Theater

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A woman in science's male domain

Beautiful minds
Geniuses have it rough.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | February 15, 2012

Mad Horse’s Becky Shaw peers behind the love curtain

The one who knew too much
Three months after her father's death, the two people closest to thirty-something Suzanna (Elizabeth Chambers) don't have a lot of patience for her grief, which has her reduced to a weeping mess watching bad TV under a blanket.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 08, 2012

Interview: Katie Leung follows Harry Potter with ART's Wild Swans

On track
Fans of J.K Rowling's wizarding empire (read: every man, woman, and child) all remember the moment we were introduced to Cho Chang, the lucky Ravenclaw who gets to paint the town (and do a bit of snogging) with Mr. Potter himself.
By CASSANDRA LANDRY | January 31, 2012

A knee-slapping Lend Me a Tenor at PC

Hilarious high notes
As hilarious as the race for the Republican presidential nomination is, even that is no competition for Ken Ludwig's Lend Me a Tenor.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 01, 2012

Green Eyes at the Ames; Robbie McCauley's Sugar

Suite stuff
Forget the Hotel California; welcome to the Hotel Tennessee.
By CAROLYN CLAY | January 24, 2012

2nd Story’s Take Me Out

A dramatic grand slam
Ironic, isn't it? To your ordinary man in the street or workplace, masculinity usually isn't an issue. Yet macho scale rankings readily come up in professional sports, where prowess should be enough evidence of testosterone levels.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | January 25, 2012

Thespian games at the Theater Project

Play acting
Five people lie supine on the floor, feet outward, like a star.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 25, 2012

Huntington pays tribute to God of Carnage

Parent flap
If Lord of the Flies wanted an upscale-urban bookend, it could do worse than God of Carnage (presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the BU Theatre through February 5).
By CAROLYN CLAY | January 18, 2012

Review: Pina

Putting 3D to good use
Who could have predicted that it would take the surviving leading lights of the New German Cinema to put 3D to good use?
By ANN LEWINSON | January 18, 2012

Midsummer gets a twist, in midwinter

Steamy dreaming
When I learned that Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was to be staged in frigid early winter, I wondered if the production's angle might be unabashed irony.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 18, 2012

Review: The Divide

The horrors of human nature
Many a teleplay for The Twilight Zone threatened atomic Armageddon, and though Frontier(s) director Xavier Gens nukes New York in the opening shots of his latest thriller, he finds more inspiration in the horrors of human nature as seen in the old TV show's episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street."
By BRETT MICHEL | January 10, 2012

Interview: Michael Mayer, director of the Broadway tour of American Idiot

Green Day's rock opera comes to Boston
Michael Mayer has a history of being all over the map in the choices of plays he has directed. From Chekhov's Uncle Vanya to the smash rock musical Spring Awakening , he's consistently ventured out of the comfort zone.
By MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER | January 12, 2012

Lyric Stage's superior Superior Donuts

Boston beats NY
No one, to my knowledge, has accused Superior Donuts of being superior Tracy Letts.
By ED SIEGEL | January 10, 2012

Red explores Rothko's emotional palette

Scarlet fever
Mark Rothko sees red in Red — and not just when staring hard at his iconic Seagram murals.
By CAROLYN CLAY | January 10, 2012

Carolyn Gage interprets Lizzie Borden's case

Reclaiming history
Lizzie Borden, who allegedly murdered her father and step-mother in 1892, remains an iconic figure in American cultural memory.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 11, 2012

Wilbury’s darkly humorous Exit the King

The reign man
Playwright Eugene Ionesco, a progenitor of Theater of the Absurd along with Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, put a lot of himself into Exit the King instead of keeping his usual ironic or satiric distance.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | January 11, 2012

David Wheeler, 1925–2012

In memoriam
Why did news of David Wheeler's death last week come as such a shock?
By CAROLYN CLAY | January 11, 2012

Shrek the Musical charms at PPAC

'Toon time
Talk about your franchises.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | January 04, 2012

Apollinaire's progressive Uncle Vanya

Moveable feast
Guns go off in Uncle Vanya. And in Apollinaire Theatre Company's production (at Chelsea Theatre Works through January 22), the title character is one of them.
By CAROLYN CLAY | January 04, 2012

Warming up with the Boston theater scene's winter offerings

Cold remedies
Although the whirlwind of Scrooges and Rockettes will soon be exiting stage left, the storm of winter theater continues unabated.
By MADDY MYERS | December 29, 2011

Dueling stages

When it came to home teams vs. visitors, audiences were the winners
It's been the visitors versus the home teams this year.
By CAROLYN CLAY | December 20, 2011

The highlights of 2011’s theatrics

From madness to mealtime
Some of the most exhilarating moments in theater this year happened in the Apohadion, as a pale and schizoid Michael Dix Thomas shrieked the opening strains of "The Ballad of Mack the Knife," summoning to stage the lurid, ghoulish menagerie of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera .
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | December 21, 2011