CAMBRIDGE, MASS — Six, the pop-concert musical featuring the wives of Henry VIII cracking wise and woeful about their tragic destinies, is an inventive and exuberant take on 16th-century history for the Snapchat generation and beyond.Continue Reading
SARNA LAPINE REINVENTS ‘ANNIE GET YOUR GUN’: REVIEW
Sparkling lead performances help make Bay Street Theater’s new Annie Get Your Gun a warm, nostalgic visit to an earlier era.Continue Reading
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE: ‘MOULIN ROUGE’ REVIEW
Three decades after The Phantom first dropped his chandelier in New York and Jean Valjean took up pursuit here, along comes another Paris-based musical spectacle and prospective blockbuster.Continue Reading
MERCEDES RUEHL IN SAG HARBOR CAMPUS POWER PLAY: REVIEW
Alan Fox’s Safe Space at Bay Street Theater is a provocative exploration of academic freedom in our call-out culture — and a three-character cage match to control the narrative during a campus crisis.Continue Reading
‘A STRANGE LOOP’ EXPANDS BOUNDARIES: REVIEW
Did he really just say that? And sing that?Continue Reading
DANIELLE BROOKS IN JOYOUS ‘MUCH ADO:’ REVIEW
Halfway through the first act of Shakespeare in the Park‘s Much Ado About Nothing, I found myself on Danielle Brooks’ lap.Continue Reading
SUSAN SARANDON, R&H MIX AWKWARDLY IN JESSE EISENBERG’S ‘HAPPY TALK’: REVIEW
“I always thought that my lot in life was to help people en masse,” pontificates Susan Sarandon as an unbearable community theater diva in Jesse Eisenberg’s half-baked new play, Happy Talk.
“Through my work. People see me on stage. They see the human condition — it filters through me — and maybe they learn a little something about themselves,” Sarandon’s character, Lorraine, says.Continue Reading
LONDON ‘MAN OF A LA MANCHA’ SCORES: REVIEW
LONDON — Man of La Mancha is being revived at the London Coliseum, starring Kelsey Grammer as a blustery Don Quixote. Directed by Lonny Price, with the English National Opera’s 30-piece orchestra, it’s a luscious delight.
For the show — the 1966 Tony Award winner for Best Musical — lyricist Joe Darion and composer Mitch Leigh crafted a perfect score, built on a base of Spanish guitars periodically punctured by explosions of brass.Continue Reading
HEEDLESS BARON AT TOPLESS TABLOID: ‘INK’ REVIEW
Students of Rupert Murdoch may wonder why an 88-year-old multi-billionaire would devote his last years to destabilizing democracy, promoting division and thwarting efforts to slow climate change.
“There is no why,” newspaper editor Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee Miller) says early in James Graham’s absorbing Ink, as part of a discussion with the young Murdoch about journalism’s five “W’s.” (Who, What, Where and When are the others.) “Sometimes shit just happens.”
Ever-so-timely, although ripped from headlines a half-century old, Ink chronicles The Sun‘s first year under Murdoch control, 1969-70.Continue Reading
WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO BROADWAY: REVIEW
Disturbing, timely and leavened by dry wit, What the Constitution Means to Me is an impassioned play about American governance that may renew your faith in Broadway.
Heidi Schreck, who wrote the autobiographical appraisal of U.S. democracy and appeal to improve upon it, plays herself, both at present day and at 15 years old.Continue Reading
