Curt Columbus

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Raise the curtain

From classic to contemporary
There's plenty of theater to keep us warm in Rhode Island through the winter. From the professional companies to the colleges, there are shows for every taste and mood.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 28, 2011

Trinity Rep’s rip-roaring His Girl Friday

The write stuff
There are theatrical adaptations and then there are magnificent transformations, like His Girl Friday . Multiple-Obie Award-winning playwright John Guare has expanded the furious screwball comedy into a historical/social commentary without our losing out on the knee-slapping.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | September 21, 2011

Review: Poe vs. Poe in Trinity's Strange Tale

I Is Another
What's left to spook us these days? Crime shows display forensic detail that has inured us to blood.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 18, 2011

Preview: Trinity Rep takes The Crucible to the streets

Truth and consequences
Arthur Miller's The Crucible was a seminal work of American theater, taking a shameful passage of history — the Salem witch trials of the late 17th century — and melding it in the audience's consciousness with a contemporary parallel — the Red Scare hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which prompted a Hollywood blacklist of suspects.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 02, 2011

Trinity Rep's uplifting It's A Wonderful Life

The road taken
Who says you can't have it both ways? Trinity Repertory Company is presenting the sentimental movie classic It's a Wonderful Life as "A Live Radio Play" (through January 2) and they've managed to make it an absorbing — and theatrical — experience.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 15, 2010

Trinity's Absurd Person Singular

Trinity nails down Alan Ayckbourn
As playwriting goes, there's prolific and then there's prolific. There's, say, Shakespeare with his piddling 38 plays. And then there's someone like Alan Ayckbourn: 73 full-length babies, and counting.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | October 14, 2010

Review: Trinity Rep's magical Camelot

An enchanted evening
Camelot is a hard musical not to like, even for those who don’t like to like musicals.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | September 22, 2010

Review: Trinity Rep revisits Camelot

A royal revival
Ask the historians, the psychologists, the sociologists. The more a society is troubled, the more it harkens back to a Golden Age — such as the one depicted in Camelot , the Lerner and Loewe musical that Trinity Repertory Company is staging through October 10.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | September 14, 2010

Play by play: May 7, 2010

Theater listings, May 7, 2010
Boston's weekly theater listings
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 04, 2010

Play by play: April 30, 2010

Theater listings, week of April 30, 2010
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 28, 2010

Play by play: April 23, 2010

Theater listings, week of April 23, 2010
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 21, 2010

Dynamic duo

Trinity Rep’s over-the-top The Odd Couple
There are King Oedipus and his mom, there are Romeo and Juliet, and there are Oscar and Felix.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | April 21, 2010

Play by play: April 16, 2010

Theater listings for the week of April 16, 2010
Theater listings for the week of April 16, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 15, 2010

Play by play: April 9, 2010

Theater listings, April 9, 2010
Theater listings, April 9, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 06, 2010

Love at second sight?

Chemistry is key in Trinity’s Shooting Star
The little two-person play that Trinity Repertory Company is staging in the intimate downstairs theater got its title from the poignant Bob Dylan song "Shooting Star."
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | October 13, 2009

Play by play: October 9, 2009

Theater listings
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 07, 2009

Play by Play: October 2, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 30, 2009

Play by Play: September 25, 2009

Plays from A to Z
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 22, 2009

Both new and old classics

Life on the boards
The Gamm certainly has come a long way in the quarter-century leading up to this its 25th anniversary season. The evolution of its name alone is quite a trip.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | September 16, 2009

Berlin calling

A ‘very Trinity’ take on Cabaret
If you ask someone whether they've seen Cabaret , odds are the answer will be yes. Ask Curt Columbus, and the answer is likely to be: Which one? Sitting in the upstairs theater of Trinity Repertory Company, where their production runs through October 11, the artistic director rattled off a chronology as lengthy as a convoluted German sentence.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | September 15, 2009