Colder Than Here, a Comedy About Dying

April 10, 2019 Theater MirrorLeave a comment

By Deanna Dement Myers

“Colder Than Here” – Written by Laura Wade. Directed by Nicole Galland, Featuring Noni Lewis, Matt Winberg, Abigail Dickson, Ellie Brelis. Stage Manager: Lynda Johnson. Presented by the Newton Nomadic Theater at various interesting venues in and around Newton, April 5 to 28.

“While I’m here, I can help. When I kick it, you’re on your own.”

The performance opens on lovely fall day, with two women setting a picnic with all of their favorite things. The younger woman, Jenna (Abigail Dickson), can’t find anything to like about her surroundings, while the older woman, Myra (Noni Lewis), who is quickly revealed to be her mother, is trying to have a more positive view. After all, this could possibly be her eternal resting place. Yes, this family outing is designed to find a burial spot for Myra, who has bone cancer and has been given six months to live.

Don’t Say His Name…The Underlings Take on the Scottish Play

April 10, 2019 Theater MirrorLeave a comment

Underlings Theatre Co. production of ‘Macbeth’

Review by James Wilkinson

‘Macbeth’ – Written by William Shakespeare. Directed by Daniel Thomas Blackwell. Scenic Design: Zachary A. L. Stern. Lighting Design: Erik Fox. Projection Design: Elizabeth Gove. Costume Design: Evelyn Quinn. Music and Sound Design: Josh Garcia. Fight Director: Lauren Squier. Presented by the Underlings Theatre Co April 5-13, 2019 at the Mosesian Center for the Arts.

As I said to my friend as we left the venue, it’s just not theater unless it ends with a severed head in a bag. On this, it would seem that William Shakespeare and I are on the same page, at least when it comes to his tragedies (though imagine how a severed head in a bag might liven up the ending of The Comedy of Errors. Oh, the possibilities!). You might find something strangely familiar in the air when attending the Underlings Theatre Co.’s production of Macbeth. That’s by design. For their fifth (and sadly final in Boston) production, the Underlings have found inspiration for their take on the Bard’s story in a bevy of modern horror movies. There’s a dash of Evil Dead, a smattering of Paranormal Activity, and a whole lot of The Blair Witch Project. To lay my cards on the table, I’ll say that Macbeth has long been my favorite Shakespeare play, so the Underlings probably could have done the show as a staged reading with scripts in hand and I’d have loved the show. My own personal bias aside, though, I still think there’s a lot to recommend this production of Macbeth, not least of all a fantastic lead performance and handful of visuals that tap into the eerie nature of the play.

Apollinaire’s ‘Prudencia Hart’ a Rare Theatrical Find

April 10, 2019April 10, 2019 Theater Mirror3 Comments

by Nicholas Whittaker

‘The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart’ – Written by David Greig. Directed by Danielle Fauteux Jacques. Music Direction and Sound Design by David Reiffel. Stage Manager/Choreographer: Christie Lee Gibson. ASM: Robin Mackey. Costume Design. Elizabeth Rocha. Set/Lighting Design: Danielle Fauteux Jacques. Dialect Coach: Christopher Sherwood Davis. Box Office Manager: Nina Weiss. Presented by Apollinaire Theatre Company at Chelsea Theater Works through May 4th.

When one walks into the theater for The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, they should be forgiven for thinking that they were in the wrong place. Rather than standing before a standard stage, one finds themselves surrounded by long wooden benches and stools, with a beer-and-wine stocked bar to one side. The cast loudly sings traditional Scottish melodies in the corner, and the buzzing room feels more like a warmly-lit tavern than a playhouse minutes before a show begins. This kind of transformational power is the calling card of Apollinaire Theatre Company’s production, The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart. With tremendous wit, elegance, and bawdy energy, the play rethinks the theatrical and dramatic tradition, combining the past and future in a thrilling exploration of the power and complexity of narrative.

‘Moulin Rouge!’, ‘Man in the Ring’ Earn Top Honors at 23rd Annual IRNE Awards

April 9, 2019April 16, 2019 Theater MirrorLeave a comment

Moonbox Productions’ ‘Cabaret’ Took Home 5 Awards at the 23rd Annual IRNE Awards last night.

‘Boston, MA, April 9^th, 2019 – Global Creatures’ Broadway-bound Moulin Rouge and the Huntington Theatre Company’s production of Man in the Ring were the big winners at the 23^rd Annual IRNE Awards, as the two productions garnered a dozen awards between them. Moulin Rouge took home seven awards, including Best Musical and New Musical in the Large Stage category, and Man in the Ring was honored with five, including the Best Play, Director, and Actor awards. Moonbox Productions’ Cabaret earned a half-dozen awards, including Best Musical, and Best Director and Choreography awards for its director, Rachel Bertone.

May The Joy Luck Family Tree Forever Bloom

April 8, 2019 Theater MirrorLeave a comment

by Linda Chin

In Dragon Mama, the second part of a three-generation family trilogy that enjoyed its world premiere at the ART’s Oberon, the brilliant Filipinx American multi-hyphenate artist Sara Porkalob does it again. Sharing the small stage with no one/nothing else but a single chair, Porkalob shares the story of her mother Maria Porkalob, Jr. by portraying 20+ characters of different ages, ethnicities, genders. The chair too transforms multiple times – into the saddle of the neighborhood bully’s cycle, hospital bed for pregnant Maria, airplane seat en route to Alaska, a seat at the gay club where she meets 27-year-old African American R&B singer Tina. Slim pickings in Anchorage, Alaska in 1993, but when her boss Greg (the astute and well-read 40-ish white foreman of a fishing cannery) learns that she and Tina are planning a movie date, he recommends that instead of Forrest Gump, they see the new film playing at the indie theater on the outskirts of downtown. It’s an adaptation of the best-selling novel by San Francisco author Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club. The story is about Chinese American daughters and their immigrant Chinese mothers, and Maria just might relate.

AKA Theatre Doesn’t Play it Safe with ‘Extermities’

April 4, 2019April 4, 2019 Theater MirrorLeave a comment

(Alissa Cordeiro in AKA Theatre’s “Extremities’

Review by James Wilkinson

‘Extremities’ – Written by William Mastrosimone. Directed by Alexandra Smith. Scenic/Properties Designer: Erin McCarthy. Costume Designer: Heather Oshinsky. Fight Choreographer: Jessica Scout Malone. Presented by AKA Theatre at First Church Cambridge through April 13

You’d be forgiven for thinking that we’d entered Sam Shepard country. The playing space for Extremities, AKA Theatre’s new production, just feels a bit off in the way that recalls the plays of the late American master. The furniture looks dated and is sparsely placed around the stage. There’s very little in the way of color or a sense of life. The one houseplant visible has lost most of its leaves and is barely hanging on to what’s left. An ashtray, half-full with cigarette butts, sits on the coffee table. There’s a kitchen set-up off to the side with a gas burner stove that looks like it has seen better days. You just can’t quite put your finger on what’s causing the sense of foreboding in the air (eventually we’ll learn that the play takes place in the early 1980’s….Take that however you want…). When the characters eventually come onstage, even they seem to have walked right out of a Shepard play. There’s a fast-talking farmhand (complete with cowboy belt buckle) with a grin a mile wide that just makes your skin crawl. Something dangerous is on its way.

Sleeping Weazel Lets the Women Speak

April 3, 2019April 6, 2019 Theater MirrorLeave a comment

(Veronica Anastasio Wiseman, Graciela Femenia Tully, Judith Nelson Dilday, Raijene Murchison, Alex Casillas, Luz Lopez, Louise Hamill Sleeping Weazel’s ‘The Audacity: Women Speak – Photo:David Marshall)

by James Wilkinson

‘The Audacity: Women Speak’ – Conceived and arranged by Charlotte Meehan. Directed by Tara Brooke Watkins. Video Design by Elliott Mazzola. Scenic Design: Rita Roy. Lighting Design: Bridget K. Doyle. Costume Design: Mirta Tocci. Presented by Sleeping Weazel in Nicholas Martin Hall at the Boston Center for the Arts through April 6.

There are two elements to The Audacity: Women Speak, Sleep Weazel’s new multimedia production, that I think rather perfectly sum up its goals for the audience. The first is a visual motif created by lighting designer Bridget K. Doyle. A patch of light will come up on an empty spot on the stage, one of the seven women who comprise the cast will enter said space and then they begin to speak. Although it may seem like an incidental detail, the order of that sequence is vital to what they’re doing. The second element comes about halfway through the show during a barrage of video clips featuring the current Commander in Chief making sexist remarks as far back as the eighties and as recent as his presidency. As the clips play, the woman on stage begin to groan. First in frustration, then it rises to anger before finally, they’re filling the space with their screams. Something is being released.

Merrimack Repertory Theatre Presents a ‘Haunted Life’

April 2, 2019April 3, 2019 Theater MirrorLeave a comment

(Tina Fabrique, Caroline Neff, Raviv Ullman, Vichet Chum, Joel Colodner in MRT’s “The Haunted Life” – Photo by Meghan Moore)

by James Wilkinson

‘The Haunted Life’ – Written by Sean Daniels. Based on the book by Jack Kerouac. Directed by Sean Daniels and christopher oscar pena. Scenic design: James J. Fenton. Costume Design: Sarita Fellows. Lighting design: Brian J. Lilienthal. Sound Design: David Remedios. Presented by Merrimack Repertory Theatre at 50 East Merrimack Street, Lowell through April 14

The crime novelist Elmore Leonard once published his ten rules for writing fiction, which he said could be summed up with the sentiment, “If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.” The decree worked fine for Mr. Leonard, whose sparse action-driven style gave his novels a pop of energy, but I’d argue that sometimes the power of a novel can hinge on when the writer indulges in the bits that sound like writing. Case in point, Jack Kerouac. If you’ve never had the joy of making your way through his best-remembered book, On the Road, I’d encourage you to go ahead and take the plunge. It took me a few attempts before I was able to properly sync up with Kerouac’s wavelength, but when I finally managed to crack that nut, it paid dividends. Kerouac’s prose vibrates with a poetic energy seemingly driven by an obsessive need to capture something that constantly eludes his grasp. It’s the thrill of being alive. Of being in the moment. Just as it seems like he’s nailed it, the image slips away. The language works itself up into a frenzy before finally bursting forth with some of the most achingly beautiful prose you’ve ever heard, at once hypnotic and intoxicating. Or at least, it is for the reader of the novels.

AKA Theater’s ‘Extremities’ is Tough, Terrifying and Thrilling

April 2, 2019April 3, 2019 Theater MirrorLeave a comment

(Padraig Sullivan as Joe and Alissa Cordeiro as Marjorie in “Extremities” – Photo credit:Ashley Yung )

by Nicholas Whittaker

‘Extremities’ – Written by William Mastrosimone; Directed by Alexandra Smith; Produced by Kelly Smith. Stage Manager: Karlie Fitzgerald. Fight Choreographer: Jessica Scout Malone. Props Designer: Erin McCarthy. Costume Designer: Heather Oshinsky. Lighting Consultation: Hunker McKee, Ben Moll. Fireplace Construction: Ben Lieberson. Presented by Also Known As Theater at Margaret Jewett Hall in First Church, 11 Garden St. Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 through April 13

“Cinematic” is a suspect way to describe a stage play, seemingly forgetting the clear distinctions between the two mediums. And yet, Also Known As Theater’s production of Extremities is nothing short of cinematic, in the best possible way. Extremities manages to rethink the possibility of live theater, capturing the crackling energy and painful brutality seemingly possible only on the screen while remaining true to the fundamentals of stage performance. That such an exercise is backed by a wildly clever (if slightly politically outdated) script, a willingness to dig deep into the complexities of sexual assault, female trauma, and masculine violence – bolstered by an extraordinary cast – makes Extremities required viewing.

THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO

April 2, 2019April 27, 2019 Theater MirrorLeave a comment

Reviewed by Tony Annicone

The year is 1939 and the audience is transported back to Atlanta and the biggest thing at that time in United States was the premiere of “Gone With the Wind” but not to some of the folks there. The most important thing was the top social event for elitist German Jews called Ballyhoo which surpassed the startling news of Hitler’s invasion of Poland that sparked World War II. This is the basic premise for “The Last Night of Ballyhoo” which is the second show of Renaissance City Theatre Inc.’s 19th season at the Granite Theatre. It also points out how people should accept their shared heritage and not hold wealth or social position above everything else. Director David Jepson casts this show with 7 strong performers who display the acting prowess necessary to carry off this well written roles.