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Theater

Remixing Shakespeare

Brown/Trinity Rep MFA's 'Romeo and Juliet'
From music to costumes to inserted interludes of dance and mad poetry, this staging is vivacious.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 13, 2013

Mixed Magic's absorbing 'Zoo Story'
The set-up couldn't be more straightforward: two strangers are having a conversation in New York's Central Park. Correspondingly, the set couldn't be more simple: a park bench in front of tall color photographs of its bucolic backdrop.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 13, 2013

Sour and dour souls

The Gamm's 'Beauty Queen of Leenane'
Some people are brittle and dry as tinder, but they don't have the sense to not play with matches. The two women at the dangerous center of Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane could blaze up at any moment, and we know that one or both will by the end. Each is filled with so much pent-up hatred that spontaneous combustion seems a distinct possibility.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 07, 2013

Fools in love

Tennessee Williams's 'The Rose Tattoo' at 2nd Story
Taking place on the hot Louisiana Gulf Coast, Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo is steamy in more than one way, as human passions boil off repressed emotions.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 07, 2013

Clandestine couplings

Epic stages Pinter's time-twisting 'Betrayal'
Although prolific British playwright Harold Pinter directed much of his professional attention to the outer world of political affairs, he focused it most narrowly in a little play about more intimate affairs. ' Betrayal' charts the gradual emotional changes of three people as they go through their dances of deception over several years.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 01, 2013

Something about 'Nothing'

Shakespeare's 'Much Ado' at URI
The University of Rhode Island Theatre is putting some of the Bard's favorite characters through their paces with determined affection. We get villainy as well as heroics, and wordplay instead of swordplay.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | April 23, 2013

A muddled mystery

'Curtains' gets the ol' college try at PC
Funny thing — and not in the good way — about a musical comedy that wants to be both an homage and a send-up. A perfect example of such imperfection is 'Curtains,' which is getting the good ol' college try at Providence College.

By: | April 16, 2013

Convent-ional wisdom

'Sister Act' rattles the rafters at PPAC
For all the fun we had along with Whoopi Goldberg in the movie ' Sister Act ,' the musical version is a delight all its own, as the show touring through Providence Performing Arts Center is demonstrating.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | April 10, 2013

A case of black and white

Ocean State plays Mamet's 'Race' card
It's inarguable that to some extent racism in America is a disease that the civil rights era did not completely inoculate this country against. The argument is about exactly what that extent has been, and David Mamet's provocative play Race explores that matter with fulminating energy and some insight.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | April 02, 2013

The Wilbury Group's 'Body Awareness'

Eye of the beholder
The male gaze. Men can think of it as merely admiring, complimentary. Woman may consider it creepy. Such is the annoying conflict between the two sub-species that Wilbury Group is examining with Annie Baker's 'Body Awareness.'

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 27, 2013

Trinity Rep's half-baked 'Social Creatures'

Appetite for destruction
'Social Creatures,' by Jackie Sibblies Drury, is getting a valiant effort to bring it to life, thanks to a talented cast and brave-hearted direction by Curt Columbus. But, as with the zombie menace it depicts, that would be quite a tall order.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 26, 2013

2nd Story’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Square peg, round hole
Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was such a dramatic indictment of the culture of the time that it was made into a play the very next year, adapted by Dale Wasserman.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 20, 2013

The Gamm’s absorbing The Real Thing

Words of love
How many words do the Inuit have for snow?

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 20, 2013

Ocean State Theatre Company’s Rent

Paying their dues
It may have been a latecomer as a rock musical, arriving 19 years after Hair rattled the boards in 1967, but Rent is overflowing with everything there is to love about both musicals and high-energy music.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 11, 2013

URI Theatre’s Metamorphoses

Changing of the gods
Mary Zimmerman's wonderfully inventive 2002 play, Metamorphoses , based on 10 of Ovid's tales of the Greek myths, is being given a spirited and hip production at the URI Theatre (through March 3).

By: JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | February 27, 2013

Brown/Trinity Rep MFA’s Rhinoceros

Following the herd
Ever have days when you're just not yourself?

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 27, 2013

Epic’s Six Degrees of Separation

Mind games
The value of imagination, the nature of trust and betrayal, the responsibilities of compassion, the uncertainty of innocence — these are all facets of John Guare's gem of a play Six Degrees of Separation , which is getting a surprisingly moving production by Epic Theatre Company (through February 24), directed by Matt Fraza.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 20, 2013