Carter, Odetoyinbo Shine in ‘The Light’ at Lyric

June 8, 2022 michaelhobanLeave a comment

Yewande Odetoyinbo and Dominic Carter in ‘The Light’ at Lyric Stage. Photos by Mark S. Howard

by Mike Hoban

‘The Light’ – Written by Loy A. Webb; Directed by Jacqui Parker; Scenic Design by Baron E. Pugh; Sound Design by Owen Meadows; Lighting Design by Elmer Martinez; Costume Design by Jez Insalaco. Presented by the Lyric Stage Company at 140 Clarendon St. Boston through June 26.

The opening scene of The Light, the final offering of the 2021-2022 seasonat Lyric Stage, has the look and feel of a lighthearted rom-com. Rashad, a single dad who works as a fireman, is frantically straightening up the apartment of his girlfriend Genesis, a principal at a Chicago charter school, as he nervously prepares to ask her to marry him. When she arrives, she suspects something is up, but wonders if he has remembered that this is the two-year anniversary of their first date. What sounds like the premise of a thousand sitcoms soon takes a decidedly more serious tone. So instead of a comic romp, we get a highly-charged story loaded with twists and turns that becomes a serious discussion of how men and women – particularly Black women – view the issue of sexual violence against women in the post #MeToo world.

Shall We Cancel A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder? It Appears To Be the Only Civilized Thing to Do.

May 5, 2022May 5, 2022 michaelhoban2 Comments

*Cast of ‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder’ at the Lyric Stage. Photos by Mark S. Howard*

by Michael Cox

Times have changed. The theatre, especially, has changed in the past few years. Every theatre company in this city has declared as much.

This musical comedy, the culminating play of Lyric Stage Company’s season, is filled from beginning to end with the most vile and offensive sentiments. Exploitative and entitled characters espouse horrific colonialist ideals – racism, eugenics and open marriages between cousins – while they systematically quell the lower classes, hold back their capacity for progress and curtail their human dignity at every turn. Woke audience members must endure the most appalling rhetoric. The playmakers who have created A Gentleman’s Guide excuse these problematic sentiments by stating that the characters who express these things are murdered in increasingly fiendish ways. And murder can be delightful when it’s the obnoxious, entitled and tone deaf who are murdered.

Lyric Stage’s Superb ‘The Book of Will’ Takes Us Back to the Time of the Bard

March 8, 2022March 8, 2022 michaelhobanLeave a comment

*Cast of ‘The Book of Will’ at Lyric Stage*

“The Book of Will.” Written by Lauren Gunderson. Directed by Courtney O’Connor. Scenic Design by Janie E. Howland; Costume Design by Elisabetta Polito; Lighting Design by Christopher Brushberg; Sound Design by Elizabeth Cahill. Produced by The Lyric Stage Company of Boston, 140 140 Clarendon St., Boston through March 27.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Ever wonder about the immediate aftermath of Shakespeare’s death, how his plays were preserved in an era when plays were not considered to be important works of literature, plots were largely constructed by the actors and written out in a ‘fair copy’ for their records by the company scribes, and new plays were churned out at an incredibly fast rate to provide the companies with enough material to keep performing new shows all the time?

Well, wonder no more.

In Lyric’s ‘Mr. Parent’, Actor Takes on Most Important Role

January 25, 2022January 28, 2022 michaelhobanLeave a comment

Maurice Emmanuel in Lyric’ Stage’s ‘Mr. Parent’

by Mike Hoban

“Mr. Parent” Written by Melinda Lopez with Maurice Emmanual Parent. Conceived with and Directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian. Scenic Design by Cristina Todesco; Sound Design/Composer, Arshan Gailus; Lighting Design by Karen Perlow; Costume Design by Yao Chen. Presented by The Lyric Stage Company of Boston, 140 Clarendon St. through Feb. 6

For most anyone working in the arts – save for the top echelon of folks that are able to actually earn a living doing what they love – the thrill of being in the spotlight is all too often offset by the rigors of a day job. For some that means working in occupations that are solely about earning a paycheck, and for others it means their career clearly trumps the artistic endeavor. For Boston actor Maurice Emmanuel Parent, what started out as a way to earn a living and pay down his massive student loans eventually became much more than just a job, as he took on his most important role – that of a schoolteacher in the Boston Public School system.

Lyric Stage’s ‘The Last Five Years’ Explores Joy and Pain of Love

November 18, 2021November 23, 2021 michaelhobanLeave a comment

*Jared and Kira Troilo in Lyric Stages “The Last Five Years” Photos by Mark S. Howard*

by Mike Hoban

‘The Last Five Years’ – Written byJason Robert Brown; Directed by Leigh Barrett; Scenic Design by Jenna McFarland Lord; Lighting Design by Karen Perlow; Sound Design by Andrew Duncan Will; Costume Design by David Lucey. Presented by The Lyric Stage Company of Boston at 40 Clarendon St., Boston through December 5^th, 2021

As anyone who has gone through a divorce or bitter breakup can tell you, there are few things in life that can generate such deep emotional pain. Fortunately for music and theater fans, it’s also a great source of material for creative artists. Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years mines this fertile territory via a clever framing device that allows the audience to witness the joy of a young couple’s budding romance while simultaneously experiencing the soul-crushing agony of their breakup.

Lyric Stage’s ‘Be Here Now’ Asks: “What Price Happiness?”

October 4, 2021October 4, 2021 michaelhobanLeave a comment

*Katherine C. Shaver, Barlow Adamson, Samantha Richert and Shani Farrell in The Lyric Stage Company* ‘*s ‘Be Here Now’. Photos by Mark S. Howard*

‘Be Here Now — Written by Deborah Zoe Laufer. Directed by Courtney O’Connor. Scenic Design by Janie E. Howland. Costume Design by Rachel Padula Shufelt. Lighting by Karen Perlow. Composition and Sound by Dewey Dellay. Starring Barlow Adamson, Shani Farrell, Samantha Richert and Katherine C. Shaver. Presented by The Lyric Stage Company of Boston at 140 Clarendon St. through October 17.

by Shelley A. Sackett

Deborah Zoe Laufer’s deceptively profound Be Here Now opens with an almost slapstick scene. Three women (Patty and Luanne Cooper and Bari) sit on yoga mats as the blissed-out disembodied voice coaches them to look inside themselves and “let go.” Patty (Shani Farrell) and Luanne (Katherine C. Shaver), dressed appropriately in latex, comply, closing their eyes and sinking into their mats. Bari (Samantha Richert) clearly marches to a different drummer. She is fully dressed (as in a midi dress and huge coat-sweater) and keeps her eyes defiantly open, widening them at each suggestion she close them. Her face portrays the furthest state from bliss possible. This woman is irredeemably and unapologetically miserable.

Lyric’s ‘The Treasurer’ a Layered Family Dramedy

February 25, 2020 michaelhobanLeave a comment

(Cheryl McMahon and Ken Cheeseman in Lyric Stage’s “The Treasurer”. Photo Credit: Mark S. Howard)

By Michele Markarian

‘The Treasurer’ – Written by Max Posner. Directed by Rebecca Bradshaw. Scenic Design by Kristin Loeffler; Costume Design by Chelsea Kerl; Lighting Design by Chris Hudacs; Sound Design by Elizabeth Cahill. Presented by The Lyric Stage Company of Boston, 140 Clarendon Street, Boston through March 22.

At some point in life, whether you want to or not, you may find yourself in the unenviable position of having to care for an aging parent. I say unenviable because not everyone’s parent ages poorly; my parents’ parents, for example, died with their boots on in their nineties. Even as the poorly aging parent becomes financially helpless and less mentally with it, they often don’t wish to relinquish control or their former lifestyle. Such is the case with Ida Armstrong (Cheryl McMahon) in Max Posner’s complicated family dramedy, The Treasurer.

Lyric Stage Serves Delicious Fare With ‘The Cake’

January 18, 2020January 18, 2020 michaelhobanLeave a comment

(*Karen MacDonald, Chelsea Diehl, and Kris Sidberry in ‘The Cake’ at Lyric Stage*
*PHOTO: Mark S. Howard*)

by Julie-Anne Whitney

‘The Cake’ – Written by Bekah Brunstetter; Directed by Courtney O’Connor; Scenic Design by Matt Whiton; Costume Design by Charles Schoonmaker; Lighting Design by Aja Jackson; Original Music/Sound Design by Arshan Gailus; Intimacy Direction by Ted Hewlett; Stage Managed by Diane McClean. Presented by the Lyric Stage Company of Boston through February 9.

Inspired by the 2015 Craig v. Masterpiece Cakeshop lawsuit, Bekah Brunstetter’s play, The Cake, centers on a conservative Christian bakery owner, Della (Karen MacDonald), who is asked by her late friend’s daughter, Jen (Chelsea Diehl), to make a wedding cake. When Jen reveals that her future spouse is a black woman named Macy (Kris Sidberry), Della clumsily claims that she’s simply “too busy” to accommodate their request.

Lyric’s ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ Mashes Up Agatha Christie, ‘The Maltese Falcon’ and the Marx Brothers

December 2, 2019December 2, 2019 michaelhobanLeave a comment

(*Cast of Lyric Stage’s* *‘Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Expres*s’ *– Photo by Mark S. Howard)*

by Michael Cox

‘Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express’ – Adapted by Ken Ludwig. Directed by Spiro Veloudos. Scenic Design, Brynna Bloomfield; Costume Design, Gail Astrid Buckley; Lighting Design, Scott Clyve; Sound Design and Original Music, Dewey Dellay; Projection Design, Seaghan McKay. Presented by the Lyric Stage Company, 140 Clarendon Street, Boston, MA, through December 22.

In 1934, when “Murder on the Orient Express” was first published as a novel, this country was looking for a way out – a way out of the joblessness, poverty and the endless ache of day-to-day existence. The economic agony that the United States felt quickly spread to Europe and around the world. And it certainly hit Great Britain, where Agatha Christie’s prolific career as a mystery writer was well underway. Christie had an astounding career. According to her estate, she is the world’s most published English novelist, and only those who have read Shakespeare and the Holy Bible (King James) outnumber her readership. A key ingredient to Christie’s success is the escapism she provides. So it should come as no surprise that the era of “The Great Depression” is one of Christie’s most critically successful periods. This is interesting because although the characters in the “Murder on the Orient Express” are plagued by a variety of dramatic problems – kidnapping, extortion, death threats, suicide, and of course, murder – there is one thing that never troubles them. Money.

Darkly Comic ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ Rocks the Lyric Stage

September 5, 2019September 10, 2019 michaelhoban2 Comments

(Katrina Z Pavao, Dan Prior, and Audrey II in ‘Little Shop of Horror’ at the Lyric Stage Company – Photos by Mark S. Howard)

‘Little Shop of Horrors’ – Book and Lyrics by Howard Ashman; Music by Alan Menken; Directed and Choreographed by Rachel Bertone; Music Direction by Dan Rodriguez. Scenic Design by Janie E. Howland; Costume Design by Marian Bertone; Sound Design by AndrewDuncan Will; Lighting Design by Frank Meissner, Jr.; Puppet Design by Cameron McEachern. Presented by the Lyric Stage Company of Boston at 140 Clarendon St, Boston through October 6th.

By Mike Hoban

The promotional materials in the press kit for the Lyric Stage’s 45th season promise “Music, Mystery, Murder & Mirth”, and with their stellar opening production of Little Shop of Horrors, the theater company makes good on all counts right out of the gate. Directed by multiple IRNE winner Rachel Bertone and performed by a first-rate cast, the revival of this 1980’s horror/comedy delivers not only as a musical, but as a legitimately funny comedy as well. From its opening 60’s girl group title number to it’s wacked out sci-fi conclusion, Little Shop is a rollicking blast.