Apollinaire Serves Up Chaos and Control with Witty ‘Lunch Bunch’

January 2, 2024January 2, 2024 michaelhobanLeave a comment

Cast of Apollinaire’s ‘Lunch Bunch’. Photos by Danielle Fauteux Jacques

‘The Lunch Bunch’ – Written by Sarah Einspanier; Directed by Danielle Fauteux Jacques; Scenic & Sound Design: Joseph Lark-Riley; Lighting Design: Danielle Fauteux Jacques; Presented by Apollinaire Theatre Company Chelsea Theatre Works, located at 189 Winnisimmet St., Chelsea, MA through January 21

by Mike Hoban

What do you do when the stress of your thankless job drives you to the brink of madness every single day? You could drink like a fish and do boatloads of cocaine like the brokers in Wolf of Wall Street, or there’s always the healthier options of meditating, doing yoga, getting a therapist, or working out. Or you could try a third option: engage obsessively in a ritual that gives you the illusion of control over your chaotic and unpredictable life. The latter is the route that the characters in Apollinaire’s production of the Lunch Bunch have taken, and while it works just about as well as you would suspect it would for the characters, this very funny sendup of foodie culture is a great stress reliever for audiences.

Cristhian Mancinas-García, Alex Leondedis

Apollinaire Theatre Company’s ‘Hir’ Throws It All Out There

March 3, 2020 michaelhobanLeave a comment

Cast of Apollinaire Theatre Company’s ‘Hir’

Review by James Wilkinson

Hir – Written by Taylor Mac. Directed by Brooks Reeves. Scenic and Properties Design: Ilona Overweg & Kevin McGrath. Costume Design: Elizabeth Rocha. Lighting & Sound Design: Christopher Bocchiaro & Robin Donovan Bocchiaro. Produced by Apollinaire Theater Company at Chelsea Theater Works, February 14-March 8, 2020.

Apollinaire Theatre Company’s production of Taylor Mac’s Hir is a disorienting piece of work, (I think this is mostly by design, so stick with me). From the moment the stage lights come up, the world feels off kilter and I think that the audience can smell it. It pushes them onto unsteady ground. When we go to a narrative drama, we’re often looking at how and why characters change over a period of time. With Hir, the change has already happened, leaving the rest of us to get up to speed with them. It’s as though we’ve caught these characters with their hands already half-way into the cookie jar and as they proceed to empty it out in front of us they keep assuring us, “don’t worry about it…this is fine…just don’t worry about it.” Is it though? I guess that’s up to us.

Apollinaire Theatre Company Lets You ‘Cry it Out’

December 28, 2019December 30, 2019 michaelhobanLeave a comment

*Amie Gem Lytle, Lily Kaufman and Becca A. Lewis in Apollinaire Theatre Company’s ‘Cry it Out’*

Review by James Wilkinson

Cry it Out – Written by Molly Smith Metzler. Directed by Danielle Fauteux Jacques. Set Design: Ilona Overweg. Costume Design: Elizabeth Rocha. Sound Design: David Reiffel. Properties Design: Kevin McGrath. Presented by Apollinaire Theatre Company at Chelsea Theatre Works, 189 Winnisimmet St, Chelsea through January 19, 2020

If you stop and think about it, it’s actually a rather brutal title. We’ll be given context early on in the play by Molly Smith Metzler that’s now being produced by Apollinaire Theatre Company, which is helpful for those of us who have yet to enter the parenting game. “Cry it Out,” as in “Letting them cry it out,” refers to a method of sleep training where the parents refrain from comforting their wailing newborns so that the infants can learn to fall asleep without assistance. It’s a necessary skill for life, (I guess), but by attaching the phrase to a play about parenting, Metzler gives it much darker implications. As her characters attempt to navigate the trials and tribulations of young motherhood through a lens of class and circumstance, the title starts to feel like an unspoken sneer coming from the society around them – one that’s dripping with existential dread. “Yeah, no one’s coming to help you. Figure it out for yourselves” seems to be the lesson imparted. Grim stuff to attach to the joys of motherhood.

ASP’s Stripped Down ‘King Lear’ Yields Mixed Results

October 8, 2019October 9, 2019 michaelhobanLeave a comment

(Actors Shakespeare Project’s ‘King Lear’ Robert Walsh, Lear and Lydia Barnett-Mulligan, Regan. PHOTO CREDIT MAGGIE HALL)

‘King Lear’ – Written by William Shakespeare; Directed by Doug Lockwood. Scenic Design by Jon Savage; Lighting Design by Jeff Adelberg; Costume Design by Jesicca Pribble; Sound Design by David Reiffel. Presented by Actors’ Shakespeare Project at Chelsea Theatre Works, 189 Winnisimmet St, Chelsea, MA through October 27, 2019.

by Julie-Anne Whitney

Actors’ Shakespeare Project opens their 16th Season with a mystifying “near-future” production of King Lear at the Chelsea Theatre Works. The intimate black box theater in downtown Chelsea was the perfect space to stage this dark, ominous Shakespearean tragedy.

Revisiting History with The Longwood Players’ “A Bright Room Called Day”

November 9, 2017November 9, 2017 michaelhobanLeave a comment

by James Wilkinson

The Longwood Players present A Bright Room Called Day by Tony Kushner. Nov 3-11, 2017. Presented at Chelsea Theatre Works. Directed by Kaitlyn Chantry. Set Design by John Randell. Lighting Design by Erik Foxx. Costume Design by Sandy Chantry. Sound Design by Lee Neikirk. Projection Design by Sunil Doshi. Prop Designer by Kaitlyn Chantry and Kat McCorkle.

I have a friend who absolutely refuses to read a book more than once. Her reasoning is that once she knows what’s going to happen in the story, (AKA the plot), she loses interest. For her, the magic is in finding out what happens next. Personally, I’ve never been that sort of person (and have argued with her on that point many times), but her theory is one that you often find lobbed at theater companies, especially those who specialize in the classical cannon (“Why, oh why do we need to see yet another production of Hamlet?”). To those people I would say that a theater script isn’t like a novel or a movie, which remains fixed each time the viewer comes to it. A play script is more like a template or, if you like, a tool box. Even within the most precise of writers there can be a great deal of variety in how a theater director explores the possibilities the playwright lays out. As an audience member, there can be a great deal of fun in going to a new production of a play you’ve seen before and saying “How are they going to tackle this one?”