrift, as well). Kushner frequently visits the subject of ambivalence in a world without “absolutes,” as he does here. In the second, an analyst (Houk) complains to the recording angel in heaven (Adduci) that even after death, he’s still saddled with Richard Nixon for a patient. It’s a hilarious premise but then Kushner meanders hopelessly in speculation about Nixon’s abandonment issues.

Kushner calls out former President Bush in a searing piece (which really doesn’t need Dostoevsky) where the first lady reads aloud to dead Iraqi children about the choice between good and evil. Adduci as Laura Bush and Mason as the angel who brings the children to her make the scene resonate.

The one section of TINY KUSHNER which really doesn’t fit with the others is an odd collection of a thousand and one (it seemed like it anyway) monologues presented as if we were seeing a film in fast cuts. All the characters in the faux film (played by Victor Shopov) are delivered, curiously, in almost the same voice. It might have been a tour de force. Instead it’s just baffling.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Comedy Cut and Dried By Beverly Creasey

2011-10-02T10:33:00.000-04:00

Robert Harling’s paean to strong southern women may be formulaic but STEEL MAGNOLIAS works like gangbusters at Stoneham Theatre. Director Paula Plum’s spirited production (playing through this weekend) showcases a passel of Boston divas who know how to deliver a tearjerker. They’re outrageous, sassy and full of piss and vinegar.

You can get a whole lot more than an updo at Miss Truvy’s hair salon. Harling puts hilarious banter into the mouths of these babes and “bless their hearts” they execute punch lines as if they were mother’s milk. What’s more, there isn’t a strident southern accent in the lot. (Here’s credit where it’s due: Amelia Broome is listed as the dialect coach!)

Kerry A. Dowling is the formidable mother lion/gossip queen, holding court with a blow dryer. Lydia Barnett-Mulligan is adorable as her oddball acolyte, with Kathy St. George and Marie Polizzano as the mother and daughter who always agree to disagree. Plum puts a nice edge on their relationship, steering it clear of the treacle most directors get stuck in. Sheridan Thomas is plenty prickly as the grumpy curmudgeon but it’s Sarah deLima as the “smart ass” mayoral widow who is the glue (or should I say gel) that holds them all together. DeLima’s barbs are so elegantly proffered, you think she hasn’t said what she’s actually said.

I’m not a real fan of the script but Plum and company tease out a warmth and camaraderie I didn’t know were there. Color me pleased!

Obsessing About This FALL By Beverly Creasey

2011-09-27T01:37:00.002-04:00

Maybe it’s just me, but I spent a good deal of time at SpeakEasy Stage’s NEXT FALL (playing through Oct. 15th) trying to figure out details of the play – time I think I should have spent letting Geoffrey Nauffts’ script do its work.

Nauffts’ coy, little tragicomedy about the pitfalls of being both gay and fundamentalist Christian has a lot of mighty funny jokes to keep the audience laughing (jokes about emaciated yoga instructors, hairy gym teachers and people who name their children after spices) but jokes don’t necessarily move a story along…or develop “character.”

I tried my darndest to follow the story, which alternates between flashbacks of a romance strained by the compulsion to pray after sex, for one thing….and the hospital where parents, lover(s?) and friend(s?) now wait for news about the aforementioned, injured young man. Alas, I got hopelessly sidetracked wondering if the older woman (Amelia Broome) wringing her hands and babbling in one of those Jim Nabors southern accents* was the present wife or the ex-wife of the bellicose father (Robert Walsh).

And who the heck was the young man in the three piece suit clutching a Bible? Is it his? Is he just holding it for the mother? I never found out, by the by. I did keep finding holes in the story, though… which I thought clearly divided the Christians (mother, father and son) from the heathens (lover, friends). Maybe not. We do learn more much later about the Bible toting friend but not his religion, strangely enough. What we do learn (about his rug and his sexual preferences) doesn’t help at all. He’s only peripheral to the plot, anyway.

Nauffts basically sets up a La Cage Aux Folles tripwire: Will the Bible Belt Floridians find out their son (the charming Dan Roach) is (gasp) gay? Then Nauffts adds gravitas to the premise by excluding his lover (the wonderful Will McGarrahan) from any hospital decisions about his care. While I’m at it, how did the young man’s mother learn a key bit of information from the EMT who rode in her son’s ambulance? She was in Florida! This is New York City. The chances of locating the EMT are slim and none… Since I’m obsessing, why does Nauffts name-drop celebs like Richard Simmons and Paula Poundstone and then conceal Malcolm Forbes’ identity?

When my head wasn’t spinning, I did enjoy director Scott Edmiston’s playful give and take between Roach and McGarrahan and I liked Deb Martin’s marvelously acerbic friend/character but the parents were drawn as such caricatures that we really couldn’t see their suffering (until the lovely moment at play’s end when McGarrahan’s character comforts the father.) I liked the actors, like the director, too, but the play just didn’t do it for me.

* P.S. What’s with this predilection for channeling Jim Nabors’ Gomer Pyle voice whenever a southern accent is called for in a show? This is the second time in a month I’ve encountered that “gol-ly” screech. Nabors was funning. Southerners don’t really sound like that, do they?

Re: Above postscript. I stand corrected. I have it on the highest authority that real southern women indeed do speak like that, in a high sinusoidal cadence. Nevertheless, even if they do speak like that in real life, it's my opinion that on stage it comes across as caricature.

To Rent or Not To Rent By Beverly Creasey

2011-09-08T12:25:00.000-04:00

Going to New Rep last night has me thinking about rentals. When you rent a tux you don’t know who’s rented it before you. You hope it’s been freshened up. You can’t be sure of the fit and you may need alterations.

I do know who’s worn Jonathan Larson’s RENT most recently. In the last year alone I’ve seen three productions. Alas, the New Rep’s RENT (playing through Sept. 25^th) needs some alterations before it can go to the prom. Perhaps it was opening night jitters but more than one or two singers were way off key. Maybe they couldn’t hear the orchestra (which sometimes happens when a show is rehearsed with only piano accompaniment until the orchestra arrives on opening night). Some of the performers weren’t sure of their lines either, and some weren’t sure of their staging.

Some, like Aimee Doherty and Robin Long, were cooking. Their “Take Me or Leave Me” was surefooted, righteous and intense. Cheryl D. Singleton, too got lots of laughs as a foulmouthed homeless woman asleep on a stoop, none too pleased at being disturbed. The wacky phone messages were delivered amusingly but “urgency” was sorely missing from the main stage.

And what’s up with the nudity? Director Benjamin Evett evidently wanted something fresh in his rental but there was no dramatic reason (or effect that I could see). Perhaps he was trying for the soul’s transcendence at death??? Angel becoming an angel??? (Most artistic renderings of angels, though, aren’t nude, are they?). If the reason were clear, it might have been acceptable instead of awkward and embarrassing and just plain bizarre.

Back to the tux. You’d prefer the wrinkles to be already ironed out. Same with theater. Maybe they will be by the time the legions of RENT fans buy their tickets. C’est la vie or, rather c’est la Vie Boheme.

A River Runs Through My Thoughts By Beverly Creasey

2011-09-06T16:32:00.000-04:00

I’m of two minds about the Lyric Stage Company’s ambitious BIG RIVER (playing through Oct. 8^th). Two big performances make it soar. De’Lon Grant and Jordan Ahnquist as Jim and Huckleberry Finn lift the musical out of its one dimensional moorings into transcendent territory. They’re sheer pleasure to watch.

But I’m afraid some of the staging (especially in Act I) serves to keep the musical earthbound. Huck and Jim are fully realized characters so why aren’t the rest of the people in their world? Now I know Mark Twain invented plenty of peripheral characters (and plenty of mischief) but the stage production looses something by embracing full blown parody. The Lyric presents Huck’s back story as caricature, making his caretakers, father and friends stock tropes (and shrill ones at that, as if Jim Nabors had been channeled for his famous “gol-ly” Southern accent).

Since the William Hauptman/Roger Miller musical already has two vaudevillians (who arrive one hour in), it seems to me dramatically detrimental to treat the early scenes as vaudeville. Act II, happily, offers more naturalistic characterizations (except for a Gomer Pylized Tom Sawyer). With real characters like Leigh Barrett’s sympathetic Aunt Sally and John Costa’s principled doctor, the whole story is fleshed out … and compelling. Take Nicholas Lee’s delicious cameo, singing “Arkansas.” He’s so sincere that we’re delighted. We’re not laughing at crass histrionics. We’re laughing at his innocence. Besides, Peter A. Carey niftily delivers all the buffoonery the play needs, spouting his slaughtered Shakespeare.

Miller’s lovely country music is at its best in anthems about the river. Jim and Huck’s glorious “Muddy Water” is even surpassed by the stirring “River in the Rain.” Music director Jonathan Goldberg makes every number count. Pity we couldn’t see the musicians who had us tapping our shoes.

Twain invented his famous “escape” story to soften the hearts of anti-Abolitionists so the issue of slavery is experienced mostly through Huck’s white eyes. We see other slaves as Huck and Jim drift down river but we don’t encounter them as characters, which is my problem with the musical. Director Spiro Veloudos has wonderful performers like Kami Rushell Smith and Nellanna in the cast and they’re only called upon to sing or march about in shackles.

I can’t help cringing, too, at the story of a black man at the mercy, and salvation, of whites. Granted the adapters were stuck with the original story but I can’t watch it without thinking of the countless spurious plays and films with just that plotline. And I recall the not too distant past when the only parts for black actors were maids, pimps, prostitutes and slaves. (Not at the Lyric Stage, I should point out. Look for their AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ later this season.) However, the big Hollywood buzz this fall is about the maids in THE HELP. Here we go again.

An Artful ARCADIA By Beverly Creasey

2011-08-21T19:56:00.000-04:00

I’m an unabashed Tom Stoppard fan. I love the mind play and the word games …or is it the word play and the mind games! Either way suffices. If you’ve never experienced a topsy-turvy Stoppard script, Bad Habit Productions’ ARCADIA is the one to see (@ BCA through Aug. 28^th). The Bad Habit folks make the complicated absorbable, the complex illuminated, and the humor utterly delightful. (I’ve seen a number of “noisy,” over stylized productions of ARCADIA but Bad Habit plays it just right.)

If you have seen ARCADIA before, you’ll be surprised by BH’s luminous, up close and personal production (in any seat you’re at most three rows away from the action). See it for the dynamic young cast and see it for Alycia Sacco’s brilliant turn as the little girl with the insatiable thirst for knowledge. She’s the precocious 13 year old tutored by a handsome scholar (Greg Nussen) who, it turns out, is augmenting his scholastic duties by showing the women of the estate a thing or two. A. Nora Long is delicious as the haughty Lady Croom, an aristocrat with an eye for the latest trends… not to mention her daughter’s tutor.

When the story shifts from the 1880s to the present, Lady Croom’s descendants play host to a number of demanding historians there to research the estate. John Geoffrion is hilarious as a pompous know-it-all obsessed with Lord Byron. Sarah Bedard is his intellectual match as the authoress he dismisses at his peril. When the timelines converge, it seems fitting, not the least awkward, thanks to director Daniel Morris’ deft touch.

Stoppard creates a maze of ideas about philosophy and science, romance and intellect, whim and determinism but Morris’ production works these ideas into your frontal lobe without you even noticing. (His nifty one-set concept keeps the through line speeding along. It’s the fastest ARCADIA I’ve seen.)

Like Voltaire, Stoppard satirizes Leibniz’s famous optimistic assertion about “the best of all possible worlds.” Morris boldly places the satire center stage with two fleeting comic characters whose existence will prove vital in unraveling a mystery in the present day story. (Stoppard adores minor characters who take on major importance.) It’s a masterful stroke to make the characters so indelible in our minds that it makes the key to the mystery all the more satisfying.

Glen Moore and David Lutheran are marvelously absurd as the two buffoons, right up to their eyebrows! Moore raises his in a huff, forming the apex of a pyramid which exactly mirrors his oversized mustache. Lutheran’s eyebrows seem to tumble inward toward his nose when stricken with a fit of jealousy (His wife in the boathouse with the tutor.) What makes Stoppard’s work unique is this juxtaposition of high art and low comedy.

The entire cast is up to the task, with fine work too, from Arthur Waldstein as the omniscient butler, from Rebbekah Vera Romero as the flirtatious sister of both math wizard Nick Chris and the silent Luke Murtha (as the current aristocrats) and from Chris Larson as the 19^th century landscape designer so taken with Lancelot “Capability” Brown.

Just one small complaint: There would be no CANDIDE, no ARCADIA (not to mention any calculus) without Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. The mathematician/philosopher referenced by Stoppard is pronounced with a long “i” as in “library.” When pronounced with a long “e” as in “leaf,” one might think the gent was that crony of Karl Marx some two hundred years later. But for that tiny flaw, the BH production would be perfection.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW CRAZY LOVE By Beverly Creasey

2011-08-08T17:38:00.000-04:00

Just like the fools in Shakespeare, Beane in John Kolvenbach’s LOVE SONG speaks the unvarnished truth. He’s reduced life to the essentials: a cup, a spoon, a chair and a lamp. He sees conspiracy in just about everything. Witness the “redundancy of glassware” when you already have a cup. To Beane, even “a raincoat is redundant [because] skin is already waterproof.” Clearly he’s nuts but he does have a point. His lateral, literal thinking is unassailable: On the subject of skyscrapers? “Leave the sky alone!” Every environmentalist I know would agree!

Unfortunately Beane is miserable. The walls in his tiny room are closing in on him and his sister and her husband want him to get professional help (not that his sister is so emotionally stable herself). So what’s to be done? Love, of course is the answer, in whatever form it appears. It takes a while for his sister to accept that Beane is at last happy…and it’s that happiness, and its distinct peculiarities, which power Kolvenbach’s wacky little comedy.

Kolvenbach’s oddball dialogue has characters defining conversation (as “opposition”), deconstructing choices (with hilarious hypothetical conundrums) and rediscovering the origin of chemical bonds. It’s quirky, it’s delightful. Each scene is a surprise, with Gabriel Kuttner breaking your heart as the poor sad sack understandably reluctant to try “people.”

Liz Hayes as Beane’s sister is wound so marvelously tight you’re afraid at any moment she might spontaneously unwind in a whirlwind. Her journey to (relative) calm is engineered by Daniel Berger-Jones in an understated but sly performance as her husband. Georgia Lyman is deliciously off kilter as Beane’s tough talking, burgling alter ego. Director Risher Reddick and the ORFEO GROUP have a hit on their hands. Don’t miss it. It’s not often you come across a fresh, funny new play with something to say.

LOVE SONG runs through August 27^th at the Charlestown Working Theater – with FREE Thursdays. You can’t beat that!

TWO ON THE AISLE: Sounding Off on Rogers & Hammerstein

2011-08-08T17:34:00.000-04:00

She Said: THE SOUND OF MUSIC: How do they solve this problem at the Reagle? The dilemma being that most productions of THE SOUND OF MUSIC are so reverential that there aren’t any surprises left (especially for reviewers who have seen it umpteen times at Reagle and elsewhere). Not this time. This time THE SOUND OF MUSIC is a delight!

He Said: In Sarah Pfisterer, director Larry Sousa is fortunate enough to have found an actress with the energy and voice to bring life to what often can be bland and one-dimensional. She embodies the “flibbertyjib, a wil-o-the-wisp, a clown” – a and we see the angel.

She: Sarah Pfisterer has performed the role of Maria at Reagle before but never so mischievously. That’s the director’s touch. Even the Mother Abbess is kicking up her heels.

He: Especially in the reprise of “My Favorite Things” when Jenny Lynn Stewart as the Mother Superior lets her wimple down! Maria’s joie de vivre infects the entire production… and the von Trapp children, who often sacrifice talent for cuteness, emerge as three dimensional, individual characters, toads and all.

She: This director escapes many of the traps (or should we say von Trapps) inherent in Rogers & Hammerstein’s overworked but beloved musical. Even the scenes in front of the curtain (so scenery can be removed and re-set) are charming interludes, with happy nuns and rambunctious children enjoying themselves.

He: The “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” scene, featuring the lovely Gillian Gordon and James Forbes Sheehan as the adolescents who fall in love, is now one of the musical highlights of the evening, thanks to Susan Chebookjian’s clever staging and simple but elegant choreography.

She: Gordon is a triple threat: She can act, sing and dance like a veteran and she’s only a teenager! Alas, less effective are two of the secondary leads. Neither Susan Scannell nor Rick Sherburne (as sympathizers) evince the cynicism or sophistication to represent the evil behind the compromise which enabled the Nazi’s triumph. It’s a wonder they were even able to annex Austria, judging by the Keystone Krauts who arrive on scene at Reagle to heighten the danger. The peril awaiting the von Trapps must be palpable and it just isn’t.

He: You mean The Drei Stoogen? We shouldn’t be laughing at incompetent Nazis. We should be terrified. More attention should be paid to characterization…and to chemistry. Perhaps Brigitta (the adorable Victoria Blanchard) saw more in the relationship between her father and Maria than we did. Patrick Cassidy’s best moment was the Captain’s heartfelt rendition of “Edelweiss.” He made it a truly moving expression of loss.

He and She: All in all, the Reagle’s SOUND OF MUSIC is a crowd pleaser. How could it not be with Pfisterer and seven consummate professionals as the children! Even the missteps pleased the crowd. When Jeffrey Leonard heroically vamped the same eight bars for five minutes due to a backstage technical delay, the audience clapped along in the generous spirit of the show. Then the moment was topped by a resourceful Cassidy, hilariously adlibbing, as the curtain finally rose, about “the same tune running over and over in his head for some reason.”

THE SOUND OF MUSIC runs through August 14^th at the Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston. B. C. & J. D.

TWO ON THE AISLE: Comparing Notes on CAROUSEL

2011-08-06T11:55:00.000-04:00

SHE SAID: CAROUSEL in a tiny black box theater? I didn’t think it could be done. CAROUSEL, one of Rogers & Hammerstein’s most difficult shows to pull off: R&H take romance from the heights of passion to the depths of domestic violence (which is condoned in CAROUSEL, raising feminist hackles by the by, mine included), all the way to heaven! I certainly didn’t think a small company like F.U.D.G.E. could manage the sprawling musical. Well, Friends United Developing Genuine Entertainment is ten years old this year and they give it their best shot.

Some elements work remarkably well and some are less successful but their production packs the requisite punch. The woman next to me gasped at the right time and sobbed at the end. (I even felt a tear in my eye and I know what’s coming.) Here’s what works. I heard lyrics which usually sail right by. I heard chords in early songs like “If I Loved You” that foreshadow the tragedy to come, notes which appear later in the “Soliloquy,” when a reckless Billy (Dave Carney) vows “to steal it or take it or die”. They’ve always been there but I never noticed them before.

Furthermore, in addition to some clever staging, director Joe DeMita does the impossible by designing a set which doubles as the actual carousel, houses the orchestra on the carnival roof AND doesn’t look crowded. Then he invents choreography for mostly non-dancers which is pretty impressive…and which soars when the radiant Kimberly Fife as Billy’s little girl executes the heartbreaking, defiant beach ballet!

DeMita and music director Stephen Schapero get lovely singing from Stephanie Schapero as the foolish mill girl who sets her cap for Billy even though she knows “the ending will be sad”…from Holly Ann Marshall as her best friend and confidante (Marshall gives a spirited comic performance) and from TJ Rufo as Marshall’s stuffy intended.

(B. C.)

HE SAID: Here’s what’s missing: Billy should be more grounded, more comfortable in his own skin. He boasts he can have any woman he wants. Girls throw themselves at him. They even give him their hard earned money for beer. Mrs. Mullins has plenty of employees at the carnival but she can’t do without Billy. He brings in the female customers (and he’s hers when day is done). We need to see the arrogance, the physicality, the sexual energy. Where’s the attraction Laurie feels? We need to see why she falls for him…and more importantly we need to see why he’s thrown for a loop over her.

If the F.U.D.G.E. production played up the sexual tension between Billy and Mrs. Mullin, it could pay off handsomely when she wants to caress her dead lover one last time. And it would pay off for Julie when she lets the older woman go to him. As it stands now, it’s a lost moment. It could speak volumes about Julie’s acceptance of Billy’s character, knowing she loves a man not equipped to handle maturity, marriage and unemployment (That might resonate with the current economic crisis: A rise in unemployment rates means a rise in violence and Julie does say that’s why he hits her.)

There ought to be sparks when Jigger and Mrs. Mullin fight over Billy but he’s not menacing enough and she’s not ferocious enough. The relationships between the characters in F.U.D.G.E.’s CAROUSEL aren’t fleshed out. It’s like the blinking white lights on the carousel. There should be colored lights, reflecting the fantasy and promise of the frenetic overture ballet.

CAROUSEL spins in Watertown through August 6^th at the Arsenal Arts Center, then it sets up again at the Next Door Center in Winchester through August 20^th.

(J. D.)

Wond’rin about CAROUSEL By Beverly Creasey

2011-08-03T11:36:00.000-04:00

CAROUSEL in a tiny black box theater? I didn’t think it could be done. CAROUSEL, one of Rogers & Hammerstein’s most difficult shows to pull off: R&H take romance from the heights of passion to the depths of domestic violence (which is condoned in CAROUSEL, raising feminist hackles by the by, mine included), all the way to heaven! I certainly didn’t think a small company like F.U.D.G.E. could manage the sprawling musical. Well, Friends United Developing Genuine Entertainment is ten years old this year and they give it their best shot.

CAROUSEL spins in Watertown through August 6^th at the Arsenal Arts Center, then it sets up again at the Next Door Center in Winchester through August 20^th.

InDepenDent Sketches from Chekhov By Beverly Creasey

2011-07-16T14:05:00.000-04:00

For their last production, the InDepenDent Drama Society presents Chekhov, by way of Neil Simon in THE GOOD DOCTOR (playing through July 23rd) The American master of comedy turned his eye on Chekhov’s early comic sketches for his eight part tribute to the playwright/doctor who famously said all his plays were comedies!

A few mispronounced Russian names aside, the InDepenDent folks are on target, giving the mini-dramas just the right 19th century stylization. Director Christine Toohey creates a robust Russian feel for the stories, many of which are set in winter. Pity the brave actors who sally forth under layer upon layer of vests, corsets, petticoats, bustles, overcoats and military uniforms in the sweltering heat of the tiny Factory Theater space. (Note to playgoers: Bring frozen bottles of water to cool your neck and slake your thirst as they thaw because it’s hot as hell in the audience, too.)

Bob Mussett as The Writer serves as our affable host, commentator and narrator. Simon has him address us as if he were Chekhov, despairing that people find his work “clever and charming” and little more (a charge leveled frequently at Simon). Mussett is suave and “charming” (Sorry!) and immensely amusing as the unifying element that holds the stories together.

The sketches vary in tenor, from physical comedy to political satire to psychological intrigue. My favorite is the ingenious tale of the “seducer of other men’s wives.” Zach Eisenstat is nothing short of brilliant as the cocksure Don Juan, methodically setting his cap for the exquisitely elegant Sarah Gazdowicz. He is certain that she will hurl herself at his feet but will she? Gazdowicz is equally impressive, slowly succumbing to the flattery repeated by, of all people, her husband (Chris Larson), completely unaware that he is the unwitting go-between. THE SEDUCTION is marvelously “clever” (Sorry, again) and deftly executed with a lovely surprise to boot.

THE SNEEZE is vintage Chekhov (with a little Gogol thrown in). Brian Tuttle is marvelously smarmy as the toady who can’t leave well enough alone. Melissa DeJesus and Kate Daley make THE GOVERNESS resonate chills and Mark Estano masters the pratfall in A DEFENSELESS CREATURE, with Victoria Townsend as his pursuer. Chris Anton and Mark Estano, likewise give merry chase in SURGERY.

In the spirit of THE GOOD DOCTOR, I offer an alternate ending. A cold front hits New England and the rest of the summer cools to a comfortable 72 degrees. IF ONLY.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW: A Very Merry Go ROUND By Beverly Creasey

2011-07-13T18:47:00.000-04:00

It’s hot. You’re not up for Shakespeare. How about some hilarious hi-jinks and the best songs Kander and Ebb ever wrote? New Rep’s delightful musical revue of songs from Cabaret, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Chicago and more is called THE WORLD GOES ‘ROUND and it’s running through July 31st.

Director/choreographer Ilyse Robbins gets maximum comic effect from songs like the fabulously naughty “Arthur in the Afternoon.” Dynamo Shannon Lee Jones proffers a girl’s best “secret to happiness” while the dashing De’Lon Grant reveals some outrageous, muscular musical timing. Jones then knocks “All That Jazz” out of the ballpark and Grant shows his vulnerable side with the Spider Woman’s “Kiss.”

Speaking of comic gold, chanteuse Aimee Doherty reveals her considerably talented funny bone in the ensemble romp, “Coffee in a Cardboard Cup” and “Class” with Leigh Barrett. Then she turns the tables on “How Lucky can You Get.” Barrett can do it all and she breaks your heart big time in “Colored Lights” and again in “My Coloring Book.”

David Costa, too, can bring a tear to your eye in his sad sack “Mr. Cellophane,” then get lots of laughs with his delicious “Sara Lee.”…not to mention the laughter Robbins gets from the staging. Her clever choreography and Todd Gordon’s musical direction make this revue much more than mere cabaret. It’s the best of both worlds: You can see your favorite numbers from lots of Kander and Ebb shows and all in one magical evening.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW YOU’RE DOIN’ FINE, OKLAHOMA! By Beverly Creasey

2011-07-10T23:36:00.000-04:00

The Reagle Music Theatre specializes in historically informed performances of classic American musicals like their OKLAHOMA (running through July 17th). Thanks to legendary choreographer Gemze DeLappe (who performed in many of Rogers and Hammerstein’s original productions) Reagle audiences can witness Agnes DeMille’s groundbreaking choreography.

DeMille and Rogers and Hammerstein transformed musical theater by introducing ballet to express a character’s inner thoughts. In her OKLAHOMA dreamscape, the heroine dances a nightmare reverie in which her worst fears are realized. Rie Ogura and Joshua Andino Nieto (as the dream Laurey and Curly) make the Reagle’s production soar. Director Holly-Anne Ruggiero is fortunate, as well, to have Eliza Xenakis and Stephen Mark Lukas as the singing/acting Laurey and Curly. Both give lively, heartfelt performances.

Ellen Peterson as Aunt Eller brings a spunky, pioneer spirit to the central role of everyone’s confidante/touchstone. Doug Jabara supplies the chills (and a wonderful baritone) as the villain. Steve Geary is hilarious as the cowboy who keeps losing his intended (Maggie McNeil) and Todd Yard adds mirth as the peddler who can’t seem to get rid of her.

Act I is a bit long and the stilted, gestural language of the choreography may seem dated to today’s audiences but patience will be rewarded in Act II with not one, but two big production numbers for the cast of fifty. “Territory Folks” is a show stopping hoedown and the title song, “Oklahoma” brings down the house.

Skyrocketing RENT at the BCA By Beverly Creasey

2011-07-07T12:18:00.000-04:00

Director David Bloom and Dream Out Loud Productions have a hit on their hands. Putting Jonathan Larson’s RENT (running through July 9th) into the Plaza space at the BCA was a brilliant idea. I’ve never felt it really worked in the huge Broadway houses. Bloom concentrates the action around one small set and it pays off. You pay close attention to the songs because you’re not looking all over to see who’s singing from the rafters (and thanks to Joshua Finstein’s deft music direction, you can make out the lyrics). Bloom and company focus on the story and his cast tells it beautifully.

RENT is my generation’s HAIR – except there’s no draft to dodge, no war to protest in RENT. Larson’s “tribal rock musical” has characters with AIDS but no outrage. Larson chose to keep the stories (and the tragedy) personal. The only politics in RENT revolve around homelessness but that thread unravels in the fray. RENT’s great strength lies in Larson’s depiction of human relationships.

The young Dream Out Loud actor/singers inhabit their bohemian characters seamlessly. As in Puccini’s LaBoheme (Larson’s inspiration), Ryan Vona and Kelly McIntyre’s characters meet on Christmas eve and fall in love amidst the squalor of a tenement where no one is paying their rent (to Ahmad Maksoud). Their intense duet, ‘Light My Candle” begins their bumpy relationship (Fans of the opera will laugh out loud at what Mimi drops instead of her key!).

But another couple meets that night and it’s their love story that sets the Dream Out Loud production ablaze. Matt Romero as Angel and Michael Levesque as Collins make this RENT soar. Their version of “I’ll Cover You” (Larson’s homage to Puccini’s “Coat Song”) will break your heart and their story will move you to tears.

Matthew Phillipps and Hayley Travers tear up the joint with a hilarious “Tango: Maureen.” Travers and Ashley Korolewski deliver a fiery “Take Me or Leave Me” and the entire company rocks the heck out of “La Vie Boheme.”

QUICK TAKE REVIEW: Most Impressive FELLA By Beverly Creasey

2011-07-04T21:17:00.000-04:00

The theater season is always full of surprises – which is what keeps it alive and fresh. And Gloucester Stage is where to go this summer for one of those happy surprises. It’s Frank Loesser’s rarely performed THE MOST HAPPY FELLA (playing through July 17th). It walks like a musical and talks like a musical but it sings like an opera and Gloucester has the voices to pull it off.

Love letters figure center stage in FELLA and just like Cyrano, the author conceals his identity in order to woo fair lady. The similarities end there. Loesser’s story (based on the Sidney Howard theater- and movie script, THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED) plays out as a clash of old and new world values when an immigrant grape grower struggles for his share of happiness.

The Gloucester production plays it two ways at once, as a concert performance (complete with music stands and faux scores) and as a fully staged musical (with choreography and slides of scenery as backdrops). It’s a small quibble, but I could have done without the music stands. I didn’t even mind two keyboards standing in for an orchestra. As soon as you hear the gorgeous singing, you forget all about it.

Director Eric Engel and music director Michael V. Joseph have a couple of knock-your-socks-off performers in Drew Pulver as Tony, the gentleman farmer and in Timothy John Smith as Joe, his foreman and unintended rival. As in grand opera, it’s the arias which give the singers their personality and you simply can’t do better than Pulver’s idealistic, dreamy songs about imagined happiness or Smith’s seductive paean to the beckoning, wandering wind.

Jennifer Ellis is lovely as the object of Tony’s dreams and Kerry Dowling and Bob DeVivo make the comic relief hilarious, especially when DeVivo’s Herman inexplicably finds a fist at the end of his pacifist wrist. Gloucester has a veritable bounty of top Boston performers in the cast: From Eric Hamel to John King to Dawn Tucker, this is an abundant (as in the “Abondanza” celebration in the barn), fully rounded production, one not to be missed.

QUICK TAKES: WORLDS BETTER THAN 1066 By Beverly Creasey

2011-06-27T12:47:00.000-04:00

Gloucester Stage now has performed two-thirds of Alan Ayckbourn’s glorious THE NORMAN CONQUESTS. I can hardly wait for Gloucester to mount part three of Norman’s romantic adventures. Director Eric Engel conducts the mayhem flawlessly, never veering into caricature, never charging over the top (and I’m a stickler where NORMAN’s trilogy is concerned: It’s one or should I say three of my favorite plays).

The physicality of the comedy is perfection in at Gloucester, and never more so than in LIVING TOGETHER (Part II) with Steven Barkhimer as Norman succumbing hilariously to some lethal dandelion wine and Jennie Israel furiously pressing a magazine to her eyebrow in order to read without her glasses. Barlow Adamson performs some marvelous feats of entertainment just by standing still and Richard Snee delights by impersonating a knight on a chessboard (not to mention his impersonation of a husband).

Sarah Newhouse is a wonderful foil to Lindsay Crouse’s hysterical, condescending sister-in-law. Her turnabout is simply delicious, right down to her smug, conspiratorial little smile. In short, this family is certifiably insane and you adore each and every one of them. You won’t find better ensemble work anywhere.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW CELTIC PRIZE By Beverly Creasey

2011-06-23T13:28:00.000-04:00

Everyone in Boston knows that Harry Frazee traded away Babe Ruth to finance the Broadway run of NO, NO NANETTE. But who knew that the Ice Capades played a major role in signing Bill Russell to play for the Celtics? Ken Dooley’s delightful new play about the life and times of Arnold “Red” Auerbach is chock full of delicious behind the scenes basketball stories like the Ice caper. THE AUERBACH DYNASTY (playing through July 3rd at the Arsenal Center for the Arts) is a one-man show with the remarkable Jeff Gill in a tour de force as Auerbach. Gill transforms himself into the brash, charismatic, cigar chomping mega-coach, easily holding sway as he shares the secrets and triumphs which made Auerbach a legend.

For basketball fans, the show is a revelation. For historians, it’s a must. The playwright collaborated with Auerbach on several projects, including a motivational film and a biography called MBA: MANAGEMENT BY AUERBACH and was privy to many a tale no one else was. Even if you think you know the man from his courtside antics, you’ll be surprised to discover what a public relations genius he was, what a strategist he was and what a pioneer he proved to be for the game.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Lovely LADY By Beverly Creasey

2011-06-19T23:45:00.000-04:00

North Shore Music Theatre’s high spirited MY FAIR LADY is definitely enhanced by being performed in the round. When there isn’t room for large set pieces, you have to think up some ingenious alternatives to backdrops and heavy machinery and NSMT does!

Choreographer Michael Lichtefeld delivers clever, punchy dancing which plays beautifully from all angles and director Charles Repole gets charming performances from all the leads, just unique enough to set them apart from all the other Lerner and Loewe productions of the musical. Charles Shaughnessy as Prof. Higgins is as debonair as he is pompous and Lisa O’Hare is delicately, sweetly naïve as Eliza.

Hayden Tee makes Freddie a lot more than the smitten buffoon most actors make him out to be. Bill Dietrich is plenty charismatic as Eliza’s father (justifying Higgins’ suggestion that he become a lecturer on morality). But it’s the fine local actors who make the secondary roles pop: Sarah deLima gets lots of laughs as Higgins’ no nonsense mother, as does Cheryl McMahon as Higgins’ skeptical housekeeper. Ellen Peterson, too, sparkles in several roles, the three woman adding personality and savvy to the production. Even if they had repeated all the songs, I could have watched all night!

The Little Musical with Teeth By Beverly Creasey

2011-06-04T16:08:00.000-04:00

Where would we be without the raft of fantastic stories in (the now defunct) Weekly World News? When you were stuck in the interminable checkout line at the CVS, there always would be a headline like “Woman Devoured by Fur Coat” to amaze and amuse. When you were running late and the bozo in front of you brought twenty items to the “10 items or less” line, you could convert your anger to laughter by discovering where Bat Boy had been sighted that week. Iraq? Afghanistan? DisneyLand? (Evidently most of us read the headline for free and never bought the paper so Weekly World News went the way of the dodo, ironically soon to be the way of the North American bat because of devastating “white nose” disease …but I digress. Back to the review.)

Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming capitalized on the craze for Bat Boy sightings by envisioning a cheeky musical about the poor, little fellow with the overbite. Their naughty story is plenty sardonic and Laurence O’Keefe’s music dovetails hilariously with the satire. Metro Stage Company’s riotous BATBOY (playing through June 11th) will have you cheering for the darling, misunderstood creature. Nick Sulfaro is simply adorable, learning how to speak English by mimicking Aubin Wise, herself sensational as the kindly wife of the town veterinarian (Nathanael Shea). Her duet with Sulfaro, “A Home for You,” is heartbreaking and genuinely lovely.

Director M. Bevin O’Gara’s entire cast is spot on, with amusing performances all around, especially Melody Madarasz as the vet’s handful of a daughter, Michael Ryan Buckley as the overwhelmed sheriff, Anthony Alfaro as the bible (and forehead) thumping Reverend Billy and James Tallach as not one, but two formidable women!

Music director John Howrey gets fine singing from the cast, especially in the rousing, show stopping “A Joyful Noise,” niftily choreographed, hallelujah style, by Chris Carcione. If you’re a BATBOY fan, you’ll be delighted. If you don’t know the musical, the Metro’s is one of the best, and certainly one of the bloodiest, productions I’ve seen.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW Shameless Shenanigans By Beverly Creasey

2011-06-03T18:36:00.000-04:00

Who doesn’t love the Marx Brothers with their bad jokes, lame clowning and their “shameless impropriety”? The Lyric Stage’s production of ANIMAL CRACKERS (through June 4th) is a sure thing…although it’s a slow starter, working feverishly to set up the {I hesitate to call it a} plot about the theft of a painting. All any of us want is to wind the brothers up and let them go but George Kaufman and Morrie Riskin (and adapter Henry Wishcamper) saw the need for complications to tease out the revelry. We just want to hear Groucho’s famous “I shot an elephant in my pajamas…”

It’s a curious phenomenon that people who can run the film endlessly in their mind’s eye delight in seeing it on stage. (I can and I do.) Here’s what makes the Lyric show a treat. “Three Cheers”, as they say, for Captain Spaulding. Ed Hoopman is sensational as the loveable lothario/big game hunter aka Groucho. Leigh Barrett’s Mrs. Dumont (here called Mrs. Rittenhouse) is simply delicious. When Groucho unceremoniously lays his head on her chest, she does a fabulous four-point take in order to absorb what’s going on!

Nael Nacer as Chico and Alycia Sacco as Harpo make us remember why the brothers are so adored. Chico’s word mangling and Harpo’s nonsensical shtick will get you every time. Bert Kalmer and Harry Ruby’s songs are charming, smartly delivered by the “straight men,” some of whom are pretty funny all by themselves, chiefly Aimee Doherty and Merissa Czyz .Rachel Bertone’s smart choreography and Spiro Veloudos’ inventive direction keep spirits up when the brothers are off stage. If only Lyric would revive A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (my favorite Marx Brothers vehicle). Every so often I need to hear Groucho and Chico’s wonderful bit about the “sanity clause.”

QUICK and NOT SO QUICK TAKES By Beverly Creasey

2011-05-23T23:35:00.002-04:00

It’s a theaterphile’s dream: A weekend of back to back shows, and almost all of them divine. One Friday, two Saturday and two Sunday! Phew!

Zeitgeist Stage Company’s AT HOME AT THE ZOO (through May 28th) pairs Albee’s recent prequel (HOMELIFE) with his shattering, seminal work, THE ZOO STORY. His HOMELIFE sets the stage for the harrowing encounter to come in THE ZOO STORY. Peter (Peter Brown) has an ordered home life which his wife (Christine Power) feels lacks passion. He tunes her out as he reads proofs of textbooks his company will publish. The two bicker politely, even elegantly until his wife has had enough. Director David J. Miller builds the tension flawlessly. Brown gives a stunning performance of compressed control and repressed anxiety. Power manages brilliantly to convey quiet desperation as it leaks its way to the surface. After this upsetting confrontation, Peter decides to take a walk in the park to relax and read on his favorite bench.

And he thought the contretemps at home was disturbing! He couldn’t have imagined what was to come in the person of Jerry (director David J. Miller in a tour de force!) in THE ZOO STORY. Miller plays him as a calculating madman, someone who has mayhem planned out in a rehearsed scenario, just waiting for the right opportunity. (If Albee had written THE ZOO STORY now, Jerry’s plans would be on his blog.) Poor Peter is in the right place at the wrong time. Naemah A. White-Peppers’ production is a juggernaut. Don’t miss it. P.S. Wednesdays are $7 days. Who could resist?

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I think my favorite British Theatre Company is the all male Propeller. I know. I know. There aren’t enough opportunities for women in the theater. I agree wholeheartedly. But once you see Propeller in motion, you might just agree. Their THE TAMING OF THE SHREW a few seasons back was a revelation about the appalling treatment of women in the world, in Shakespeare’s time and still to this day. Believe it or not, having a man (playing Kate) as the object of Petruccio’s gross maltreatment made it more noticeable. Too many correctly sexed productions negate the abuse by making it comical. (Dare I say, all the productions of SHREW in my recent memory have done.) It’s one of those experiences which flies in the face of conventional wisdom but having a man (even though you accept he’s a woman) face such cruelty makes you sit up and take notice.

Propeller is currently visiting the Huntington Theatre through June 19th. Thank you, Huntington and The Touring Partnership! Now you can experience them without crossing the pond or finding out where their next stop in the colonies will be. I saw their rollicking, outrageous, incomparable THE COMEDY OF ERRORS last evening and haven’t stopped laughing yet (and don’t plan to until I see their RICHARD III next weekend, if then). As artistic director Edward Hall says in the program, “One comedy and one tragedy. But which is which?...”)

Never has the story been so clear. Never have the twins and their servants been so understood. Never has there been such silliness. It’s simply too delicious to spoil with description. If you see one Shakespeare play in your lifetime, let it be THE COMEDY OF ERRORS or forever regret that you didn’t.

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I saw Turtle Lane’s THE DROWSY CHAPERONE this weekend, as well, and it’s well worth the engagement even if you saw SpeakEasy’s version of the wedding that almost wasn’t. The dueling productions (the mind boggles) are playing at the same time but TLP’s ends this coming weekend. They’re both wonderful for different reasons! Please see my full reviews of the two productions for specifics.

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Not as successful is The Nora Theatre Company’s new musical, SILVER SPOON, a work in progress with a bittersweet book by Amy Merrill about love and activism in the ‘60s and music by rabble rouser Si Kahn (playing through June 19th). The music itself is gorgeous, sounding for the most part like traditional olde English folk melodies (when it isn’t pastiche).

Kahn’s lyrics, likewise, are plenty clever but they don’t fit the olde English music (which is beautifully performed by Rodney Allan Bush’s classical quartet). Where is the feel of the ‘50s folk music and 60’s rock ‘n roll which fueled the anti-war (and anti-oppression) movements of that era? Can you think of Vietnam or Caesar Chavez or the civil rights movement without thinking of Pete Seeger or Bob Dylan or James Weldon Johnson? It’s like HAIR or RENT without the rock.

That said, director Daniel Gidron keeps the story hopping with nifty turns by Rena Baskin and Peter Edmund Haydu as the older generation who have to get out of the way, to paraphrase Dylan, if they “can’t lend a hand” and by Kara Manson and Edward T. Joy as the younger generation who are a-changin’ the times. Joy’s performance is reason alone to see SILVER SPOON. He’s charismatic, talented like nobody’s business and he makes the Brooklyn social reformer totally irresistible. (How Manson’s blueblood can tear herself away from him is beyond me.) His “We Will Hold the Line” will have you out looking for a cause to march for.

It’s a work in progress so you have to expect that some elements work better than others. Kudos to Nora Theatre for taking on a new musical. How many theaters would risk it?

Dreamy DROWSY CHAPERONE By Beverly Creasey

2011-05-23T14:47:00.001-04:00

I saw Turtle Lane Playhouse’s delightful version of THE DROWSY CHAPERONE this past weekend. Although they don’t have the fabulous Will McGarrahan (from the SpeakEasy show, also playing this month), the TLP production is full of heart – and some sensational choreography by Karen Fogerty (which outdazzles the SpeakEasy production, believe it or not!!!).

As they do at SpeakEasy, the tipsy chaperone and her Latin lover steal the show. Kate deLima is devilishly delicious and Peter Mill is equally hilarious as her confused swain, Aldolpho. The two comedians make the plot go round. It’s Jackie Theoharis’ wedding or non-wedding which provides the rest of the mayhem. Theoharis is spectacular in the show stopper, Show Off, showing off with a split as the number ends. WOW!

Tim McShea makes the fiancé role pop and when he’s on skates, he’s unstoppable. He and David Carney get a smart tap duet called Cold Feets. Joe Berry as the inverted Ziegfeld heads up the opposition to the marriage. Kira Cowan makes her short appearance count as the aviatrix who saves the day. The rest of the company, too, deliver like gangbusters…which reminds me: Jordan Greeley and Chas Kircher are daffy dancing thugs in the Damon Runyon mold. Kudos to Dan Dowling, Jr. and Howard Bowles for a production packed with energy and naughty, nostalgic charm.

42nd Second Thoughts By Beverly Creasey

2011-05-17T10:29:00.000-04:00

It seems like I’ve seen at least forty 42nd Streets, partly because it’s my job and mostly because it’s a tap lovers dream (and I do love tap). This is my fist experience with a tiny 42nd Street, though. Granted, it’s out of necessity because the Stoneham Theatre’s stage is too small for eighty thundering feet. I miss the usual opening of the show as the curtain slowly rises to reveal all that heavenly stomping but thanks to Ilyse Robbins (Stoneham’s director/choreographer) I’ve discovered that eleven crackerjack hoofers can work up a nifty noise. I also discovered that Jim Rice’s trio delivers the requisite orchestration. I didn’t even miss that pit full of musicians.

Here’s the most surprising thing about Stoneham’s show: A second banana can be a first banana when it’s Kathy St. George. I’ve seen a lot of Dorothy Brocks (she’s the haughty star who breaks an ankle, leaving the musical without a leading lady). They’re most always humorless and one dimensional. Not this Dorothy Brock! St. George makes her so deliciously naughty that you start to think the musical is about her! Sorry, Peggy Sawyer. To be fair, Ephie Aardema is mighty talented and she makes Peggy’s innocence endearing. She’s the character who saves the day and “comes back a star” And her attraction to the steely producer (Russell Garrett) is quite believable (There are sparks, to boot which isn’t often the case in most versions I’ve seen).

Because the dancing is scaled down (but ingeniously, tightly choreographed nevertheless) and the big production numbers aren’t so big (Think deflation for “We’re in the Money”), the story and the individual characters take center stage. Neil A. Casey and Margaret Ann Brady as the stock comic relief characters stand out as do Ceit Zweil as Anytime Annie, Bob DeVivo as St. George’s love interest and Andy McLeavey as the cheery leading man with an eye for the ladies. As the producer says, “Musical comedy” are two of the “most glorious words in the English language”…big or small.

Musical Schmusical By Beverly Creasey

2011-05-15T09:50:00.000-04:00

THE DROWSY CHAPERONE (@ SpeakEasy Stage through June 6th) is one of those delightful musicals where you turn to your date and ask, “Why didn’t I think of that?” It’s a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too kind of idea, making fun of- and playing it earnestly at the same time.

The show opens with a man sitting center stage commiserating with us on the state of musicals nowadays. He knows what we’re thinking: Let it be good and let it be short. (It is and it is!) This Man in Chair, as he’s named, is on stage throughout the musical (which he shares with us via the so called “original cast album” and his own cheery “liner” notes).

Just when we fear we’ll be listening to his records all night, the faux musical (also called THE DROWSY CHAPERONE) bursts forth in his apartment, with set pieces sliding right out of the oven, for heavens sake. Then the Man in Chair takes it upon himself to stop the action a number of times to impart some juicy dish about the “original” stars. What can I say other than it’s gloriously, shamelessly, deliciously silly. Gag after gag catches you off guard—even though you should have seen them coming.

Will McGarrahan is perfection as an agoraphobic host, a depressed but affable chap whose only joy in life comes from listening to recordings of old musicals. (Not so different, I might add, from those of us whose joy comes from seeing those musicals!)

The daffy story (by Bob Martin and Don McKellar) hinges on, surprise surprise, a chaperone who falls down on the job, or rather falls for and on a flamboyant Latin lover named Aldolpho (a name you will never forget once you’ve seen the show).The magnificent mayhem has everyone trying either to prevent or present a wedding, depending on which side their bread is buttered. Karen MacDonald and Thomas Derrah steal the show hands down as the tipsy chaperone and the aforementioned Aldolpho: “Like a cat in pajamas,” as he would say.

Like KISS ME KATE, (and you’d almost swear that Accident Waiting to Happen was Cole Porter even though it says Lisa Lambert & Greg Morrison) two gangsters in disguise threaten theatricide as a gorgeous starlet contemplates leaving the stage for good. McCaela Donovan tears up the joint with I Don’t Wanna Show Off No More. Close behind in the tearing up department are David Christensen and Brian Swasey in a tapping duel which brings down the house. And wait ‘til you see Kerry Dowling and Robert Saoud go at it. Heaven!

Director and choreographer (and I should add, magician) David Connolly makes it all look so effortless—and you know the old saying: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” Connolly and music director Nicholas James Connell have done the impossible: Their soufflé is so light and airy, you’re left wanting more.

MONSTER RALLY By Beverly Creasey

2011-05-14T10:28:00.000-04:00

Renowned child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim postulated that children learn via fairytales how to overcome fear. With a slight twist on Bettelheim’s theory about autonomy, playwright Mary Jett Parsley dispatches a monster out from under a bed with the express purpose of teaching an unhappy young woman that she can conquer hers.

The Mill 6 Collaborative’s lovely production of THE MONSTER TALES (playing through May 21st) features Becca A. Lewis as a sort of “fairy godmother” bogeymen and Elizabeth Rimar as a lonely but delightfully morose young woman desperately in need of help.

The TALES are parables of the “you get what you wish for” variety, some fanciful and some downright cautionary. Co-directors Barlow Adamson and John Edward O’Brien have a stellar cast to impersonate the stories: (It’s a treat for the audience to see the same actors become vastly different characters within one play.)

Nathaniel Gundy transforms from a noble hearted, self sacrificing hero to a curious, rapidly growing little boy to a man who discovers true riches. Sasha Castroverde is the manufactured beauty who learns about love from Gundy in the first tale, the daughter who wastes away from misguided grief in the third and a young woman who finds she is healed through generosity in the last. Both Castroverde and Gundy add depth beyond the written word to their characters.

Irene Daly is the crusty gardener who learns to love in the second tale, a devoted, dying mother in the third and a wife who recaptures her youthful spirit in the last. Lonnie McAdoo is the blind (in so many ways) rich man searching for happiness, foolish man, in a beautiful bride and in the last story, he’s a man who cannot hear any music but the tune he creates with his hands. Daly and McAdoo triumph as the couple who regain joy and each other.

Brent Bundock’s partially (then fully) completed paintings add another dimension to the accumulating weight of the stories and PJ Strachman enlightens many a character in the Mill 6 Collaborative production. Cara Pacifico’s whimsical costumes are layered like the stories (I especially loved the division of socks!) and the gorgeous original music by Sarah Rabdau truly underscores the emotion of the characters (quite effectively in the story of the daughter overcome with grief.). Mill 6 certainly celebrates its “collaborative” talents in THE MONSTER TALES.

Rags to Riches By Beverly Creasey

2011-05-12T10:04:00.000-04:00

American Classics is on a roll. Last month they celebrated the 100th anniversary of Irving Berlin’s ALEXANDER’S RAGTIME BAND. This past weekend the curators of the American Songbook placed ragtime front and center with their tribute to Scott Joplin.

THE KING OF RAGTIME featured Joplin’s most familiar rags (The Entertainer, The Maple Leaf Rag, The Pine Apple Rag) and some intriguing compositions like the tango-infused Mexican Serenade (with Jim Dalton’s mandolin sounding like the zither in “The Third Man” theme).

American Classics ragtime virtuoso Margaret Ulmer was in her element, clearly enjoying herself at the piano. Her shoulders kept the syncopated rhythms moving (or maybe visa versa!) while her hands swept playfully, masterfully across the keys. She beamed at co-conspirators Jim Dalton (banjo) and Eli Newburger (tuba) as they delivered the dazzling cakewalks and inventive waltzes that made Joplin a star. (His Maple Leaf Rag sold 75,000 copies as soon as the sheet music was published.) Ragtime was definitely the rage!

The evening was also a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Joplin’s folk opera, TREEMONISHA. The opera’s only performance during his lifetime was a backer’s audition, with him at the piano. Spoofs of plantation life made it to Broadway but not his earnest parable about resisting temptation and practicing forgiveness. The opera in three acts had twenty-seven musical numbers. We were treated to eleven at the American Classics performance.

James Dargan sang two bravura roles, the first a conjurer/confidence man (anticipating Sportin’ Life in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess) and the second a fiery preacher (“Do you feel released?”). Anita Murrell’s voice soared as the child Monisha (Christina DeVaughn) discovered under a tree (hence the name “Treemonisha”). The memory of DeVaughn’s wrenching “I heard a baby crying…” still gives me chills and Fred VanNess’ rousing “Goin’ Around” still has my feet stepping out in place. Classics regulars Brad Conner, Mary Ann Lanier and Ben Sears joined Merle Perkins and company for the show stopping chorus numbers, closing with the “marching, hop-skipping”, sensational “Real Slow Drag.”

Joplin would be so pleased.

Garden Of Delight By Beverly Creasey

2011-05-08T18:48:00.001-04:00

A big Victorian musical like THE SECRET GARDEN in the limited Cambridge Y performance space? Yes. But it seems counterintuitive to pack that small stage with as much flotsam and jetsam as you could find in your grandma’s attic. Then have all the characters, ghostly and living, on stage for most of the show! Heavens to Betsy!

Here’s the good news. Kaitlyn Chantry’s lovely production for the Longwood Players (playing through May 14th) works in surprising ways. One of the reasons it does is Brandon Thrasher’s ingenious lighting. When Dickon, the lad with the green thumb, sings about the spring sun coaxing shoots up through the ground, Thrasher throws a warm, yellow wash over the stage bathing all the still, observant characters in sepia, as if this were a formal Victorian photograph.

Crowding the stage doesn’t work only once, toward the end, in the exotic “spell” number when twenty characters attempt to circle each other in some unnecessarily clunky choreography. The rest of the time the solutions Chantry finds (for her space problems) are delightful. Here’s one of the tricks she has up her sleeve: With no room for a garden – and you have to have a garden to rejuvenate all the unhappy people – Chantry engineers a nifty reversal and Mary, the little girl who brings everyone back to life, enters the garden through the back wall of the set so all we see is blinding sunlight when she opens the doors. And we believe! Later we stand in for the garden and the characters point toward the audience admiring the roses. And that works too.

If you’re not impressed enough by the clever staging, here are more reasons to attend: A solid chorus, touching performances and the chance to hear Renée Saindon as Lily, one of the central ghosts. It was her death which left Mary’s uncle an emotional cripple. Once you hear her gorgeous voice, you understand his grief. Of course, you know that Mary’s indomitable spirit will heal him (and the child who survived when Lily did not). The role of Mary is double cast and when I attended, an angelic and enormously talented 9th grader named Allsun O’Malley won over our hearts.

The Frances Hodgson Burnett story is packed with overwrought sentiment, embodied in the character of Mary’s guardian/uncle, played with ferocious frailty by Mathew Zahnzinger. Burnett contrasts the weak willed gentry with the strong servant class and Shonna McEachern makes Mary’s chambermaid a font of warmth and affection. Jocelyn Hesse and Kevin Cirone supply the severity as Mary’s nemeses and Stephen Piergrossi, Jr. supplies the charm as the boy who can converse with animals. (I don’t want to give away any surprises so suffice it to say the director found a wonderful way to have the robin “speak” to Mary.)

Music director Jason Luciana gets exemplary singing from the entire cast: I’ve seen the show many times but hadn’t heard all of Marsha Norman’s lyrics before. I appreciated Lucy Simon’s sumptuous music more this time, too. A lot of care went into the Longwood production. If you love THE SECRET GARDEN, you’ll appreciate their labor. If you haven’t seen it, now is the time.

Strange Interlude By Beverly Creasey

2011-05-06T18:35:00.000-04:00

New Rep has a big heart. They’re right on the border with Brighton although they’re actually situated in Watertown. The high school in Watertown has one miraculous arts program but the Boston School System doesn’t have a lot of arts – so New Rep has started a TELL YOUR STORY program with Brighton High students. They’ll create their own version of the PASSING STRANGE musical currently running on New Rep’s main stage (through May 22nd). Then New Rep will hold public performances of their results. Best of all, the talented actors of PASSING STRANGE will hold workshops with the students.

The best thing about New Rep’s PASSING STRANGE are the performers who recreate L.A. musician Stew’s semi-autobiographical, Tony Award winning show. Not your typical musical, PASSING STRANGE follows Stew’s search around the world for the “REAL.” Although his genre is rock and roll, it’s definitely not your grandfather’s rock. (It’s a little too “soft” rock for me, sorry to say.)

In director Kate Warner’s smart version, Stew is played by Cliff Odle, who looks for all the world like a ‘40s jazz man. (All he needs is a goatee and a beret.) Odle is the hipster narrator who pushes the story along, from mother’s long apron strings to a strung out layover in Amsterdam, to a mind bending sojourn in Berlin, and home again.

Stew’s humor is what carries the show and although many of the individual interludes are enjoyably drawn (especially the crazy Germans), they don’t add up to a heck of a lot. I’d be hard pressed to explain what Stew’s epiphany is. I think there’s a bit of THE WIZARD OF OZ to it. You know, learning there’s no place like home…or no “REAL” place like home…but the message about “life being a mistake that only art can correct” was lost on me. What I liked were Stew’s rhymes. My favorite song was Take My Keys, Please from the Amsterdam section…which happily inspires the Youth to sing “[Amsterdam] Looks like Sodom from top to bottom.”

What I loved were the wacky characters the “Youth” meets on his travels. (Cheo Bourne gives a winning performance as the adventurous, innocent, “Youth”ful Stew.) Maurice Parent has a field day as the outrageous choir director in L.A., then, among other roles, the wild, punked up, Berlin cabaret performance artist. Eve Kagan, too, makes the most of her German pseudo-revolutionary poet role. Kami Rushell Smith and D’Lon Grant are hilarious in multiple personalities but it’s Cheryl D. Singleton as Mother who grounds the piece: Singleton moves effortlessly from hovering and gently teasing to touching and heartbreaking.

Music director Todd C. Gordon and the on stage band do work Stew and Heidi Rodenwald’s music. It just didn’t gel for me. Hey, what do I know? I’m just an ancient rock n’ roller, hanging on to the Stones and Jimi Hendrix. See it for yourself. Maybe you can discover the “REAL” deal.

Whistler Makes Lemonade By Beverly Creasey

2011-05-05T15:50:00.000-04:00

The recently lauded Whistler in the Dark Theatre follows their winning TALES OF OVID with Wallace Shawn’s AUNT DAN AND LEMON. AD&L is Shawn’s languid play about a little girl (nicknamed Lemon) and her fascinating aunt, Danielle. Shawn is most famous for MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, a meandering film featuring Shawn’s sprawling conversations about life and art with Andre Gregory.

AD&L is ripe with, as Dan herself says, “conversations no way related to anything else”…except, I might add, to decadence, which is what excites and captivates the eleven year old (Jen O’Connor). Shawn speculates that cruelty and violence are mother’s milk to the human race. The play is bookended with Lemon’s thoughts on Nazi ideology and implementation in WWII – but what comes between is scattershot and endlessly repetitive (“in other words…” the characters say over and over).

The performances in Bridget Kathleen O’Leary’s production are well drawn (except for one actress who swallows her lines so rapidly you cannot make out the dialogue). One actor, Alejandro Simoes, lights up the stage as the charming roué, Raimondo. You don’t mind at all when he repeats his suave come-on about the remarkable orchestra. Pity is, he’s only briefly on stage, the first time as seducer and the second, as victim of a nefarious seductress.

O’Leary cleverly runs subliminal music (mostly Kurt Weill interrupted by a jarring Bacharach!) throughout the play. P.J. Strachman’s evocative lighting works on several levels as well, especially when mother (Melissa Baroni) and Dan (Meg Taintor) sit on the grass in dappled sunshine and lock horns over Henry Kissinger’s morality. Both suggest the undercurrents flowing beneath the action. If only AD&L wasn’t so bloody long.

REVOLUTIONIZING OUR NOTION OF EVIL By Beverly Creasey

2011-05-02T12:17:00.000-04:00

Discovery can make going to the theater exhilarating: You can experience a play which covers familiar territory but doesn’t seem at all familiar. EAST OF BERLIN is one of those remarkable scripts, unearthed by the Apollinaire Theatre Company, presented as part of their international FOREIGN FEST. Canadian playwright Hannah Moskovitch comes at her subject (the legacy of the Holocaust) from an entirely surprising angle. At the heart of the story is the son of a Nazi doctor born after the war who knew little or nothing of his father’s crimes…until a school chum enlightens him. From then on, he is obsessed with the need for redemption. Moskovitch visits the sins of the father squarely on his shoulders and the weight, you can imagine, is unbearable.

I’m writing this on Holocaust Remembrance Day … and thinking of the plays I’ve seen which try to address the horror, so many of which miss the mark. At the moment only two come to mind which left me shaking in my seat. (In my opinion if a play with this subject matter doesn’t leave you stunned, it didn’t do its job.) Double Edge Theatre’s SONG OF ABSENCE is one and Apollinaire’s EAST OF BERLIN is the other – both entirely different plays. The former uses breathtaking imagery to conjure the inhumanity and the latter uses a psychological juggernaut to deliver its blow.

Danielle Fauteux Jacques (who directs both the company and EAST OF BERLIN) paces the play flawlessly. We have no idea what’s coming our way (I give high praise to a script when I can’t guess the ending) until the playwright wants us to realize what’s driving the action. Evan Sanderson’s exquisite performance as the son is a harrowing depiction of sheer terror wrapped in an exterior of forced charm and affability. Harry Hobbs, as his childhood friend, brilliantly conveys hurt and betrayal and Alison Meirowitz is the lovely Jewish student who could be this tortured man’s salvation. But it’s Sanderson, on stage alone for most of the play, who transports us into the vortex of his guilt.

Gift Horses By Beverly Creasey

2011-04-29T22:33:00.000-04:00

The IndepenDent Drama Society’s EURYDICE (through this weekend only) is my second encounter with Sarah Ruhl’s classically inspired tale of love and death and more death. The first time I didn’t connect at all with the play. This time I was charmed from the get-go with Lindsay Eagle’s magical production…and moved to tears by Eurydice’s overwhelming losses. The tragic loss of Eurydice’s father (after regaining him) was inspired by the death of Ruhl’s own father. She fashions a sort of “Gift of the Magi” for her characters above and beyond the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, transporting the play in to rich emotional territory.

Director Eagle knows the power of the audience’s imagination and she trusts us with an invisible thread by which her father creates a room for Eurydice … and an implied elevator which descends to the underworld (aided by Chris Larson’s inspired sound design). The “talking stones” in IndepenDent’s Hades are delightfully demented acrobats, some of whom, like Zach Eisenstat, flip effortlessly head over heels (and crack us up with a hilarious telephone voice), and some like Sierra Kagan, seem to be caught like deer in subterranean headlights Each and every stone is wonderfully unique despite their job as the Greek Chorus.

What a cast and crew Eagle has to work with. Anne Winneg is perfection as the sweet but foolishly naïve Eurydice. Greg Nussen is a pensive Orpheus who becomes heroic in the depths of his devotion. Cliff Blake breaks your heart as Eurydice’s kind and loving father and Adam Lauver evokes laughter and chills as a spoiled brat of a god.

Matthew Breton’s gorgeous, dappled lighting for a room and Abigail Neuhoff’s simple leveled set exemplify “less is more.” Samara Martin’s ingenious costumes for the stones help define their personalities in countless ways. (Even the lifting of a voluminous, circle skirt over her head for protection sets one stone apart.) I could recount endless IndepenDent touches which make Ruhl’s play resonate. See for yourself what a topnotch company can do with a script … and hurry. IndepenDent is disbanding after their next play.

SO MANY GENIES, SO LITTLE TIME By Beverly Creasey

2011-04-19T13:29:00.000-04:00

It may be a by-product of pop culture phenomena like South Park but the children I asked at Wheelock Family Theatre’s ALADDIN this past weekend all adored the Bad Guy! Or maybe it’s just that Larry Coen is the funniest villain they’ve ever seen. He mugs, stomps his feet, mushes his chin up under his nose. Let’s face it. He intends to steal the show. That isn’t easy, considering the talent in ALADDIN and the Wonderful Lamp (playing through May15th).

James Norris’ adaptation of ALADDIN returns to the “Arabian Nights” source material so Wheelock audiences are treated to two genies, the one everyone knows lives in the lamp and another formidable force of nature, the genie of the ring (not to be confused with the “Lord of the Ring”).

Wheelock is fortunate to have a charismatic Aladdin. (Sebastian Kim is now a teenager but he’s been acting at Wheelock for years!) When the evil magician (the larcenous Coen) discovers that only an honest person can retrieve the lamp from beneath the earth, he tricks the guileless Aladdin into helping him. While in the underground cave, Aladdin meets the Genie of the Ring, a ferocious John Davin as the Ring leader of an army of magical, chanting spirit/slaves.

Wheelock has an arsenal of character actors to liven up a story. Director (and clever desert/set designer) James P. Bryne creates hilarious havoc on stage, almost as if he winds everyone up and lets them go. Dan Dowling, Jr. bellows and frets over his gorgeous daughter (Samantha Boucher), as the reigning Sultan. June Baboian is a whirling dervish of an indulgent nanny and Monique Nicole McIntyre is delightful as a gullible and unwitting accomplice to the nasty Magician. (McIntyre’s daughter performs in the show as well, as one of the Lamp genie’s slaves. Wheelock really is a “Family” theater!)

Where John Davin is an earthbound genie, Kortney Adams descends from the sky as the beautiful genie of the lamp. Adams is deliciously pleased with her powers, manipulating the action below her with a wiggle of her toes or a turn of her magnificent bejeweled turban. Melissa Miller’s sumptuous costumes add to the exotic feel of the show. She layers gilt accented silk scarves over colorful Indian prints which sparkle under John R. Malinowski’s dappled lighting.

BREAKING WITH THE PAST By Beverly Creasey

2011-04-18T18:40:00.000-04:00

I hardly know where to begin…perhaps with a salute to the late Jon Lipsky. In addition to authoring a wealth of plays, Lipsky effected a meeting of sorts of the left and right brain by co-founding the MIT Catalyst Collaborative with Underground Railway Theatre “to encourage the collaboration of science and theater.”

Together CC @MIT and URT are producing Hugh Whitemore’s brilliant BREAKING THE CODE, about the extraordinary life and times of Alan Turing (playing through May 8th at the Central Square Theatre). Turing is the scientist credited with decoding the Nazi’s “enigma” machine and in Winston Churchill’s words, “saving Great Britain from defeat at the hands of the Germans.”

The History Channel recently televised a program about the “enigma” code created by a typewriter equipped with rotors and grids which generate hundreds of thousands of permutations, all of which can shift combinations daily, thereby making deciphering messages almost impossible. That is, until Turing engineered his “computer.” Many celebrations are planned for the inventor of the modern computer on the anniversary of his centenary in 2012.

If your curiosity about “enigma” has been piqued, by all means see BREAKING THE CODE. If you prefer stories which can break your heart, see BREAKING THE CODE, by any means. It’s not a dry COPENHAGEN sort of play. BREAKING THE CODE is flesh and blood, passion and betrayal, on a grand scale. It’s the best play I’ve seen in a long, long time. I get chills just replaying scenes in my mind.

Another code that Turing broke nearly broke him. His OBE award was of no help when he was tried and convicted of “gross indecency” after the war. Accused Had Powerful Brain read the headlines which just decades earlier lauded his patriotism. Like Oscar Wilde, he was imprisoned for being homosexual and suffered even after prison on mandatory estrogen therapy.

Director Adam Zahler’s vision of Whitemore’s play is inspired, from the crystal performances, full of dazzling facets, to Janie E. Howland’s clever replication of the “enigma” diagram over our heads (with wires crossing like Cat’s Cradle strings, connecting point to counterpoint, suggesting that string theory evolved from Turing’s equations). Behind us Howland has chalked mathematical formulae forwards and backwards, like Turing’s dreams, on blackboards visible from either side of the playing area.

Allyn Burrows straightens from ill at ease, stuttering outsider to confident warrior when Turing is engaged in explaining his theories. Burrows’ shoulders square and a light shines from inside, illuminating his charm (or was that a Franklin Meissner, Jr. lighting effect?) It’s an immeasurable tour de force. Debra Wise, too, gives a performance of exquisite beauty, transforming as she rallies to her son in his hour of need. Just holding his hand brought me to tears.

Danny Bryck gives each of his characters a palpable soul and Liz Hayes imbues Turing’s friend and colleague with a wistful sadness. Marc Harpin is plenty officious as the bureau man but it’s Dafydd ap Rees who gives the play its lovely touches of humor.

WALKING ON AIR

Exactly across the river (as the crow flies) the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and the Boston Center for American Performance are presenting eight of Jon Lipsky’s ten-minute plays written for the annual Boston Theatre Marathon. WALKING THE VOLCANO (playing at BPT through May 1st) unites the plays and finds a common thread: Each takes place at a moment of heightened awareness for its characters.

The plays fit a nifty chronological arc as well, starting in the ‘60s and ending with events in more recent memory. Lipsky takes us from the bloody battlefields of Viet Nam to the indulgent world of rock stars to the wrenching reunions that rip us apart. Director Elaine Vaan Hogue couldn’t find a better cast to impersonate Lipsky’s characters. Jess Moss and Brian Vaughan perform the younger set with an intensity which takes your breath away – and then blows your mind away with their rock ‘n roll chops.

Paula Langton and Gabriel Kuttner play a generation (or two) older with sage savvy. What a pleasure to watch these performers work their magic. Kudos, too, to designer Jon Savage (and Marc Olivere)’s gorgeous Louise Nevelson-esque sculpted set which cleverly turns into a dock and a hospital bed.

The Boston University Theatre community will honor Lipsky with a memorial celebration at the Huntington Theatre on Monday, May 9th @7:30 P.M.

IF WISHES WERE HORSES By Beverly Creasey

2011-04-16T20:07:00.000-04:00

Psychologists cite a peculiar phenomenon in the death of a husband or wife: The surviving spouse is more likely to die in the ensuing year than he or she is after that year. Such is the power of grief.

Nathan Louis Jackson has written a touching play about a love affair which transcends death. BROKE-OLOGY, the study of being broke is getting its New England premiere at the Lyric Stage Company (through April 23rd) Johnny Lee Davenport plays a larger than life pater familias whose wife dies early in their marriage. Although he raises their two sons, he never “moves on” with his life. Now that the two boys are grown and MS is ravaging his body, he thinks more and more about her, longing to be by her side.

Jackson takes his time setting up the story. Although some of the scenes seem redundant (namely the gnome business), the father’s suffering comes through loud and clear. Monty Cole and David Curtis play the sons, with Curtis stealing the play as guru of the science of “Broke-ology”: a mathematical equation where a fried bologna sandwich equals a bottomless pit of poverty. Curtis postures and preens but we see right through his braggadocio to his deepest emotions, such is the skill of Curtis’ performance.

Director Benny Sato Ambush builds the momentum by having Davenport become more sonorous as his body weakens. Patrice Jean-Baptiste is lovely as the beatific wife. Her sweetness tempers all the testosterone on stage, making us wish we could see her in Act II. Thankfully, the playwright grants our wish.

LUCKY STAR By Beverly Creasey

2011-04-12T12:36:00.001-04:00

Company Theatre in Norwell may be a bit out of the way but it’s worth the drive to see SINGIN’IN THE RAIN—chiefly to see John F. King in the Gene Kelly role. RAIN is a mighty ambitious musical for a semi-professional company and yes, the rain came down without a hitch, leaving plenty of puddles for King to stomp through. Company Theatre hires equity and non-equity actors and like Reagle Music Theatre, it profits from the mix because the more seasoned performers help to raise the level of the other performances.

King is surrounded by talent in RAIN, especially Amanda Joy Loth as his love interest, the hoofer who saves the movie studio’s first “talking picture” when their “silent screen” star can’t (pronounced ‘kee-ant’) talk on film, even with elocution lessons. Michael Hammond, as King’s wisecracking sidekick, knows how to Make Em Laugh and the three together give the production plenty of kick.

Michael V. Joseph’s twenty piece orchestra is another reason to rave about Company’s production. They make the score crackle from the get-go, with a brass section that practically lefts you out of your seat. Best of all, they’re not buried out of view, so you’re able to see and hear them – and most importantly, the balance between singers and orchestra is perfect. (So often in musical theater it isn’t and you can’t make out the lyrics but not here!) Kudos, too, for the mock “silent films” at the heart of the story.

Mad As A Brush By Beverly Creasey

2011-04-10T22:31:00.000-04:00

It exploded with Monty Python. Americans have been enamored of BBC comedy imports ever since. Public Television in the U.S. has long dined on the revenue from imports like Upstairs Downstairs, Fawlty Towers and (Lord help us) Are You Being Served?

BLACKADDER fans, rejoice! Theatre On Fire is celebrating the series’ 25th anniversary with the first ever live production of Richard Curtis and Ben Elton’s wacky adventures on this side of the pond, voted (by the Brits) “second best British comedy of all time.” Strange as it may seem, I’ve never experienced the television show so I’m reviewing the stage version without benefit of prior adoration. (The theater was packed on opening night with droves of admirers who knew every turn of plot and every gloriously lame joke.)

BLACKADDER II (playing in two parts at the Charlestown Working Theatre through April 23rd) stars Craig Houk, one of Boston’s best comic actors, of late having slain Zeitgeist audiences with his furious napping. In TOF’s BLACKADDER II (i.e. BBC Season Two) he takes over Rowan Atkinson’s reins, galloping full tilt into the dubious fray.(I might add that Houk cuts quite a dashing figure as the sardonic knight, giving him the distinct advantage over Atkinson.)

My theater companion knows the BBC series intimately and testifies that the stage version is rendered word for word, characterization for characterization … with one exception: Crystal Lisbon’s Queen Elizabeth, he says, is better than the original. I must say, I ate up her every baffling utterance, delivered with just the right amount of aristocratic vacuity.

The BLACKADDER episodes (three to an evening in two evenings) are very, very silly, skewed in that naughty British way…You know, you cringe at the joke about scrofula, but you can’t help being amused. Bad taste is king. (You’ll know what I mean when you see the Sir Walter Raleigh episode. You’ll need a stiff upper lip for that one.)

If Shakespeare is your cuppa tea, Shakespeare this isn’t. Funny it is. At times it’s darn good social satire but mostly it’s just shameless. Over a dozen actors portray the denizens of Queen Elizabeth the First’s realm in a sort of low and I do mean lowbrow Nicholas Nickleby. Darren Evans is the mad genius behind the scenes, finding playing space where none existed in the small Charlestown firehouse theater and nimbly directing the impossibly madcap action (Wait ‘til you see Jason Beals’ spectacular entrance as Flashheart!)

Michael Steven Costello is marvelously droll as the cunning Lord Melchett (Do not miss his bio, either!), always scheming to foil Blackadder’s plans. Nadia de Lemeny is hilarious as a grieving, chest-heaving, (not fully aware that she’s a) widow and Wayne Fritsche scores as Blackadder’s often maligned and more often misled sidekick, Lord Percy. Chris Wagner is sensational as the dimwitted Baldrick and a cast of thousands (actually fourteen) play everyone else: from Gerry Slattery’s creepy Dr.Leech to Ann Carpenter’s crazed Wisewoman. I’ll report on the rest of the cast once I’ve seen the other evening. Suffice it to say I can’t wait.

Heaven On Their Minds By Beverly Creasey

2011-04-03T17:29:00.000-04:00

There’s always a production of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR this time of year. Sometimes it’s a rock concert, sometimes it’s a theater production. Sometimes it’s at a club, or even in a church basement. So off to the South Shore we went to see SUPERSTAR at the Christ Congregational Church (with church members in the chorus and pros in the leads), directed by Teresa Capachione of the Capachione School for the Performing Arts in Bridgewater.

When you’ve seen dozens of SUPERSTARs, it’s refreshing to see a different take on the material. I can’t say I agree with the sexual heat igniting between Jesus and Mary Magdalene (or the apostles pairing off with women for the night: “Close Your Eyes…Everything’s Alright…”) but it certainly made the audience sit up and take notice. Having Pilate cradle a beaten, bloody Jesus in his arms, however, as he sang “Your Life is in My Hands” made the lyric resonate all over the place. It’s not often you see a conflicted Pilate in SUPERSTAR and it works.

Capachione is lucky (or should I say ‘blessed’) to have a beatific Jesus (Adam Joy), a lovely Mary Magdalene (Katherine Joy), a fierce Judas (Adam Rosencrance) and a charismatic Pilate (Alan Thomas)…as well as some talented performers in the smaller roles, namely Eddie Paris as Peter and Dan Boyd (in two roles), delivering a gorgeous “Power and the Glory.”

Music director Eli Bigelow’s orchestra managed the Andrew Lloyd Webber score beautifully, with inspiring trumpet work from Erik Johnson. The cavernous sanctuary made for some peculiar acoustics but what a coup, to have the definitive musical about Christ in Christ Church!

The United States of HEDWIG By Beverly Creasey

2011-04-01T15:39:00.001-04:00

HEDWIG fans are divided. Is she a multiple personality or an unfortunate casualty of the cold war? Is Tommy Gnosis her nemesis or her alter ego? If you haven’t discovered Stephen Trask and John Cameron Mitchell’s hard rock philosophical/ musical phenomenon, now is the time to experience the cult heroine of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH. Here’s why.

You won’t find a better production than Tortoise and Finch’s gig (at the Turtle Lane Playhouse through April 9th). I’ve seen four or five HEDWIGs and not been able to make out Trask’s clever lyrics in any of them. Everyone (except this remarkable crew) seems to think it’s merely a rock concert where lyrics are sacrificed on the altar of sound. There’s a touching story in HEDWIG. There’s great pathos in the songs and Jim Fitzpatrick (one of the best performers in town, by the way) and music director Dan Rodriguez are determined to have the audience hear them.

Fitzpatrick co-directs the show (with Kevin Cirone) and portrays “the internationally ignored song stylist from Berlin” to perfection. Looking and sounding like Marlene Dietrich, Fitzpatrick fills the stage with emotion, relating Hedwig’s sorrowful story: a cold mother/a life trapped behind the iron curtain / a botched operation / escape/ a heartless world /rejection / transformation / acceptance / triumph. Kudos, too, to the gorgeous Shonna McEachern (believe it or not) as the bearded Itzhak, Hedwig’s jealous, misunderstood husband and to Dan Rodriguez and the Angry inch Band for rocking us without robbing us of the whole Bowie-esque experience.

The Power of Song By Beverly Creasey

2011-03-29T19:02:00.000-04:00

Le JAZZ HOT

American Classics has been doing it for eons. Overture Productions had a good run. Now Metro Stage is getting into the act with a concert performance of VICTOR VICTORIA. The advantages of a concert musical are threefold: You get dialogue, story and you get to concentrate on the lyrics…in this case, Leslie Bricusse’s cheerfully goofy rhymes about Paris nightlife (“Losing my libido…at the Lido….like a big torpedo”). As far as I’m concerned, it works better this way.

Leigh Barrett and Henri Mancini are a match made in heaven. Barrett soars on Mancini’s ascents, giving Victor/Victoria warmth and depth. Robert Saoud as Toddy masterminds the hoax (and masters the hilarious double entendre) which has Bob DeVivo (as the macho wheeler dealer) falling for Victor. Jennifer Ellis (as his moll) squeaks her way into the frivolity, (Boy, can she sing!) rivaled only by Robert Case as DeVivo’s loyal enforcer. Directed by Chris Carcione, with musical support from Maria Duaime, this VICTOR VICTORIA is acted and sung so gorgeously, it’s a pity it couldn’t have a longer run.

IT MIGHT AS WELL BE SPRING

Boston has missed chanteuse Jan Peters. And we don’t hear John O’Neil nearly often enough so their reunion cabaret this past weekend was reason for celebration. Add to that the news that Peters is moving back this month and the audience was ecstatic. Throw in the Jim Rice Trio and you have a classy, jazzy and “Impossibly Lyrical” evening of song.

Peters is queen of the smooth, silky delivery and O’Neil is cabaret royalty. Both can tear at your heart strings and tickle your funny bone with equal skill. They both know how to “work” a crowd: O’Neil with his delicious spoof of Broadway musicals and his delightful, laugh filled “Don’t You Hate It When They Make You Sing Along” (We didn’t and we did!)…and Peters with her heroic “save” of “Ring Them Bells” when a naughty audience member tried to upstage her. (Not bloody likely!)

All anyone could say at the end of the night was “More. Give us more… soon!”

NEW REP STAGES SONG CYCLE

Jason Robert Brown’s THE LAST FIVE YEARS is more of a concert show than it is your old fashioned, production number-filled musical. The two character piece traces a couple through song from the first blush of romance to the pain of divorce …with a clever trick. Her reminiscences are backwards in time and his are forward. They come together only when the two trajectories intersect in the middle: in love in Central Park in a boat.

Mark Linehan shines in the comic songs (especially the tale of “Schmuel”) but it’s Aimee Doherty who gets my sympathy (perhaps it’s because we women stick together??). She has the light, cheery numbers (like the amusing “audition” songs and the wonderfully sardonic “Summer in Ohio.” Doherty portrays Cathy as eager, indefatigable and eminently reasonable where Jamie, the writer/husband, seems awfully full of himself.

Director Jim Petosa keeps the pace brisk and designer Cristina Todesco gives us a pair of gorgeous Chagall panels shaped like ellipses at either end of the small black box stage. Alas, the double sided seating right up to the exits and the elongation of the playing area make it difficult to hear all of Brown’s catchy lyrics when the actors leave center stage. Music director Todd C. Gordon’s tiny ensemble has a big orchestra sound, especially moving when the cello duets with Doherty, both perfectly expressing what heartache feels like.

From The Halls Of Montezuma To The Shores Of Tripoli: AGAIN? By Beverly Creasey

2011-03-25T19:57:00.000-04:00

War. What is it good for? The answer to Edwin Starr’s famous question is Absolutely Nothing! Three significant plays about the cost of war have opened this March and each is a must see.

Diane Paulus’ brilliantly conceived (Tony winning) revival of HAIR is raising the roof at the Colonial (through April 10th), resonating all the way to the Middle East with its anti-war heart and all the way to Japan with its prophetic references to radiation. This is not your grandfather’s HAIR. Time has given the musical gravitas and Paulus has given it new, electrifying Life. The fresh-faced, cheeky cast (chiefly Steel Burkhardt, Paris Remillard and a wailing guitar section) lead this juggernaut to its breathtaking last, symbolic image.

Never mind the financial cost of waging three wars (I stand corrected: two wars and one “military action”) at the same time, it’s the human cost that matters. Bill Cain’s 9 CIRCLES (at the BCA through April 9th) meanders through Dante’s Inferno as a young soldier (Jimi Stanton) awaits trial for the atrocities he committed in Iraq as part of “shock and awe.” The army that placed the gun in his hand and civilians in his sights, wants nothing to do with him now. Cain niftily substitutes part for the whole in his wrenching allegory about guilt and responsibility.

The first ring of Hell offers an attorney who wants to put the military on trial. Subsequent levels offer authority figures with varying agendas… which may or may not aide the accused. Cain draws on an actual incident for his tragedy of errors (from the recruiters who sign up troubled teens to the shrinks who send them back into battle with PTSD), so 9 CIRCLES can work as realistic drama as well as parable.

Eric Engel’s shocking production for the Publick Theatre allows us to see Stanton’s Private Reeves as victim (the poster child for what’s wrong with the military) as well as the perpetrator of evil. Will McGarrahan delivers a tour de force as all the lawyers and one outrageous pastor (sending chills up and down the spine). Amanda Collins plays all her roles with compassion, including the overwhelmed psychiatrist. The stunning Publick production is plenty rattling even before John Malinowski turns those judgmental lights on us.

BENT (at Hovey Players through this weekend only) transports us to WWII where two inmates at Dachau struggle to maintain their humanity in spite of their inhumane treatment at the hands of the Nazis. The two are homosexual, making them more repugnant “than Jews” in the eyes of their tormentors, says one of the two to the other. Act I sets up the circumstances for their capture but Act II is what lifts Martin Sherman’s play to the extraordinary. He gives testament to the power of words. Evan Bernstein and Ian Schleifer bring pathos and dignity to their remarkable relationship, demonstrating the healing power of love.

Alexander The Great And His Ragtime Band By Beverly Creasey

2011-03-20T23:32:00.000-04:00

If American Classics’ “ALEXANDER’S RAGTIME BAND” AT ONE HUNDRED hadn’t been such a delightful birthday party, you might have considered the Irving Berlin celebration a master class on how to deliver a song. There are so many ways: You can deliver it “straight,” you can act out the song, you can turn it into comic gold, you can turn it inside out…The possibilities are endless.

American Classics joined forces with some of the best musical theater stars in Boston for a joyous evening overflowing with laughter and song this past weekend. The concert hall at Longy was packed to the rafters with celebrants, including Berlin’s daughter and granddaughter and the bigwigs from the Rogers & Hammerstein Organization.

Leigh Barrett and Peter Foxon Miller invented a delicious comic scene while they sang Snookey Ookums, Berlin’s tongue in cheek send up of gooey love songs. Valerie Anastasio’s hilarious Mysterious Rag imitated art as her legs took on a syncopated life of their own. Edward M. Barker made Everybody’s Doing It Now imperative and Kerry A. Dowling brought Scottish charm to the Bagpipe version of Alexander’s Ragtime Band.

Eric R. Bronner captured that vintage Follies flavor with his gorgeous, straightforward delivery of The Girl on the Magazine (Cover). You could easily imagine him serenading a bevy of beauties as they descended the stairs behind him. Mary Ann Lanier, Heather Peterson and Anastasio provided fancy harmonies for Everybody Step and indeed, everyone was stepping out the rhythm and tapping up a storm in their seats. The lyric, “written for your feet” is exactly what Berlin accomplished: Not a still shoe in the house!

American Classics splurged on musicians, as well, with Tim Harbold joining the fabulous Margaret Ulmer on piano and Jim Dalton (banjo), Eli Newburger (tuba) and Dean Groves (percussion) adding pizzazz (and the odd train whistle) to the musical accompaniment. The embarrassment of riches included Brian De Lorenzo’s amusing Ragtime Violin and Joei Marshall Perry’s mock operatic Mesmerizing Mendelssohn Tune. Ben Sears pleased the crowd with the Yiddische Izzie Get Busy and Brad Conner set the pace with I’d Rather Lead a Band. Of course we all got into the act, along with the ensemble, for a rousing rendition of Alexander’s Ragtime Band. It wouldn’t have been a proper party if we hadn’t!

Pretty Good Yarn By Beverly Creasey

2011-03-14T13:52:00.000-04:00

I’m not a fan of Neil LaBute’s discomforting work like IN THE COMPANY OF MEN or FAT PIG because, even though I know some men feel emasculated by women – and I know society, (not just men) places value on outward beauty, LaBute writes about it in terms that make my skin crawl. Imagine my surprise when I saw SpeakEasy Stage’s hilarious (but still disturbing) production of REASONS TO BE PRETTY (playing through April 2nd).

LaBute lightens up at bit on the blame game (believe it or not) – and I say that knowing full well that the opening scene would make a sailor (no, the whole Navy) blush. He nails the comedy in the war of the sexes in both camps. (There is an irredeemably despicable character written as a cipher but he’s not the man at the center of the play).

That particular guy is remarkably sympathetic. It’s his girlfriend who is totally unreasonable in the first scene. We can understand why she’s furious: He’s told a friend that he wouldn’t trade her and her “regular” face for a thousand knockouts like the hot new hire at work. The friend’s wife overhears and passes it on.

Poor Greg (the charming Andy Macdonald). He’s the unfortunate schlub who just digs the hole deeper trying to explain away his remarks to a raging Angie Jepson. “It was a point of contrast with you as the good thing!” Jepson as Steph reacts with a nuclear meltdown. The audience is in stitches, having been, no doubt, in similar tight fitting shoes.

LaBute is still the master manipulator (he gets us to condone and congratulate violence) but he’s not so obvious in this play and the ride is amusing. There’s payback but it’s subtle compared to his other spirit crushing plays. Characters grow and there’s even hope to savor for three of the four characters at the end of REASONS TO BE PRETTY. Angie Jepson’s rage has subsided. Danielle Muehlen will see the light and our hero can move on (and up). Only Burt Grinstead escapes LaBute’s kind reformations.

Eric Levenson’s magnificent industrial set looms over the action, as if the rows and rows of metal shelves (looking like lab animal cages) might topple, like their lives are collapsing. As clever as Levenson’s ominous work “cages,” are Rick Brenner’s echoing click-clicks of high heels on concrete, warning the men that women are around, observing them. Gail Astrid Buckley fits the warehouse workers in dusty grey jumpsuits which fit their grey lives but her “dress up” attire for Steph at play’s end bursts out in color, just as Jeff Adelberg’s lighting reflects LaBute’s optimism (Yes, optimism! Who knew!).

Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This By Beverly Creasey

2011-03-12T17:54:00.000-05:00

I adore Alan Ayckbourn. THE NORMAN CONQUESTS are my favorite farces, followed closely by ABSURD PERSON SINGULAR and myriad others. Zeitgeist Stage’s riotous production of his PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES still has me giggling (and reenacting the video scene) a year later.

MY WONDERFUL DAY (up at Zeitgeist through March 26th) is not your usual Ayckbourn brand of madcap mayhem. MY WONDERFUL DAY is a slow burning ember which ignites at the end of the play. It’s like watching a Rube Goldberg contraption advance a ball which hits a lever that drops a hammer which hits a nail…You get the idea. The cogs in the machine turn like clockwork until the cuckoo pops out on the hour.

The birdie in WONDERFUL DAY is a sweet little girl’s assignment to write about her day. Her pregnant mom (Obehi Janice) cleans houses and this particular Tuesday she’s in tow, having been instructed to sit very quietly and finish her homework. Alanna Logan plays the obedient (and extremely savvy) nine year old whom none of the adults seem to notice. When mom’s water breaks (It’s like the theatrical rule about the gun: If you introduce one, it has to go off.) poor Winnie is left in this unfamiliar house with strangers who are melting down left and right. Winnie gets to witness and record it all in her notebook.

Zeitgeist veterans Becca Lewis and Craig Houk are masters of farce, the former playing the tactless, witless mistress of a television celebrity who takes advantage of his wife’s absence to invite her over. Houk can, as they say, read the phonebook and get laughs but his fitful nap and fabulous snoring in WONDERFUL DAY are reason alone to see the play. Director David Miller knows his way around farce and gives his cast lots of opportunities (and pratfalls) to prove it.

Winnie and her mom (tenderly played by Janice) practice their French every Tuesday in hopes of moving to Martinique. The stupid adults assume Winnie doesn’t understand English and Ayckbourn moves another cog into place in his comedy machine.

John Romualdi and Angela Smith are the estranged husband and wife (another cog). You know when they collide, there will be fireworks. I must admit I prefer the fast paced Ayckbourn farces where you have no time between the gags to analyze anything – but there’s something to be said for the chance to see how he carefully layers the plot and makes a strong statement about class callousness, to boot.

THE HOTEL NEPENTHE: Open For Business By Beverly Creasey

2011-03-09T18:02:00.000-05:00

THE HOTEL NEPENTHE is a four star destination this month (playing through March 20th at the Actor’s Shakespeare Project in funky, fabulous Davis Sq.) Not exactly the “kind” elixir proffered by Poe, a hit of John Kuntz’s NEPENTHE induces a wild ride through a bizarre and often hazardous world. Kuntz’s Grand Hotelesque play embraces eccentrics, crackpots and psychos as they meander in an absurdist roundelay.

Who cares if the through line is perforated, the loosely connected stories are hilarious, even the grimmest of them. Kuntz and director David R. Gammons bombard us with pop allusions: from the Perry Mason theme song to one of my favorite spaghetti westerns (A Fistful of tinkling watch chimes spins Kuntz’s characters around in a frenzy). And if that weren’t enough to make me happy, Kuntz himself melts down royally, in one spectacular bit of business, over the loss of his keys. In that instant, art imitated my life, as I had lost my keys just hours before, enacting a tiny meltdown myself!

The heady cast inhabits over a dozen characters: from Marianna Bassham’s cold, calculating wife of a politician out to compromise her husband to Georgia Lyman’s vacuous starlet for the ages to Daniel Berger-Jones’ ominous cab driver (Is there any other kind in movies and theater?) to Kuntz’s affable taxi dispatcher. The performances are dead on and thanks to Gammons’ ingenious design (scenic and costume) we see the actors transform into their next character. Jeff Adelberg’s lighting morphs as well, from ambient to sinister… and into actual flashes of lightening (via tubes of light outside each “dressing room”). Bill Barclay’s sound, too, plays a pivotal role in the performance, giving the technical crew quite a workout and the audience quite an adventure.

House of Games By Beverly Creasey

2011-03-03T13:12:00.000-05:00

Playwright Theresa Rebeck adds one hundred and thirty years to Ibsen’s feminist masterpiece, yanking it into the 21st century. DollHouse is Rebeck’s re-imagining of the Ibsen classic (running at New Repertory Theatre through March 20th).

The catch-22 in updating A DOLL’S HOUSE is that we have to root for a shrill, self-centered, preening woman who would rather shop at Barney’s than care for her children. (The nanny does that.) She’s a woman so out of touch with the world around her that, when she desperately needs money, she doesn’t think of getting a job/hocking her diamonds/selling her designer togs on E-Bay/borrowing against her inheritance. Even a loan shark is a better choice than embezzlement. (Rebeck follows Ibsen so closely that she’s obliged to keep the forgery (now embezzlement) plot. I’m satisfied that in 1879 Nora had no other outlet but I just can’t buy that in 2011).

Director Bridget Kathleen O’Leary’s production starts out whimsically, getting plenty of laughs from Nora’s (Sarah Newhouse) surprise reunion with a high school friend. Jennie Israel makes their class differences delightfully awkward. And Israel makes the friend’s betrayal completely believable, even laudatory. To her credit, O’Leary gives the secondary characters a wide berth. Diego Arciniegas is mysteriously compelling as their doctor/friend and Cheryl D. Singleton makes the most of a thankless nanny role. But why does Nora need to leave her children to find herself when she could get a divorce/see a shrink/take an adult ed course/volunteer at a soup kitchen?

Adding to my difficulties with Nora’s lying and buying is the way her husband is played in the New Rep production. Will Lyman gently chides her (for shopping too much or being a soft touch) but he doesn’t go ballistic until the very, very end when he transforms into Bogie from THE MALTESE FALCON (“I’m not takin’ the fall.”) Until then, the worst thing you can say about him is that he’s overprotective. Lyman makes lines like “I don’t want that man in my house” seem eminently reasonable (given that he doesn’t know the facts). So there’s my problem. I liked him so much more than her. I even liked the reluctant blackmailer (Gabriel Kuttner) more than I liked Nora. My favorite interaction in the play is the kindness scene between Nora’s friend and the blackmailer.

Watching the audience, I observed an abrupt magnetic connect when Nora fights to be heard. When she accuses her husband of “not listening,” you could hear the female audience audibly assent. When he asserts the notion that women don’t say anything worth listening to, the males laughed in unison. Every mind in the audience was engaged. Her husband’s assertion that he would never take the blame for her foolish crime resonated for me because of a recent Massachusetts court case (involving a politician whose wife kept the books for her brother’s money laundering scheme) .She went to jail, maintaining her husband didn’t have any knowledge of the crime. He remains in office, evidently untarnished by the affair. Welcome to the real DollHouse.

Turtle Lane’s Got the Goods! By Beverly Creasey

2011-02-28T15:10:00.000-05:00

Remember the ads for Richard Kiley’s last tour of MAN OF LA MANCHA? “This is your last chance” sounded pretty compelling…and we all went. Thank goodness. Well, I’ve got another “last chance” you mustn’t ignore. This is the last time you can see Steven Michael Key reprise his show stopping turn in THE FULL MONTY. He’s retiring the role at the end of the Turtle Lane run (March 20th)…which is where he first played it by the way, in 2006. He’s nothing short of spectacular (and the rest of the strippers are pretty darn good, too).

If you haven’t seen the musical before (or the cheeky film which inspired it) I should warn you that stripping is integral to the plot. A couple of out-of-work machinists who can’t find a job anywhere decide to do something about it. They see women spending a “girls’ night out” and a fair amount of cash at Chippendale’s so why not get a bunch of their buddies together and put on a show! They may not be as buff as the Chippers but they’re boffo and they’ve got moxie.

Director James Tallach gets hilarious performances with this motley crew of misfits, from Key’s mashed potato/hully gully/frug dancing dynamo to James Fitzpatrick’s bumbling wall flower to Robert Klimeczko’s frenetic wall crasher. There’s a sweet story, too, behind the strip line. James Casey’s character gets to “man up” for his son (Andrew Cekala) and Timothy Lawton’s depressed couch potato gets to impress his wife (Brittany Rolfs) and get back in the game. Lawton has one of the sweetest songs in the show, a duet with Bill Toll, dedicated to their wives (Rolfs and Tracy Nygard). Fitzpatrick gets to show off his impressive range in the gorgeous “You Walk With Me” (duet with Klimeczko) but it’s Key’s naughty “Every Woman Loves A Big Black Man” which brings down the house.

Erik Diaz’ corrugated set is the perfect backdrop for the labor intensive script and Donald Gregorio’s chair slamming/testosterone raising choreography hits all the right notes. Even the women (in Richard Itczak’s finery) look good. Nygard struts her stuff in the sassy “Life with Harold” number but it’s the men who take over center stage in this show. Sorry, Ladies.

WILD AND CRAZY PUPPETS: STORYTIME PRESERVATION HOUR By Beverly Creasey

2011-02-15T11:18:00.001-05:00

Is there any form of puppetry more delicate and graceful than Indonesian shadow figures, with their elegant outlines and intricate silhouettes? Now imagine the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE version of same and you have a little idea of the madness of the NEW EXHIBITION ROOM show integrating “storytime” and puppets (playing at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre thru Feb.26th).

Does it sound like a children’s show? It isn’t…except it is. Several children in my audience just gave themselves over to the silliness and enjoyed it for silliness’ sake without absorbing the outrageous allusions (to pop rock, feminism and anarchy).

If you think there’s nothing new under the sun, wait ‘til you see a baby zombie morph from a shadow puppet to a hand puppet (both incarnations quite delightful), navigate the MBTA and partake in a poetry slam. The puppetry is wildly imaginative and amazingly dexterous.

After baby zombie’s adventures, we meet a princess who learns to trust her own capabilities. “The Paper Bag Princess” utilizes humans as well as brown bag puppets to hilarious effect… but Mac Young’s paper set pieces steal the show. His giant pop up books inspire awe and his folded library stacks are a marvel of large scale origami.

The wonderfully shameless humor is delivered absolutely deadpan. You’ll shake your head but dissolve into giggles nevertheless at the fire breathing dragon (Joseph Mirrella) who singes a princess (Hannah Husband in a fabulous gown/cloud of dust and debris by Cara Pacifico), who enlists the help of a minstrel (Chuong Pham) and falls for a goofy librarian (Alejandro Simoes in a dual role). What’s not to love? Who wouldn’t welcome an off-the-wall experience which ends in homemade cookies for everyone? Best of all, the NEW EXHIBITION ROOM has cured me of my forty year puppophobia!

HEARTS AND MINDS By Beverly Creasey

2011-02-15T11:10:00.000-05:00

What a clever idea for a Valentine’s Day cabaret, especially in these cynical times: GET OVER IT! explores the flower-less, loveless side of the holiday with humor and style. Who needs candy and roses when you can hear cheeky songs like He Ain’t Mr. Right or Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover – and nosh on yummy cornbread at Ryles Jazz Club.

Pamela Enders and Wayne Fritsche celebrated “the Martyrdom of St. Valentine” with a mix of traditional and pop songs under the musical direction of Doug Hammer. Enders sailed through the comic material with just the right touch of flirty innuendo. With gorgeous low notes and an ethereal top range, she is as at home with heartbreak (like Irving Berlin’s ironic You Can Have Him) as she is with musical theater numbers like So What? and Mein Herr (from CABARET). Her defiant Mein Herr brought down the house.

Fritsche, too, knows his way around musical theatre, having performed in shows like FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and OLIVER. His voice is as big as his towering stature, which he spoofed in I Enjoy Being a Girl from FLOWER DRUM SONG and used to advantage in the duet with Enders in the all out Enough Is Enough.

The godfather of Boston cabaret, John O’Neil, did the introductions and John Baboian and Steve Chaggaris joined Hammer for the snazzy accompaniment. As Edna St. Vincent Millay famously wrote, “Forget the epitaph. Take up the song!”

SMALL WONDERS at WHEELOCK By Beverly Creasey

2011-02-09T12:33:00.000-05:00

Ask any gardener. Working the earth is good for the soul. Health professionals promise that digging and planting will lower your blood pressure. Philosophers and novelists have touted the healing power of nature for centuries. Candide chose gardening for his “best of all possible worlds” and Frances Hodgson Burnett made a garden the centerpiece of her children’s novel, THE SECRET GARDEN.

Burnett’s stories were wildly successful in the late 19th and early 20th century. Popular films of the ‘30s and ‘40s renewed interest in her work but most people these days recognize THE SECRET GARDEN because of the Broadway musical. Jane Staab and Susan Kosoff have revisited the novel and fashioned a new musical from the source material. Their SECRET GARDEN (at Wheelock Family Theatre through February 7th) simplifies the tangled plot of the Broadway version, restores the core of Burnett’s story and makes the songs themselves part of the narrative.

The musical opens with Mary Lenox’s arrival at lonely Misselthwaite Manor and her immediate impression of the place: “No, I Don’t Like It.” The catchy tune (which I’ve been humming since) sums up the whole plot, simply and effortlessly. She doesn’t want to be in England under her uncle’s care and he doesn’t much like the idea either. Only the maid seems happy to interact with the girl.

With little amusement for Mary at the edge of the forbidding moor, she follows the grumpy gardener about. Mary befriends the unfriendly man and with a robin as her only playmate, she decides to plant her very own garden. (NOTE: Don’t hurry out for refreshments at intermission until you witness Mary’s garden miraculously bloom before your eyes. It’s one of the “secret” surprises in Matthew Lazure’s grand Victorian set.)

Kosoff’s smart book and clever lyrics (like the amusing notion and play of time in “Let’s Do It Now”) and Jonathan Goldberg’s gorgeous orchestrations of Staab’s lovely music lift their GARDEN head and shoulders above the gloomier Broadway version, in my opinion. It’s a whole lot more enjoyable for children: The two in my party, ages five and seven (ordinarily a hard sell) sat glued to their seats, waiting for the story to unfold.

The relationships Mary forges give the story its redemptive spirit. Kosoff, as director as well as writer, gets fine performances from everyone. Katherine Leigh Doherty (fresh from her Broadway appearance with Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC!) makes Mary a force to be reckoned with. She wins over the crusty gardener (Neil Gustafson) and soon they’re inspiring each other (“Tha’ an’ Me Are Alike” is cheeky and charming).

Jennifer Beth Glick radiates kindness as the maid whose affection for her young charge is unconditional. Jacqui Parker as the severest of housekeepers and Russell Garrett as the distant, depressed uncle even manage to soften under Mary’s indomitable influence. Andrew Barbato lights up the stage as the country boy who talks to animals and knows their secrets. Ellis Gage gets lots of laughs as Mary’s sickly cousin whose temper tantrums she simply will not abide. (Composer Jane Staab even has a wee cameo as the tyrannical boy’s nurse.) And if that’s not enough to entertain us, the country boy brings on an adorable lop-eared rabbit which draws plenty of oohs and ahs from the audience.

THE SECRET GARDEN reveals its metaphors on the technical side of the production, too. Stacey Stephens creates soft, supple garb for the country folk and stiff, starched Victorian garb for the housekeeper and her employer. Franklin Meissner, Jr. gives the secret garden its very own light and the cold manor house, its lack thereof. Don’t miss Wheelock’s delightful promise of spring.

SpeakEasy Stage’s Boffo NINE By Beverly Creasey

2011-01-28T09:26:00.000-05:00

As difficult as it must be to live with a genius (You might ask Fellini’s wife, Giulietta Masina, for instance.) it must be even more difficult to be the genius. That’s the case made by Arthur Kopit, and Maury Yeston in NINE. Their ethereal, dream catching musical is firmly based on Fellini’s strangely brilliant 8 ½ (adapted from the Italian by Mario Fratti).

NINE was never one of my favorite musicals – until I saw SpeakEasy’s high voltage take on the ordinal number. Director Paul Daigneault’s juggernaut (playing through Feb. 20th) speeds from one production number to the next, ratcheting up the electricity. Timothy John Smith is perfection as the arrogant, irresistible filmmaker who surrounds himself with a legion of adoring women. He’s only happy when he can control their every move and he does just that in the overture, waving his baton, conducting them as if they were instruments in his orchestra.

What gorgeous instruments they are: From an elegant Aimee Doherty as his long suffering wife, to the sexy Kerry A. Dowling as the slightly dangerous whore with the best song in the show, to the sensational McCaela Donovan as his spitfire mistress. (David Connolly’s erotic choreography ramps up the sexual energy, especially between the director and his mistress).

There’s no shortage of comic performances, either: From Shana Dirik’s overeager proprietess, to Maureen Keiller’s insistent producer, to Amy Jackson’s persistent critic. Kudos, too, to Eric Levenson for his silhouetted arches which frame Seaghan McKay’s stylish projections, and to music director Nicholas James Connell for the luscious harmonies. I’d see it again in a trice!

Hope for the Future By Beverly Creasey

2011-01-24T13:40:00.000-05:00

How do you attract younger audiences? Theater won’t thrive without them. Turtle Lane Playhouse is one theater doing something about the “aging audience” problem. Their production of RENT brought in twenty- and thirty-somethings and this weekend and next (through Jan. 29th) TLP is hosting a YOUNG ACTORS’ WINTER FESTIVAL to showcase talented high school (and younger) performers.

Most of the plays are the ten minute variety by local (adult) playwrights, with live music nestled in between. The comedies fare best with Sean Clarke’s Double Date, George Sauer’s League of the Unexpected and Maggie Bandur’s Tea & Sorcery leading the pack. (The serious plays seem to rely on lurid headlines for their subject matter, I’m afraid.)

Clarke’s hip send-up of multiple personality phenomenon stars a dynamo named Gillian Gordon as the fractured femme who’s dating Paul Kmiec and Patrick Maloney at the very same time…on the same date! Kmiec and Maloney also play the non-conformists in Sauer’s cheeky League, giving shock and awe new meaning. (James Tallach directed both plays and a few more…in addition to co-founding the event with Regina Ramsey and acting the villain in Ramsey’s In the Woods.)

Lisa Burdick gets astonishing performances from her very young actors in Bandur’s clever Tea & Sorcery. Madeline Rocklin, Rosa Stern Pait and Elizabeth Wu are middle school students whose tea party held us in thrall, spellbound! (My fears about the future of theater were quelled by these three pros.)

Maggie Whitlock sang and accompanied herself on guitar between the plays in Program I, introducing her winsome original song, “I Found You.” Then she and Paul Kmiec collaborated on the “Moonbeam” song from the movie ONCE. Whitlock has an easy style and a lovely, plaintive quality to her voice, especially evident in sad laments like “Cover It Up.”

In Program II, Chris Bailly manned the keyboard for a medley of smart original songs by Janine deSouza, sung by Jackie Theoharis (who also plays Cinderella in Teresa Fisher’s Sweet Dreams). Theoharis delivers deSouza’s post-feminist “No More,” her catchy “Just a Kid (in the big city)” and ends the program with her rousing anthem, “The Truth Will Prevail.”

Giving Up the Ghost By Beverly Creasey

2011-01-19T13:53:00.000-05:00

AFTERLIFE: A GHOST STORY is Steve Yockey’s provocative and puzzling new play about loss and love and what awaits us in the great beyond. New Repertory Theatre is giving the world premiere a stylish outing (through Feb. 6th) with Marianna Bassham and Thomas Piper in the lead roles. As the play begins, the couple is trying to deal with the loss of their child. Yockey skillfully captures the overwhelming guilt and repressed anger which often tear apart a relationship after a tragedy. Bassham and Piper break your heart.

Act I ends with a spectacular special effect (orchestrated by David Remedios and Karen Parsons). I haven’t been so thrilled and amazed since Ming Cho Lee’s avalanche in the Broadway production of K2.

Act II is connected to Act I by the thinnest of threads (paper thin, in fact). Tone, style and rhythm all change as the dead now face three realities (or maybe ‘fantasies’). It’s the doors of Let’s Make A Deal: Door numbers one and two are blind alleys but door number three offers the needy a hot cup of tea – granted, the tea lady is awfully testy but at least there are no birds of prey hanging about.

It’s certainly courageous to change horses in midstream but I’m not so sure the territory in Act II packs the punch of the suffering in Act I. For me, momentum and focus were lost but replaced by a fascination with Yockey’s metaphysical ideas. What’s more, Dale Place is a majestic bird and I wouldn’t want to lose the chance of meeting him or Adrienne Krstansky’s wonderfully cranky hostess. Director Kate Warner gets fine performances all around, from the aforementioned and from Georgia Lyman and Karl Baker Olson, as well.

LAND SHARKS By Beverly Creasey

2011-01-18T10:08:00.000-05:00

You’ll never want to buy real estate again once you see David Mamet’s sardonic, bad-to-the-bone, nasty little comedy about naïve buyers and ruthless sellers. The salesmen in GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS (playing at the BCA through Jan. 22nd) would sell the family home right out from under their grandmother for a fat commission.

The IndepenDent Drama Society production is solidly acted and (happily, since I’ve seen three GGRs in the past year) imaginatively directed by Brett Marks. He finds amusing, new “stage business” for his actors without altering the tone or the trajectory of the script.

The ensemble masters the rhythm of the rapid give and take dialogue, making the high stakes two character scenes pop. Marks and company create suspense and believe it or not, sympathy for the old timers who can’t keep up. Phil Thompson as Shelly “The Machine” Levene lets us see the desperation beneath the swagger. Michael Fischer, as the flashy top closer, even has his softer moment, acknowledging Levene’s old school finesse.

Craig Houk brings a frenetic intensity to the scheming Moss. His “hypothetical” scene with the hapless Aaronow (Michael Pevzner) gets lots of laughs. Jeremy Browne oozes contempt as the calculating office manager and Adam Lauver gets to huff and puff as the frustrated policeman but Bob Mussett makes your heart break as the mark out of his depth and about to drown in shark-infested waters.

BELLES and BALLYHOO By Beverly Creasey

2011-01-14T12:12:00.000-05:00

Alfred Uhry is having a banner year. The Broadway revival of DRIVING MISS DAISY with Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones has just been extended, yet most people aren’t familiar with his other play about Southern injustice. THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO (at the Wellesley Summer Theatre through January 30th) explores anti-Semitism in the “genteel” South right before the outbreak of WWII.

Well to do Southern Jewish families tried their best to assimilate, embracing all the trappings of the Christian “good life,” from exclusive country club and Junior League memberships to a beautifully adorned Christmas tree in the front window. Uhry shows us what was lost in the translation.

For the Freitag family of Atlanta, Ballyhoo is the social event of the season, an all out, exclusive, formal cotillion to which Russian Jews are not invited. The Freitags see this form of prejudice as acceptable, as if it enhances their standing with their Christian neighbors. Uhry reveals their self-hatred by introducing a handsome New Yorker into the mix, a young man comfortable in his own skin. Lewis Wheeler plays the principled Yank with a charming swagger. His scenes courting Ashley Gramolini (as the daughter home from college) are delightful. The young lovers (to be) are awkward, sweetly funny and of course destined for one another.

Back at home, the Wellesley (!) student’s cousin (Margaret Dunn) laments her prospects for a date to Ballyhoo, not to mention her long range prospects, something forever on her scheming mother’s brain. Lisa Foley wages a one-woman war on the subject, adding to her fragile daughter’s insecurities. (THE GLASS MENAGERIE comes to mind.) In one of Uhry’s best scenes, Foley leaps out of the stereotype and fights for her cub like a lioness, redeeming the character of the mother.

Charlotte Peed provides comedic flair as the college girl’s ditsy mother and Danny Bolton gets to whip up a whirlwind as the eligible, loudmouthed Louisiana bachelor. The play belongs to John Davin as the longsuffering uncle. With his quip that “Men don’t stand a good chance around here,” he speaks volumes about his role as family provider, his chances for a life apart from his sisters and their girls and his wry sense of humor. As the play progresses we learn about his lost love, his unexpected role as stand-in father and his iron strong backbone. Director Nora Hussey’s company breathes gentle life into Uhry’s bittersweet comedy.

MANAGING THE LAUGHTER By Beverly Creasey

2011-01-07T14:33:00.000-05:00

There’s nothing performers love more than recounting their disasters (at the time painful, but later, absolutely hilarious. What’s the formula? Tragedy plus time equals comedy?) I can remember a lovely piece of choreography which was supposed to land me elegantly on a piano. I kept going off the other side! Or the crucial time the messenger in Ionesco’s THE CHAIRS locked himself out of the theater when he popped out for a smoke. The adlibbing was legendary. See what I mean? These delightful memories were triggered by Theresa Rebeck’s THE UNDERSTUDY (at the Lyric Stage Co. through Jan. 29th).

Rebeck memorializes missed cues and mangled communications by conjuring a fraught rehearsal for a new understudy (Christopher James Webb) with little respect for the movie star (Kelby T. Akin) he’s covering. The frazzled stage manager (Laura Latreille) can barely keep the session together. Rebeck knows the business inside and out having started in theater, migrated to motion pictures and maintained her stage credentials in wild, lacerating comedies. She gets back at nasty producers, spineless directors and obtuse movie people with a slash of her pen. In THE UNDERSTUDY she melds Hollywood and Broadway to Kafka (yes, Kafka), creating a random (well, ‘Kafkaesque’) world with little or no concern for ‘art.’ As Dorothy Parker famously said, “fresh hell” awaits the actors attempting to animate Kafka.

Director Larry Coen sees ‘farce’ written all over the script so from the get-go we’re treated to high strings and taut emotions – leaving almost no room for the more serious side of the proceedings. Who can say…maybe there isn’t a serious message lurking in THE UNDERSTUDY. (Although Webb and Akin manage to let down their comedic guard when the artistic going gets tough and we feel their crushing disappointment.)

Both Mamet and Durang have crafted ‘on stage’ disaster comedies but Rebeck gets closer to the bone with topical references to recent Broadway dust-ups like Jeremy Piven’s sudden exit via mercury poisoning (prompting Mamet to suggest his next role could be a thermometer). I’ll bet there’s even more payback in THE UNDERSTUDY than we’re aware of.

POSTMODERN MORITAT By Beverly Creasey

2010-12-26T18:00:00.000-05:00

Some people prefer Shakespeare, some musicals, some light comedy. Some, (that would be me) adore the counterclockwise world of Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter, theater you have to work at. Imagine my surprise—and delight to discover that the A.R.T.’s multi-media BLUE FLOWER is right up my alley. You can immerse yourself in its wildly imaginative songs and images and still not absorb it all. (I’m hoping to go back to see what I missed the first time.)

This baby boomer grew up in an eccentric Esperanto speaking household with music for mother’s milk and war stories in lieu of fairy tales: In short, the quintessential audience for Ruth and Jim Bauer’s oddly magical cabaret cycle infused with Dada expression, war horrors and neo-Esperanto. The latter Bauer’s Kurt Weill-ish music, which he impishly calls “Sturm und Twang,” owes a bow to ‘60s musicals like HAIR (You can hear a snatch of Let the Sunshine In throughout the Paris Trio) as well as country western rhythms (in John Widgren’s heavenly pedal steel), overlaying the German oom pah pah. (You’ll find many a musical allusion niftily tucked into the songs.) Who would have imagined such a combination would sound so gorgeous?

The stylized acting dovetails perfectly with Ruth Bauer’s angular videography and the sharp edges of her narrative (which follows an artist and his friends back and forth through the madness of two world wars).All the characters bear a resemblance, or are reminiscent of historical figures from the Weimar years–and yet they’re only a shadow of reality.

Director Will Pomerantz creates searing images with gestural movement alone (credits, too, to Tom Nelis who also performs the (narrator) role of Fairytale Man), like the agonizing death of a horse in the Franz’s War number. Lucas Kavner gives a powerful performance as the tragic hero whose very soul is disfigured by war while Daniel Jenkins exudes a pitiable, quiet desperation as the artist who glues all their lives together in his collages. The women they love are beautifully portrayed by Teal Wicks and Meghan McGeary. Jenkins and McGeary’s Eyes and Bones song haunts me still and Wicks’ Eiffel Tower is a heartbreaking paean to loss.

I haven’t been so enamored of a work in a long time. You may not make out all the lyrics (I didn’t) but you know nevertheless what BLUE FLOWER is saying about the ravages of war.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW FOR A QUICK RUN By Beverly Creasey

2010-12-20T01:04:00.001-05:00

Jingle those bells as fast as you can: New Rep’s Darling Divas Deck the Holidays is only running one week, ending Dec. 23rd. The intimate cabaret show (on the big stage at New Rep) unites four veterans of past productions with music director Todd Gordon for a happy celebration of Christmas and Hanukkah.

The divas share personal memories, cabaret style, and offer their favorite songs, like Michele DeLuca’s delightful homage to Barbra Streisand with her breakneck version of Jingle Bells (sounding a whole lot like [I Like To Be In] America! from WEST SIDE STORY), and Aimee Doherty’s lovely Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire for her beloved grandfather.

Kami Rushell Smith gets a doo-wop version of All I Want for Christmas is You and Bobbie Steinbach gets to cavort in Eartha Kitt’s naughty Santa Baby. The quartet reads stories about the season of miracles, both Christian and Jewish, covering all the bases but Kwanzaa.

My favorite moment is Gordon’s duet with DeLuca in Baby, It’s Cold Outside. They manage to spoof and pay tribute to the Loesser gem all at the same time.

Rock ‘n’ Roll MATCH.com By Beverly Creasey

2010-12-17T12:34:00.000-05:00

SpeakEasy Stage Company has a novel idea for New Year’s Eve – or any (less stressful) eve of your choosing (through Jan. 2nd): A chamber rock performance called STRIKING 12. The quirky pop theater/concert features keyboard, percussion and an electric violin (which reminded me first of the strings in Celtic Woman and later of the nasal sound of Chinese stringed instruments). The trio portrays three people in search of meaning on New Year’s Eve. The drummer (a dapper Zachary Hardy) wants nothing more than a party with friends. The keyboardist (the multi-talented José Delgado who also music directs) wants to be left alone and the violinist (the gorgeous Erikka Walsh) wants to spread a little light in the world.

The Rachel Sheinkin script (for the indie rock trio GrooveLily who originated the project) gives the title its resonance, adding in the Hans Christian Anderson fable of The Little Match Girl, so that STRIKING 12 means matches as well as the New Year countdown. The intimate cabaret set-up at SpeakEasy (upstairs at the BCA) allows the music to take center stage. The songs are hip with cheeky lyrics (cleverly rhyming ‘lazy boy’ with ‘hoi polloi’ in Resolution) which send up just about every pop genre. Delgado gets an amusing rap number and Hardy provides laughs as “postnasal drip guy.” Walsh contributes the heart so that STRIKING 12 has a warm, fuzzy ending for the holidays. Director Scott Sinclair keeps the pacing sharp and the sound balance just right for the small space: You don’t even need earplugs!

STRIKING 12 begins and ends with a catchy Snow Song (and projections of the white stuff). I don’t know how SpeakEasy did it, but the evening ended with a light snow shower as we left the theater: not enough to stick but enough to remind us of the song!

Christmas Juggernaut By Beverly Creasey

2010-12-06T00:31:00.000-05:00

The Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston has been staging their Christmas extravaganza for more than a quarter century. Over forty choristers, one hundred dancers and eighty children are participating in this year’s IT’S CHRISTMASTIME (playing through Dec. 12th) …and each and every one of them enters and exits on cue. Imagine stage managing that throng! (By the way, her name is Lori E. Baruch.)

The Christmas themed variety show thrilled and amazed the little girls in my party who best liked the wee Santas-in-Training (racing headfirst through a chimney) and the Beach Boys’ tribute of “Little Old Saint Nick” (Go figure! I would have bet on the Teddy Bear Nutcracker.)

IT’S CHRISTMASTIME has been abridged over the years but it’s still an embarrassment of riches – which this time includes the hilarious last minute buying frenzy in “the shop around the corner” from the musical, SHE LOVES ME. (Long time Reagle supporter, Yolanda, gets her name over the transom!) From the crackerjack Reagle Rockettes to the Olde English John Mason Neale carols, Reagle’s spectacular delivers.

Broadway star Sarah Pfisterer adds elegance and warmth to the big choral numbers and R. Glen Michell as narrator (and soloist) adds a “radio announcer’s” gravitas to the proceedings. Tableaux Vivantes are a specialty of director Bob Eagle, freezing a Victorian street scene into a “living” painting, reminiscent of the Museum of Fine Arts’ famous Childe Hassan view of Boston Common.

Lavish details are the hallmark of Reagle’s holiday shows and audiences have come to expect them. A reverent Biblical reenactment of the Nativity ends the show with a breathtaking tableau of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus in the manger, surrounded by angels, shepherds, sheep and the three Wise Men.

Here’s my dilemma: Gold can be mined anywhere but frankincense comes only from Africa and myrrh only from Ethiopia so two of the three Kings are definitely not European, an historical detail that escaped someone’s attention. Certainly in a show which highlights “Peace on Earth and good will to all men” the performers could reflect all of us in this “weary world”… but that’s just my opinion on the subject.

MOON SHADOWS By Beverly Creasey

2010-12-03T10:02:00.000-05:00

Today being World AIDS Day, I’m remembering again all my friends and family who died from the disease in the ‘80s – which is when Terrence McNally wrote FRANKIE AND JOHNNY IN THE CLAIR DE LUNE. Although it was written with AIDS in mind, it’s not about AIDS per se…it’s more about the world after the plague. As Frankie tells Johnny, she longs for times gone by, when people weren’t afraid of each other. Frankie and Johnny are two misfits, groping their way through the darkness alone. Now they have the chance to connect to someone before it’s too late, despite the odds, despite the fear.

The New Repertory Theatre’s heartfelt production (playing through Dec. 19th) unites two of Boston’s best actors for the thorough workout that is McNally’s intense two character play. Director Antonio Ocampo-Guzman emphasizes the naked vulnerability of the pair—which works in all but one aspect. We’re to believe Johnny when he says neither of them is a prize. Both Anne Gottlieb and Robert Pemberton create characters who are scarred and flawed–but when the physical is out there for us to see, I wondered why Johnny didn’t notice that Frankie is drop dead gorgeous. (Kathy Bates originated the role although Michelle Pfeiffer starred in the film—and managed to look dowdy, believe it or not.)

Gottlieb is such a skilled performer that I soon forgot my reservations and was swept up in Frankie’s desperate attempt to keep pain (and love) away. You see why she wants to keep this needy, cloying man at bay but you’re rooting for him all the same. McNally does the impossible, creating romance out of sheer isolation.

Jesus Christ Superman By Beverly Creasey

2010-11-29T10:38:00.000-05:00

GODSPELL debuted in 1971, following the phenomenal success of HAIR in 1968, becoming yet another anti-establishment (i.e. preaching love not war during the Viet Nam conflict), hippie-dippy (albeit soft) rock musical. But the award winning retelling of the last seven days of Christ had stiff competition from a British import which already boasted a best selling album by 1971. Where GODSPELL was sweet and ingenuous, JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR was raucous, campy and immediately stole GODSPELL’s thunder.

The Turtle Lane Playhouse debuted with GODSPELL in 1980 – so it’s only fitting that the revival mark their thirty year anniversary, arriving December 9th.Stephen Schwartz’s catchy songs (Day By Day crossed over to the pop charts) lend an earnest glow to John-Michael Tebelak’s re-working of the gospel according to Matthew. Luckily TLP has a fresh-faced newcomer named Chad Moores to portray Jesus. He radiates goodness and light all over the place in Act I, in his cheerful yellow britches and superman T. (Act II reveals a testier Jesus, not entirely thrilled, understandably, with what’s coming.) NOTE: The role of Jesus is double cast and I only saw Moores. (Choreographer Jason Hair-Wynn is the alternate.)

More problematic than the material being so “nice” compared to SUPERSTAR – was TLP’s misbehaving sound system. At my performance, it alternated from not enough volume on some numbers to way too much, crackling at top volume and distorting the voices. (Maybe the devil was at work, considering all the attention to Christ!) But since Moores was so convincing as Jesus, I shall take his lesson about charity to heart and concentrate on the pluses in the TLP production.

All for the Best is aptly named, as it’s the best number in the show, with its cheeky vaudeville patina…with Light of the World a buoyant close to Act I. Kudos to director Lisa Rafferty for the lovely ASL in All Good Gifts and the touching tableau in By My Side…to Erin Beaber for her rousing Day By Day…and to costumer Richard Itczak for the authentic sixties garb. (Running through December 30th.)

Goody Goody For Us By Beverly Creasey

2010-11-27T19:35:00.000-05:00

Everyone knows GUYS AND DOLLS but maybe you don’t know that Frank Loesser won an Oscar, a slew of Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize (which he spoofed, calling it “the putzlitzer”). He had an acerbic wit (naming his first wife the “evil of two Loessers”) but could give himself over to a sentimental song just as easily.

This weekend American Classics celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Loesser’s birth with a chipper cabaret concert called LUCK BE A LADY (performed by GOODY GOODY, i.e., three American Classics regulars and pianist Robert Humphreville).

Humphreville finessed Loesser’s lyrical melodies (and a few by collaborators like Irving Berlin and Hoagy Carmichael) while Valerie Anastasio, Mary Ann Lanier and Heather Peterson inhabited his delicious lyrics---with Lanier ripping Loesser’s sassy, bluesy Junk Man (“I’m gonna fix your wagon…do you black and blue [so the junk man] can pick up what’s left of you”) – with Anastasio proving she’s the consummate comedienne in Loesser’s (other) Runyanesque send-up, Murder, He Says. Then they gave us a medley of GUYS AND DOLLS with Peterson getting the most famous case of sniffles in all of showbiz, the hilarious Adelaide’s Lament.

If you haven’t experienced an American Classics performance, you’re missing the joy. Treat yourself to their next event in March, Alexander’s Ragtime Band at 100!

Adventure Of A Lifetime By Beverly Creasey

2010-11-15T13:56:00.001-05:00

In case you haven’t heard, something extraordinary is happening at the Lyric Stage…twice! You can attend Part I of Charles Dickens’ NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, then come back another night (or do them both in one day) for Part II. The experience is nothing short of thrilling.

The shimmering adaptation has been engineered by David Edgar, shortening his first version for the Royal Shakespeare Company (presented on PBS with Roger Rees and David Threlfall). If you missed the first, miraculous incarnation – and even if you saw it – I’m happy to report that the Lyric’s version is just as delightful and uplifting.

Dickens’ idealistic tale of triumph over adversity has all the hallmarks you expect from his work. Drawing from his own family’s stay in debtor’s prison when he was twelve, Dickens chronicles the social evils of the time: the cruelty visited on children by knowing adults, the vulnerability of women and the infirm and the growing ranks of the impoverished.

Dickens threw his lot in with the Romantics who approached realism with a fanciful eye. The characters of Dickens’ creative imagination may seem at first glance to be melodramatic, especially the villains – but soon you’re aware of the emptiness in their hearts, too. The alchemy involved is quite remarkable: These broadly drawn inhabitants of Dickens’ London seem utterly real, despite Dickens’ romantic embellishment. In director Spiro Veloudos’ pitch perfect production at Lyric, twenty four actors portray one hundred and fifty roles and you marvel at each and every portrayal.

THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY begins, of course, with Jack Cutmore-Scott as the bravest of young men thrown to the wolves by circumstance (that would be the stock market crash, in case you’re looking for resonance to our time). Cutmore-Scott plays Nickleby with a righteous swagger. He’s kind, he’s good, but he’s no patsy. Jason Powers portrays the unfortunate Smike with an inner glow which fairly ignites under Nickleby’s protection. You cannot watch their friendship and not have your faith in man renewed.

Will Lyman gives a charismatic (and slightly wry) performance as Nickleby’s uncle and arch enemy. Wonderfully evil, too, is Nigel Gore as the nasty boarding school master and later, as a lascivious gentleman bent on deflowering Nickleby’s sweet sister (Elizabeth A. Rimar who blossoms as her independence and confidence grows). Maureen Keiller gets lots of giggles as her gregarious, chattering twit of a mother. Larry Coen is hilarious as the boarding school master’s potty son and later, as master of the revels. Sasha Castroverde is impressive in every role, from the conniving daughter of the schoolmaster to the gracious beauty who captivates our hero.

The Lyric stage overflows with rich performances; from Peter A. Carey’s compassionate, heaven sent clerk to Eric Hamel’s deliciously pompous wannabe actor, from John Davin’s greedy, grasping bachelor to Daniel Berger-Jones larger-than-life great hearted Scot, from Alycia Sacco’s clever en pointe “Phenomenon” to Leigh Barrett’s generous landlady. I wish I could name all the talented actors who enliven Dickens’ visionary adventure. I wish I could entice you to attend by revealing director Veloudos’ inspired comic touches…Better you enjoy them firsthand.

It’s not often a piece of theater can hold you in its thrall long after you’ve seen it. NICHOLAS NICKLEBY does just that. I can re-imagine every scene in my mind’s eye and be thrilled all over again exactly as I am with every year’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL. How many authors’ works can do that?

Body Politic By Beverly Creasey

2010-10-29T10:48:00.001-04:00

Walt Whitman sang the body electric and now Annie Baker offers up BODY AWARENESS in her award winning play of the same name (running through Nov. 20th as part of the SHIRLEY, VT. PLAYS FESTIVAL). What makes BODY AWARENESS cheeky and smart are her quirky characters: They’re delightfully self-absorbed and at the same time, lovingly human. Baker manages to spoof political correctness and work in a nifty conundrum about the politics of art ...without us really noticing. We’re too busy giggling.

Paula Plum plays one half of a hip lesbian couple and doting mother to an extremely bright but noticeably strange child. Gregory Pember is nothing short of brilliant as the toothbrush sucking twenty-one year old who seems to be an emotional twelve. The remarkable Plum pulls off “saintly” and “funny” without batting an eyelash. Her partner (the always compelling Adrianne Krstansky) is hosting a conference at her women’s college in observance of “eating disorders week.” Their son is not the only obsessive. The professor has changed the name of the conference to “Body Awareness Week” so that the students can “reclaim their body image” from those who seek to “objectify” them.

Into their out of control but tightly knit little family unit marches a guest artist (a droll Richard Snee), a macho, new age, male photographer who specializes in nudes (female only). Even worse than the exploitation factor the professor infers, he calls her ‘honey’… Even worse for the uninitiated son, he imparts some hilariously appalling advice to him about sex. Baker has the perfect setup to whirl into motion – and does it ever in director Paul Daigneault’s deft, seemingly effortless production. BODY AWARENESS pleases, from Nathan Leigh’s spot on (laugh out loud) musical interpretations to Bobby Frederick Tilley II’s collegiate garb to Cristina Todesco’s sophisticated, book filled, light filled (Jeff Adelberg) apartment.

She’s Back! By Beverly Creasey

2010-10-27T17:34:00.000-04:00

It’s A Hard Knock Life. Tomorrow. You know the show by heart: A dozen adorable little girls, one nasty matron and a cute dog. The Wheelock Family Theatre’s production of the famous musical is not your grandmother’s ANNIE. It’s still plenty sweet but director Jane Staab’s version is more than timely, with its Depression ethos. The Wheelock’s ANNIE (playing thru Nov. 22nd) has satiric bite.

It’s almost inconceivable that the 1930’s are back, with unemployment skyrocketing and foreclosures exploding across the country. When ANNIE first took Broadway by storm in the ‘70s, its creators had no idea that the stock market crash of 1929 would resonate in our time. Staab and company highlight the politics of poverty for maximum effect, from the billboard outside the radio studio proclaiming “The World’s Highest Standard of Living” to the breadlines forming outside Daddy Warbucks’ Christmas celebration.

Anita Fuchs’ suggestive expanse of skyscraping iron and glass easily accommodates a broadcast studio, a high rise orphanage and Daddy Warbucks’ Fifth Avenue mansion. Staab’s clever “radio serial” frame for the musical is a perfect fit, since Chauncey Moore’s corny radio show is already part of the musical. The cast, too, is perfection, from Grace Brakeman’s spunky Annie to Cheryl McMahon’s villainous Miss Hannigan. Aimee Doherty makes Daddy Warbucks’ Gal Friday irresistible (especially when she’s excited) and Timothy John Smith adds dash to the character of the charismatic billionaire industrialist.

John F. King brings style and pizzaz to the featured role of Rooster: Easy Street gives him plenty of opportunity to show off Laurel Conrad’s smart choreography. The orphans do her proud, as well, in the bucket slamming, floor scrubbing Hard Knock number. Music director Steven Bergman keeps all the orphans (and adults, for that matter) on pitch, not an easy task for children. Lisa Simpson’s costumes not only suit each role. They clearly define the chasm between the haves and have-nots, the former sparkling under Daniel H. Jentzen’s lush lighting while the latter suffer the dark.

Here’s why you should give ANNIE another turn around the block: Each scene, each character has new meaning for us watching what we thought was so familiar, thanks to Staab’s brilliant, audience friendly staging. The children in my party were delighted and the adults were moved.

Legends at Reagle By Beverly Creasey

2010-10-20T16:57:00.000-04:00

Reagle Music Theatre hosted Broadway legend Leslie Uggams over the weekend and she showed why her star shines just as bright today as it did when she appeared weekly on the Mitch Miller television show. She can bend a note, rocket that note to the stratosphere and bring it back with a whisper safe and sound. She delivers gorgeous standards and familiar show tunes but most impressive is her magical ability to take a pop tune like the Drifters’ Up On The Roof and turn it into the sweetest of dream songs, as if “On the Roof” were “Over the Rainbow.”

If you missed her UPTOWN, DOWNTOWN cabaret at Reagle, you may be able to see her as Lena Horne on Broadway in STORMY WEATHER, the new tribute musical she hopes to bring to New York.

The next legend coming to Reagle is Patti Page, queen of the airwaves in the fifties and early sixties. She “owned” songs like Old Cape Cod, The Tennessee Waltz and of course, that little Doggie in the Window. Radio had just begun to play Top Forty music and Page came of age with Elvis, believe it or not. Imagine hearing Les Paul, Mary Ford, Page and Elvis, one right after the other on the radio. Then rock n’ roll transformed inventor Les Paul’s electric guitar into a weapon for social change and the crooners were crowded out. I knew all the lyrics to the “doggie” song but Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino were irresistible to us teenagers. When we were coming of age in the sixties, we never imagined we’d be sixty! Now nostalgia reaches back to those days by the radio when it all started. It’ll be lovely to hear those old songs again. Page comes to Reagle November 21st.

Murder Most Foul By Beverly Creasey

2010-10-20T09:45:00.000-04:00

Used to be, every school, every town had a couple of scary guys… but they couldn’t wreak much havoc on their own. Now they can hook up on the internet and find a cluster of other like minded fanatics. And as we’ve witnessed, the mayhem is far more serious.

David Gow’s play, CHERRY DOCS, focuses on one instance of racially motivated violence perpetrated by a white supremacist. The skinhead is now on trial for murder and has been assigned a public defender… who is Jewish.

The stunning New Repertory Theatre production of CHERRY DOCS (playing through Nov. 7th) is helmed by David R. Gammons who directed their heart stopping production of THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE two seasons back. Gammons extracts all the physical intensity he can from CHERRY DOCS (named for a pair of steel toed Doc Marten’s boots). Voices scream, bodies flinch and chairs fly.

Gow’s script elegantly traverses the evolving relationship of the two men: their growing dependency and their dual transformations. Both change: one for the better and one for the worse or should I say for the “sadder but wiser.”

Gow uses Judaism and the Bible as touchstones for redemption and forgiveness, with lovely metaphors sewn into a prayer shawl belonging to the lawyer’s father. If only the defendant’s turnaround didn’t seem so contrived. Tim Eliot and Benjamin Evett suffer and spar for ninety minutes in tour de force performances, heightened by Adam Stone’s startling sound effects and Jenna McFarland Lord’s claustrophobic cell/set, lit without mercy by Karen Perlow.

Here Comes the Sun Again By Beverly Creasey

2010-10-16T20:09:00.000-04:00

When it premiered in 1973, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (playing at the Cambridge YMCA thru Oct. 23rd) was unique for its unusual score, in 3/4 (waltz) time and for its overture, sung by the chorus. Thirty-seven years later, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC is a guilty pleasure: a hearty helping of sardonic Sondheim wit served over James Lapine’s lovely book (inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film).

The Metro Stage production has a delightful cast to pose as restless Scandinavians—whose antidote to endless days in the land of the midnight sun appears to be romantic liaisons. To add to their troubles, everyone seems to be involved with the wrong person. Fredrik thinks he adores his child bride. His son, too, loves his father’s bride. The Count thinks he wants Desiree but Desiree loves Fredrik. Talk about lover’s knots! Untangling the couples is the real joy of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC.

Metro has four solid performers in the lead roles so that any combination of the four creates sparks. James Fitzpatrick as Fredrik and Robert Case as the count lock horns in pursuit of Tracy Nygard as Desiree. Case and Shana Dirik lock horns as husband and wife…and Fitzpatrick and Nygard lock arms as lovers in times past. Everyone knows Send in the Clowns (Sondheim’s only crossover pop chart hit) but Nygard gives it new, tragic life. If you need one reason to see Metro’s production, Nygard is it.

Director Maryann Zschau (who has played Desiree herself) gets charming performances from the whole ensemble, especially from John Coons as Fredrik’s smitten son, enamored of Joelle Kross as the immature child bride…and from Mary O’Donnell as the wise grandmama to Desiree’s daughter, sweetly portrayed by Isabelle Miller. Kudos to Neil Fortin (with help from Richard Itczak) for the sumptuous period costumes, to Rachel Bertone for the elegant waltzes and to Maria Duaime for the gorgeous music.

Lovely Tree Tale from Blue Spruce By Beverly Creasey

2010-10-13T10:25:00.000-04:00

ONCE ON THIS ISLAND is a charming little musical with an infectious Caribbean beat. The calypso infused story is a magical folk tale about gods and humans and the trouble they wreak. At the heart of the Ahrens/Flaherty musical is an enchanting young girl (Kira Cowan) who learns about love and the cruel world. Just beneath the lilting melodies and whimsical lyrics lies a serious lesson about the evils of colonialism. Blue Spruce Theatre’s clever production (running through Oct. 24th) plays up the inventive nature of the piece with ingenious double casting (which works via impressive acting and Lindsay Hurley’s distinctive headwear).

Directors Jesse Strachman and Jennifer Condon manage to capture pure air in their light, breezy production and Condon’s hip, syncopated choreography amuses with every turn. Dan Rodriguez’s combo infuses the music with sweet island spirit. (If you’re not swaying to the Afro-Cuban beat of the drums, your heart just isn’t in the right place.)

What a cast Blue Spruce has assembled! Each and every performer brings a sense of joy and wonderment to the piece….and first rate vocals as well. Kendra Alati adds her gorgeous, soaring soprano to the mix. Kira Cowan adds remarkable footwork. Abigail Cordell adds warmth. Kaedon Gray adds humor. David Lucey adds menace. Alaina Fragoso adds style. David Carney adds drama and Alexa Niziak is just plain adorable as Little Ti Moune.

Almost Heaven By Beverly Creasey

2010-10-10T19:33:00.000-04:00

Theatre On Fire has a reputation for unearthing smart, sardonic scripts from writers known for more famous works. ALMOST AN EVENING (at the Charlestown Working Theatre thru Oct. 23rd) by one of the filmmaking Coen brothers is TOF’s latest coup. Screenwriter Ethan Coen mixes the zaniness of RAISING ARIZONA (one of my favorite movies) with the menace of FARGO for an evening of offbeat musings on life, death and everything in between.

ALMOST AN EVENING begins with Marc Harpin waiting ad infinitum in (of course) a waiting room. Harpin contorts his wonderfully malleable face into expressions of boredom, impatience and desperation, reminiscent of Stan Laurel in distress. Even Harpin’s sobs are delightful.

He delivers the goods again in a short play called DEBATE as a smarmy new age pitch man. He’s selling love and good fortune, acting like he knew each and every one of us intimately. His polar opposite at the morality seminar is Jeff Gill in a riotous rant about how rotten we all are, caring about no one but ourselves…fretting over trivialities like parking. (How did he know that?) Gill spews such hilarious fire and brimstone that you wish his character was in every scene.

Between those two playlets is a less successful piece about spies and the people they have to dispatch (with Craig Houk and Phil Thompson). The first scene of FOUR BENCHES is performed entirely in the dark (except for five uncomfortable seconds). Here’s what I’ve discovered from that little theatrical experiment: It’s much more difficult to hear dialogue when your senses aren’t working in harmony. Without my sight, I had trouble figuring out who was speaking and that preoccupied my brain instead of absorbing what was said. Thank heaven the rest of the play, with Houk, Bill Doscher and Jorge Martinez was well lit!

Director Darren Evans gets fine performances all around, especially in Coen’s perceptive gender gymnastics, where two couples (Gill & Lisa Caron Driscoll and Chris Wagner & Kate Donnelly) spar about “feelings” and the usual hot button topics of disagreement. Coen goes right for the jugular and the performers don’t miss a beat. ALMOST AN EVENING, it turns out, is just the right amount.

A Room of Her Own By Beverly Creasey

2010-09-24T18:55:00.000-04:00

Sarah Ruhl’s strange, provocative play, IN THE NEXT ROOM (or the vibrator play) is getting a smart production at SpeakEasy Stage. Director Scott Edmiston has assembled a first rate cast to enliven Ruhl’s tale of mass hysteria in the Victorian age. Ruhl based her play on a scholarly study of Victorian medicine (years before Freud’s revolutionary theories of sexuality) at a time when “nervous prostration” was understood to have its origin in “congestion of the womb.” Even more outlandish was the accepted medical practice of massage to achieve a “release” of the toxins. When doctors needed more time for other patients, a mechanical vibrator took the place of manual stimulation. Clinical vibrators, believe it or not, were advertised for sale in the Sears Roebuck catalog!

Ruhl has crafted a comedy of sorts about a practitioner and his wife to highlight the gulf between pleasure and marriage, a rift echoed in the off kilter arrangement of the set (by Susan Zeeman Rogers), whereby the parlor and the doctor’s adjoining office slant away from each other, just like their occupants. The wife prefers candlelight to electricity. She likes long walks and the scientist can’t waste the time … and sex for them, evidently, is merely an obligation.

This being a comedy (at times) the women will discover a more practical use for the office equipment. Anne Gottlieb and Marianna Bassham are downright hilarious, experiencing orgasm for the first time thanks to this new invention. Ruhl joins the ranks of Eve Ensler (vocalizing varied orgasms within different cultures in The Vagina Monologues) and Meg Ryan (in the famous “I’ll have what she’s having” scene in When Harry Met Sally) for getting us to laugh about a ticklish subject.

Unfortunately the play loses ground when Ruhl switches focus, as if she changed her mind about the issues she wanted to cover. Motherhood, surrogacy, feminism, homosexuality and the nature of the soul all make an appearance, but threads are dropped and characters abruptly change trajectory. Luckily, the SpeakEasy performances are what keep us in thrall. In addition to Gottlieb and Bassham’s star turns, Frances Idlebrook (as the doctor’s assistant) gives a heartbreaking portrayal of unfulfilled promise and Lindsey McWhorter gets a stunning speech about her love for a child (although it seems like it belongs in another play altogether). Many of Ruhl’s tangents seem peculiarly at odds with the love story at the heart of the play. (I’m only guessing at the “heart” of the matter because of the romantic revelation at play’s end.)

The men are peripheral (for the most part) to the joy and discovery of the female characters, although they initiate actions which set the women on their journeys: Derry Woodhouse is the doctor sorely out of touch with his emotions, Dennis Trainor, Jr. is the clueless husband of the depressed patient who flowers apart from him, and Craig Wesley Divino cuts a swath as the manic artist who awakens possibility in two of the women. Gail Astrid Buckley’s infinite layers of under- and outer clothing for the women speaks volumes about the strictures of the age.

An Ostentation of MAMET By Beverly Creasey

2010-09-19T12:22:00.000-04:00

You have your choice of Mamets this week at the Arsenal Center for the Arts. BOSTON MARRIAGE is playing upstairs at New Repertory Theatre and GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS leases the Black Box Theater downstairs.

GLENGARRY is Mamet’s most celebrated play for its take-no-prisoners portrait of the gritty real estate game. (Mamet knows whereof he speaks, having worked in the business). He writes smart, nasty dialogue for his male characters but his female characters are another story. He’s been accused of being a misogynist, as most of the women he creates are predatory (Think OLEANNA). For my money, though, the women in the BOSTON MARRIAGE are not of that ilk. They’re supposed to be strong, turn of the century gals who don’t want or need men. Yet they come across as tropes, not as real women. They’re evidently what Mr. Mamet thinks women were like a hundred years ago: scheming, petulant, needy, hyperbolic and brutally class conscious.

When all the men in a Mamet play like GLENGARRY (or my favorite, AMERICAN BUFFALO) are despicable, we’re amused, delighted even, with their extraordinarily bad behavior, but make both women in the Boston alliance cruel, deceitful and callous and there’s little delight in it. I’ve seen two versions of BOSTON MARRIAGE: the initial outing directed by Mamet himself and this “Oscar Wilde” version directed by David Zoffoli (where the characters speak like Lady Bracknell). Even a stylized delivery doesn’t make the oddball dialogue funny. When the foulmouthed salesmen of GLENGARRY kid about “courtesy class” it’s cheeky and sardonic. When one of the women contends that “men live but to be deceived” or that “one must follow the buffalo herd,” it’s neither witty nor sardonic. It’s just strange for strangeness sake.

Try as they might, Jennie Israel and Debra Wise, both fine actresses, cannot make us understand why they’re speaking like Victorian poseurs. Melissa Baroni has an easier time of it as the longsuffering maid, the only character who’s authentic. She doesn’t engage in banter about the ruination of purses or the longing of loins. One syllable says it all for her. (I wish I could supply the “mute appreciation” the central character craves from her sister but I cannot.) The contentious BOSTON MARRIAGE plays through Oct. 3rd.

I can, however, rave about a shoestring production of GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS from Zero Point Theater. They may not have fancy sets (or Spellcheck) but they have crackerjack acting to create Mamet’s dog-eat-dog banquet of bad behavior. Before the housing bubble and the ’08 crash and the banks to blame, there was GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, a celebration (or vilification depending on your point of view) of the tract salesman, the guy who sells units before there are any. Mamet called them “a dying breed” and he was right…soon thereafter replaced by rapacious mortgage lenders.

Director Emil S. Kreymer gets supple performances from David DiLillo as the desperate old fashioned salesman who isn’t cutting it any more, from Brian Zifcak as the parasitic office manager, from Kenneth Siddons as the larcenous “mastermind” behind the scenes, from Jack Agnew as the benighted client conned by sales leader Ricky Roma (Sean Stanco in a charismatic turn as the brash know-it-all) and from Walter Driscoll as the funniest Aaronow I’ve encountered in many a GLENGARRY performance. Watching Driscoll suffer the closer he gets to his interview with the police is simply delicious. Director Kreymer filled in nicely for an ailing actor (as the policeman) the night I attended. See it before the closing this weekend!

Cautionary CABARET By Beverly Creasey

2010-09-18T11:22:00.000-04:00

The A.R.T.’s CABARET at Club Oberon, not their theater space, encompasses a world where Kit Kat Klub pranksters intrude on almost every scene — infiltrating the audience, checking our bags, crawling up the balcony railings, standing on audience chairs, balancing on our tables, knocking over our drinks. Director Steven Bogart does not let you forget that Berlin was a dangerous place in the ‘30s and anonymity was impossible. A ruffian, or rather a prankster, can ruffle your hair at any moment. The Dresden Dolls’ phenom, Amanda Palmer (who plays the emcee) wanted an interactive setting for her production of the Kander & Ebb musical (running through the end of October) and she gets it.

A consequence of this frenetic atmosphere is that the absence of the whirlwind heightens the dramatic punch: The Nazi threat (personified in the elegant presence of David Costa as everyone’s seductive “friend”) and the impossible marriage of the rueful landlady (Thomas Derrah) to her beloved greengrocer (Remo Airaldi) stand out in relief like a fresco. We’re of course charmed by Sally Bowles (Aly Trasher) and the Isherwood stand-in (Matt Wood) but the stage is electrified when the threat is undeniably immediate. Director Bogart gives us another, stunning “immediate” horror at the end of the musical (reminiscent of Stacey Klein’s ashen rain in Double Edge’s SONG OF ABSENCE) which triggers a flashback to his clever foreshadows like the train which transports the “Money” number to its climax.

Palmer gets a plaintive, sardonic duet with Tom Duprey on trumpet (I Don’t Care Much) and cheeky gender bending with the naughty Two Ladies but curiously, Tom Derrah as Fraulein Schneider makes no waves, not a ripple in our suspension of disbelief. He plays it absolutely straight, as it were, and we’re completely convinced. Fraulein Schneider’s affection for her Jewish suitor and his mistaken belief that the Nazi menace will “pass” is the story that stays with you long after you’ve “Come to the Cabaret.”