Rock of Ages – Featuring a book by Chris D’Arienzo and arrangements and orchestrations by Ethan Popp, the tenth anniversary tour is being directed by Martha Banta and choreographed by Janet Rothermel. At the Boch Center Wang Theatre, Boston through 10/28
You don’t have to have been a child of MTV to enjoy Rock of Ages, the jukebox musical now rocking the Boch Center Wang Theatre – but it certainly helps. Featuring songs by bands that helped launch the channel back in its early days – Twisted Sister, Quarterflash, REO Speedwagon, Whitesnake, Foreigner, Journey and Pat Benatar – the show is a essentially comic sendup of every dumb rock and roll movie ever made from Beach Blanket Bingo to Rock n Roll High School, and it’s a blast.
Newport Playhouse’s holiday offering is, “A Doublewide Texas Christmas” by Jones, Hope, & Wooten. Somewhere in the Texas heartland, lies the brand new town of Doublewide – Population, 10. It’s Christmas time, and things are complicated. You see, Doublewide is being double crossed by the county, there’s a nativity competition to worry about, and there’s a pack of overly aggressive raccoons hanging around just outside the door. All the makings of raucous Yule time comedy.
(MEASURE FOR MEASURE by Shakespeare, , Writer – William Shakespeare, Director – Declan Donnellan, Designer – Nick Ormerod, Lighting – Sergei Skornetsky, Paris, 2015, Credit: Johan Persson/)
By Deanna Dement Myers
ArtsEmerson welcomes Cheek by Jowl (UK) and The Pushkin Theatre Moscow (Russia) with Measure for Measure. This production by the international award-winning Director Declan Donnellan and Designer Nick Ormerod asks vital and unsettling questions about how we are governed and, in the process, unmasks the true nature of authority, love and justice. The creative team includes Assistant Director Kirill Sbitnev, Lighting Designer Sergey Skornetskiy, Composer Pavel Akimkin, and Choreographer Irina Kashuba. The limited run of only six performances takes place October 24 through 28, 2018 at the Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre. Tickets may be purchased at www.ArtsEmerson.org.
“The tempter or the tempted, who sins the most?”
Power and purity are explored in this production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Performed entirely in Russian on a stage bare except for four, enormous, red cubes, this modern interpretation has a stark beauty and a fluid physical presentation that transcends the need to understand the language. Government corruption and licentious behavior is easily understood without the overhead captioning. The entire cast is present during most scenes, gliding at times like a school of fish, at another as a phalanx, with characters and set pieces peeling off and rejoining the array as the scene requires. Part dance and part stagehands, the non-speaking cast members offer commentary and witness, much like a Greek chorus.
Murder for Two – An original musical with book and music by JoeKinosian and book and lyrics by Kellen Blair. JC Clementz directs. Creative team includes Regina Garcia, Scenic Designer; Misti Bradford, Costumer Designer; Aimee Hanyzewski, Lighting Designer; and David Remedio, Sound Designer. Presented by the Merrimack Repertory Theater at 50 E Merrimack St, Lowell, MA through November 11
“Will someone kill the lights?”
The cozy stage at the Merrimack Repertory Theater is sparsely dressed to look like an old New England family home and is dominated by a red grand piano. It soon becomes clear that the piano is a defacto third actor adding to the two-person cast of the musical murder mystery, Murder for Two, the second show of the MRT’s 40th season.
Written by David Meyers, Directed by Jim Petosa; Scenic Designer, Ryan Bates; Costume Designer, Becca Jewett; Lighting Designer, Matthew Rodgers; Sound Designer, Dewey Dellay; Stage Manager, Brian Robillard. CAST (in alphabetical order): Sarah Oakes Muirhead, Conor Proft, Tim Spears. Performances through November 4 at New Repertory Theatre, Mosesian Center for the Arts, 321 Arsenal Street, Watertown, MA through November 4
For 90 minutes after the lights went up until the final blackout, the audience at We Will Not Be Silent was mostly silent, captivated by the drama unfolding in an interrogation cell in 1943 Munich. The 21 year-old subject Sophie Scholl’s crime? High treason, from participating with other students (including her older brother Hans) and a professor at the University in the non-violent activist group the White Rose, with punishment by guillotine. Founded on the principles of peaceful protest, the group authored and distributed pamphlets to resist the Nazi regime, speaking out about Hitler’s violent treatment of children and Jews.
The current show by the Uncommon Theatre in Foxboro at the Orpheum Theatre is “Annie”, the 1977 hit musical. Based on Harold Gray’s comic strip “Little Orphan Annie”, it won seven Tony Awards and ran for 2,377 performances. This high energy show is a hit again with this audience. This heart warming musical is the rags-to-riches story of plucky young Annie’s journey from a hard knock orphanage to the luxurious home of billionaire businessman Oliver Warbucks. It has insightful direction by Meg Quin Dussault, topnotch musical direction by Eric Anderson Jr. and wonderful choreography by Alex Sweeny. This show is what is needed in today’s society, a brighter future and the optimism of the title character.
Gamm Theatre’s first show of their 34th season in their new theatre in Warwick is “Night of the Iguana” by Tennessee Williams which is based on his 1946 short story. He later developed it into a three act play. It is the darkly tragicomic 1961 show about humanity’s difficulty in hanging onto love, faith and grace, set on the brink of World War II when these things were sorely lacking which sounds a lot like things these days, too. The show is set in 1940 at a run down Costa Verde Hotel on the west coast of Mexico where the recently widowed Maxine Faulks sees a chance to hang onto her life and trade when an old pal from Texas visits her.
All My Sons – Written by Arthur Miller. Directed by Joe Juknievich. Assistant Director/Stage Manager: Isabelle Beagen. Costume Design: Maureen Festa. Sound Design: Francis avier Norton. Movement/Intimacy/Violence Director: Kayleigh Kane. Produced by Praxis Stage at Chelsea Theatre Works through October 27, 2018.
It feels like Arthur Miller should be having more of a moment in theatrical circles than he currently is. Looking at his best work, you can see him wrestling with many of the ideas bouncing around in our contemporary political climate. What is America? What do we owe each other? How do the darker sides of capitalism affect the family unit? The individual? From the start of his career, Miller seemed to be taking the baton from Ibsen and using a theatrical framework to examine the relationship between the individual and society. One of Miller’s early works was even an English-adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, a play that looks at the cost a man is willing to pay for speaking truth against the wishes of the people around him. Earlier this year, I decided to acquaint myself with more of Miller’s work and it was fascinating to find specific lines and scenes in those old plays that spoke to the current moment. It’s a sign of either an especially prescient writer or a stunted society that didn’t learn its lesson when the work was staged the first time around.
“The Queens of the Golden Mask”, a world premiere, is currently running at the historic Ivoryton Playhouse. Carole Lockwood’s new play pulls aside the Cotton Curtain to reveal a piece of history that tells a little known story and also raises a warning. It starts off in 1961 and moves two years later in Act 2. The normalizing of hate is dangerous and toxic, not only to the objects of the hatred but eventually destroying those who are caught up in its comfortable complacency. The play is based on the experiences of Elizabeth H. Cobbs written by Petric Smith who also wrote the autobiographical “Long Time Coming: An Insiders Story of the Birmingham Church Bombing That Rocked the World”. Smith’s work provides more than an insiders account of one of the most atrocious events of the civil rights era; it is also the personal journey of a woman inside the world of the most extreme opponents of racial justice. In the violent world of the Klan, women were subservient; men beat their wives with impunity in order to maintain white male supremacy But there were many who, quietly and with great moral courage, put their lives on the line. This is their story. They hide behind a religious facade while performing despicable actions, pretending they are only in a patriotic social club.
THE BARBER OF SEVILLE – Music by Gioacchino Rossini; Libretto by Cesare Sterbini; Sung in Italian with English surtitles; Conductor David Angus; Stage Director Rosetta Cucchi; Set Designer Julia Noulin-Mérat; Costume Designer Gianluca Falaschi; Lighting Designer DM Wood. Presented by the Boston Lyric Opera at the Emerson Cutler Majestic Theater, 219 Tremont St., Boston through October 21
As I have stated in my previous reviews of opera, the extent of my experience with the form until this past spring has been limited to viewings of the Warner Bros. classic, “What’s Opera Doc”. And while that may disqualify me from having an informed opinion on the operatic qualities of the Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, I can say unequivocally that from a pure entertainment standpoint, Barber is a blast. From the opening strains of the overture (which should be instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever listened to classical music or, quite frankly, ever watched television in the previous century) to the joyful marriage of Rosina and Count Almaviva where EVERYBODY wins – even the ‘bad” guys – BLO’s ‘Barber’ is a comic and musical joy.
