"Lend Me A Tenor"

Reviewed by Tony Annicone

The current show at Providence College is Ken Ludwig's Tony Award winning farce "Lend Me a Tenor". The show takes place in 1934 and revolves around renowned tenor, Tito Merelli, known to his fans as "Il Stupendo," who is scheduled to sing the lead in their opera, produced as a fundraiser for the Cleveland Opera Company. Unfortunately, even before the star leaves his hotel room, everything begins to unravel.

"Lend Me A Tenor" (27 January - 5 February)

PROVIDENCE COLLEGE

@ Angell Blackfriars Theatre, Smith Center for the Arts, River Avenue, PROVIDENCE RI

1(401)865-2218

The third show of The Players 103rd season is the 1991 Pulitzer Prize winning, Neil Simon show, "Lost in Yonkers". The show is set in 1942 and examines the relationships in the emotionally crippled Kurnitz family. It is a coming of age tale that focuses on brothers Arty and Jay, left in the care of their Grandma Kurnitz and Aunt Bella in Yonkers, New York Simon shows why the five adults in this show have become the way they are and how it affects the two teenage boys left in their midst.

Despite snow and rain pelting outside, nothing could dampen the spirit and sterling performances of Boston Equity stars Shana Dirik and Sarah DeLima, who shone brightly in NextDoor Center for the Arts’ production of Peter Schaffer’s comedy, “Lettice and Lovage”. These two veteran ladies of the stage are treasures, who light up any production in which they perform. Besides garnering awards, Dirik and DeLima’s individual talent and versatility are marvelous, but together, they were sublime. Their sense of timing and comedic portrayals bounced off each other in perfect harmony, while the rest of the eight-member ensemble were necessary satellites - especially Michael Levesque as young lawyer Mr. Bardolph.
For more information about future productions at the 40 Cross St., Winchester theater, visit nextdoortheater.org or call 781-729-NEXT (6398).

For 90 non-stop minutes, this ingenious, zesty, youthful rock opera attacks and assails on stage with relentless energy.
Almost no words are spoken. The super-charged lyrics of Green Day’s lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, along with the frenetic choreography of Steven Hoggett say it all, energetically and eloquently.
Several mounted monitors and screens are emblazoned with images of the George W. Bush era, laden with battle scenes, hallucinated and real drug zones, and vestiges of capitalism. The stage is divided into a seamless triptych, focusing on three childhood friends, whose paths differ widely. Narrators announce dates to signify the passage of time during scenes.
Every song --- from the moving opening theme, “American Idiot,” “Jesus of Suburbia,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “St. Jimmy,” to the evocatively painful “Give Me Novacaine,” and “Nobody Likes You,” to the plaintive, lovely “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” --- is anthemic, throbbing vividly with angst. They’re youthful cries against a suburban society they think has failed them.
Perhaps “American Idiot” isn’t saying anything profoundly new about youth’s disillusionment with our country, politics, and future, but its message is so compelling, its music so memorable, and the cast’s performance so vibrant, the play will echo long after these anti-heroes are rocking in chairs.

There’s an air of mystery, intrigue, as one enters the Ames Hotel to see The Kindness' and Company One’s production of Tennessee Williams’ 45-minute one-act play “Green Eyes”. Once inside, theatergoers must check in, get numbers and coat check tags, then proceed to a small elevator, check their coats and wait to enter, wondering what’s behind the green door --- figuratively speaking. Wait ‘til you find out. It’s an experience you won’t forget.
Although the 14-page “Green Eyes” script lay forgotten among Williams’ later works, when Director Travis Chamberlain dusted it off and presented it to New York City audiences of 14, in a room of the Hudson Hotel, the show sold out. Locally, it’s garnering public and critical awe.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. With “Green Eyes,” interpretation, too, lies within the individual.

Yasmina Reza's “ART,” you’ll remember, is the story of three upper class Parisian suburbanite friends, who disagree on whether a painting is a masterpiece, thus creating a rift in their 15-year relationship. The play was inspired by an actual experience with a friend of Reza’s, who bought an expensive expressionist “monochrome” painting, which are generally considered by admirers and some critics as masterpieces. Besides raising the question of individuals’ artistic differences, “ART” tests the value of friendship and how far friends will go to sustain their relationship.
Lockwood, Pemberton and Walsh deliver compelling performances - a work of art - that keep the audience’s attention riveted throughout.

"Red"

A Minority Report by Sheila Barth

It isn’t often that attending a play leaves one breathless with every word, every scene, but with actor Thomas Derrah, it’s becoming commonplace.

There’s no type-casting or corraling Derrah. He’s ubiquitous. He’s Everyman. Even his looks and voice change with every role. Now, as he portrays famous artist Mark Rothko, under the marvelous direction of David R. Gammons, in SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of “Red,” Derrah mesmerizes audiences again. He doesn’t merely portray Rothko. He captures his soul, his essence, Rothko’s tempestuous, pulsating view of life and his art credo. Watching Derrah, we’re convinced blood didn’t run through Rothko’s veins. Paint did, spilling furiously onto canvases, creating masterpieces of light and dark, form, color, and emotion.

All art is metaphor; start there.
Put centerstage a great, historic creative talent at the height of a long career.
Inject into the work-space an eager young student --- actually an audience-surrogate --- who can ask dumb questions, fill in background , listen to often outrageously eloquent dogmatic pronouncements about life in general and the particular art in question, and who, eventually, can grow brave enough to question and even to criticze the mentor.
Then send that student (and the audience) back out into the real world with new eyes, new insights, renewed and invigorated minds.
And it helps when everyone connected with the exercise is a theatrical master eager to --- in the final words of John Logan's magnificent play --- "Make something new!"

That is how SpeakEasy Stage makes "Red".

The current show at 2nd Story Theatre is "Take Me Out". The three act show is Richard Greenberg' passionate and patriotic look at "The Great American Pastime". It premiered off-Broadway on September 5, 2002, and made its Broadway debut on February 27, 2003 where it ran 355 performances, winning the 2003 Tony Award for Best Play. "Take Me Out" sneaks a peek into that most exclusive of boy's clubs: the locker room of a major league baseball team. When the NY Empires' superstar player, Darren Lemming comes out to the press with a closely held secret, assumptions are challenged, tradition is upended, friendships are tested, and the question of what it is to be an American is explored in a naked and unflinchingly honest way. The play is full of insights about baseball, masculinity and identity in the 21st century. Director Ed Shea gives his 12 performers their moments to shine in their roles in this show as he mixes the dramatic and comic moments together superbly, earning them a spontaneous standing ovation at the close of the show.

This show will keep you riveted to your seat with its brilliance.This review is my 1000th review and what a hell of a way to celebrate it.

A satisfying bread-and-butter performance.

The Gamm Theatre's third show of their 27th season is "Festen" by English playwright David Eldridge. He adapted it from the award-winning 1998 Danish film by the same title. This is the New England premiere of Festen at the Gamm Theatre. "Festen" satirises the hypocrisy of a large and wealthy family by observing the events that unfold at the ancestral home during a reunion held to celebrate the oldest family member's 60th birthday. As the time arrives for the birthday, speeches to be made to the party's subject, the eldest son, Christian,whose twin sister, Linda, recently committed suicide stands and asks the assembled guests to choose which of two prepared speeches he should read. The guests select one not knowing its contents, and the son declares it the "true speech". As he begins to talk and make the toast, he reveals a shocking family secret. Trapped for 24 hours within the walls of the lavish country estate, rocked by revelations that shatter the veneer of respectability, even the disbelieving guests are choosing sides as the truth painfully unfolds.The rest of the story traces the family's turbulent battle with the truth to discover whether the son's cold rage is justified or the product of a deranged imagination. Director Tony Estrella picks topnotch performers to play these roles and obtains stunning portrayals from them in this powerhouse show. "Festen" truly redefines tragedy for a modern age, making it the must see show of this winter season. Run do not walk to the box office to see this magnificent performance.

Winter is cold, bleak and gloomy, so it’s great when it’s offset by a silly, family-friendly, audience participatory program. Imaginary Beasts’ “Winter Panto (pantomime) 2012: The Half-Baked and Hard to Swallow History of Humpty Dumpty, or One Egg is Enough,” appearing through Feb. 4 at the Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Black Box Theatre, provides precisely that, delighting youngsters and young-at-heart for more than 2-1/2 hours.

Imaginary Beasts scrambles British pantomime, nursery rhymes, and characters with modernity. Farcically weaving together childhood nostalgia with today’s events (such as a Betty Crocker baking contest) the narrator says, “The Land Before Rhyme is worse than parking on Tremont Street!”

Grand fun, for all ages. Children, bring your adults.

Playground battles between youngsters have ruined parents’ friendships. Oftentimes, parents cheering for their children at football, hockey, basketball and baseball games resort to savagery, bowing to the God of Carnage, screaming “Get ‘im!” “Kill ‘im!” and other brutalities, resulting in the unspeakable. Parents arguing about their children’s actions have turned violent, post-game, ending in murder. Playwright Yasmina Reza doesn’t get overwrought in her one-act, internationally popular, award-winning play, “God of Carnage,” which is taking stages by storm. She waxes farcical in her comedy, which she refers to as a tragedy.

"The Voice of the Turtle"

Reviewed by Sheila Barth

At Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Artistic Director Charles Towers advises the audience to sit back and enjoy “The Voice of the Turtle,” John Van Druten’s 1943, three-act romantic comedy set in that same year, in New York City.
Although the play focuses on fickleness, sex and love affairs among thespians and visiting military in bygone days, it resonates today, because of its warmth and humor.
Van Druten looks on the brighter, lighter side of love lost and found, breezing along one weekend in the Big Apple.

"The Voice of The Turtle" (5 - 29 January)

MERRIMACK REPERTORY THEATRE

50 East Merrimack Street, LOWELL MA

1(978)654-4678

Journey back about 350 years ago when Blackbeard was the scourge of the Atlantic coast and when "booty" had an entirely different meaning, when men were men and so were some of the women. Blackbeard amassed a fortune in his lifetime, but now he is dead and the audience must elect a new king, which pirate will become Pirate King. "Blackbeard's Booty" is a new form of dinner theatre that is interactive and improvised. The show is loosely written and directed by Frank O'Donnell who stars as Sir Francis Drake where he leads his cast of some of the funniest and fiercest pirates to plunder the Seven Seas. This show is bawdy and naughty as well as being a fun evening of entertainment with a delicious dinner served with it.

When I came up out of the subway in the heart of Harvard Square, there were two guys --- a drummer with a shaved head and shades and a maybe younger sax man --- over by the kiosk, and they were good. The sax had a hint of Paul Desmond in it, but after a while I recognized that they were well along into variations on Gerschwin's "Summertime". I dropped a buck into a yawning bass-drum-cover, apologising for my penury, and mentioned that it seemed to me that they'd reversed roles with the sax doing melodic rhythm and the drum-set almost carrying the melody itself. The drummer complimented my ear and admitted, with only two of them, there were a lot of holes to fill.

I had nearly an hour, so I retreated up against a pole, my back to the traffic, when they launched into the next tune where they shared the work more equally, and I noticed that a series of at least half a dozen passing toddlers each in turn stopped and stared in hypnotized fascination at the source of live music, some with appreciative murmurs from their parents. I don't dance, but my body swayed in rhythm to the chord-changes and the beat liking what it heard, so before I pushed on I fished out another buck and as I dropped it in admitted "Hell, it's only money man" and as they played we three smiled.

It was still early so I stopped off at The Harvard Book Store's underground second-hand shop hoping some new book would nip me in the pinkie, but it didn't happen, and neither of the books I hoped might turn up --- Russell Hoban's "PILGERMAN" nor Thornton Wilder's "THE CABALA" --- were there nor upstairs in the new-books Fiction section. (The Harvard Bookstore was my first real job, after coming to Cambridge from New Jersey. Once, on a dare from fellow book-pushers, I answered the phone "Harvard Boo Store, may I scare you?"; the patron merely replied "Yes, I'm looking for..." responding to my politely professional tone rather than my words.)

The foyer of Zero Arrow was repainted and hung in blacks as an entrance corridor; at the entry was a box-office table, above it an enormous glass-beads chandelier. I was four minutes early so I retreated to a neutral corner and read to the end of a tale in "AUCASSIN & NICOLETTE AND OTHER MEDIEVAL ROMANCES AND LEGENDS" until ten-of curtain-time, then inquired whether my partner in crime had picked up our tickets. I left his, took my own ("We'll be letting people in at eight") and joined a line stretching nearly a block toward Central Square. A bouncer-ish guy came along affixing paper ribbons around everyone's left wrist ("And when will the doctor see me?" I quipped), and eventually the line edged by dribs and drabs into the black tunnel from which boringly regular ear-blasting base-notes erupted. Apparently Disco is, unfortunately, not yet dead.

Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:05:08 -0500
From: Christine Connor
Subject: Your book

Hi Larry,
Just finished your book. It is amazing how the world has changed since '82! Not just typewriters/computers but the liaison between professor and nineteen year old, which once would scarcely raise an eyebrow, no longer!

The desire to create and share art remains timeless however.... and that impulse is very much alive in your story .

Two suggestions,first,I think there also might be a play in here. Secondly, don't know if you are aware but you can send a copy of a self published book to Amazon, set your price and they will list and sell it for you. You get 30% I believe, better than most royalties I think . Anyway, a thought.
. Thanks for the copy and keep writing!
C

"ARTIST IN RESIDENCE" (144 pp. PerfectBound Paperback $20.00)

Available at HARVARD BOOK STORE's

Espresso-Books Machine

1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Harvard Square, CAMBRIDGE

1 (617) 661-1515 [Toll Free: 1 (800) 542-READ]

"Shear Madness --- 25th Anniversary Season" (31 January 1980-….)

Carl A Rossi reviews "Shear Madness --- 25th Anniversary Season"

The Charles Playhouse Stage II, 74 Warrenton Street, BOSTON, MA

1 (617) 426-5225

"The King's Feast" ( open-ended run on Friday and Saturday evenings)

Tony Annicone's review

KING'S FEAST. INC.

Hose Company No. 6, 636 Central Avenue, PAWTUCKET R I

1 (401) 722-7220

Regrettably, until further notice, I shall not be attending any productions by the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.). Let me explain:

I have frequently been critical of other critics. In some cases, this has been my "internal editor" quibbling about style; at other times, it has been an attempt to let critics feel the personal pain that damaging criticism can cause in people who must get up before another audience knowing that critics' comments have shaped what at least some in that audience might thus believe.

But, even admitting these opinions, I believe even the harshest of critics, deep down, really love theater --- that creators and critics are really "on the same side". Sometimes it may look as though a critic Loves Theater To Death; still, in an austere era many of my colleagues are continuing to write critiques without being paid to do so, their love is that strong. And they try to apply their personal standards in as impartial a manner as possible, though it may not always look that way from outside. That, I think, is the critic's job.

The job of a Public Relations Coordinator for any particular theater company, though, is necessarily biased. The goal there is to get that same potential audience to view the company's shows in the best possible light, to see and appreciate what is there, and to come back again and again for more. And it may seem that P/R people and critics are at war --- especially when they disagree, with one seeing only negatives while the other must accentuate the positive.

But those on both sides operate in what is called "The Free Marketplace of Ideas" --- and audience-members may decide for themselves which one is right. This, at least, is how I assume the game should be played.

Lately, I have heard rumors that a vicious "kill the messenger" attitude threatens this entire structure. I have often voiced my opinions privately or written them publically, but deliberate attempts to disgrace or disbar or silence someone's free voice I cannot tolerate nor condone. I therefore sent the following letter to the producer at the American Repertory Theatre protesting what I see as disgraceful behavior, stretching back over many years, that has no place in that "Marketplace of Ideas" which I fervently hope will remain Free.

To: Diane Borger, Producer, AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATRE

Dear Ms. Borger:

Of late I have heard astonishing stories and rumors of the

antics of a person in your employ referred to as "Catty"

by those who have had contact with her. I undertstand that

Public Relations work necessarily involves some sorts of

manipulation; however, if even half of what I've been told

is true, this person has no ethical standards whatever.

I am astonished that you continue to employ anyone who so

totally misunderstands her profession, and mine.

You must realize that in the climate created by her actions,

any positive reviews of your company's work can be

construed as written out of fear of this woman's power to

ruin the reputation of anyone voicing opposite opinions.

I cannot believe you are ignorant of this situation, but

you must be aware that continuing to employ her in such

a sensitive position can only be construed as approval of

such behavior by the American Repertory Theatre, which I

fervently hope cannot be the case.

But if you condone such actions, I cannot.

I cannot in good conscience continue to work with anyone

who behaves with such vindictive misunderstanding of her

job, and mine. To do so would suggest that I myself

condone such behavior, which is decidedly Not the case.

Should there be a change in personnel in future, I would

appreciate your notifying me.

Sincerely,

===Larry Stark

of Theater Mirror

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Hairspray!
July 29 - August 21
“Everything is bigger in Hairspray
– the dreams, the voices and, of course, the hair!”

For information call 781-871-2787

The Company Theatre
30 Accord Park Dr.
Norwell, MA 02061
(781) 871-2787 (ARTS)

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entire contents copyright © 1995 - 2006 The Theater Mirror.
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Larry Stark's THEATER MIRROR

The Theater Arts Magazine of the Internet

Hairspray!
July 29 - August 21
“Everything is bigger in Hairspray
– the dreams, the voices and, of course, the hair!”

For information call 781-871-2787

The Company Theatre
30 Accord Park Dr.
Norwell, MA 02061
(781) 871-2787 (ARTS)

 

 

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"Lea DeLaria"

with
Lea DeLaria

Piano and Musical Direction … Janette Mason
Bass … Kendell Eddy
Drums … Austin McMann

Singer-comedienne Lea DeLaria brought her jazz and hilarity to the BCA’s Deane Hall for three evenings, kicking off the Huntington’s new cabaret series, “Upstairs at the Calderwood” --- the Old Girl, of all companies, is out to prove to Beantowners that, yes, there is life at an hour when most local theatergoers head home after applauding a curtain call and how wise, good and clever to begin with Ms. DeLaria who makes me laugh heartily as no one else can, onstage or off, and whose every note of scat is a well-hammered nail on the musical line. Twice have I seen Ms. DeLaria perform in Provincetown where she alternated in-your-face monologues with clear, sparkling vocals --- “Chords of steel!” she proclaimed to me, afterwards --- but Boston is not Provincetown and I wondered how this bull(dyke) would fare in our china shop. Happily, Ms. DeLaria is so layered an artist that, like a starfish cut in half, she could regenerate herself into a jolly big sister that the whole family could love, with just enough naughtiness to make her audience squirm with delight (i.e. walking amongst the women, with mistletoe, while singing “Christmas Kisses”) --- in Provincetown, Ms. DeLaria is a comedienne who sings; here, she was a singer who made us laugh which is comforting to know for not only will Boston always be Boston but the political winds are shifting to more hopeful, optimistic ones and Ms. Delaria, like many a stand-up comic, may find herself passing from Old Comedy to New (a year from now, who would want to be reminded of our outgoing President?). But even a Lea-Lite is better than no Lea, at all, and may Ms. DeLaria always find time for Boston within her busy-busy schedule and, of course, there is always Provincetown in the summer should you want to experience her in full, unleashed merriment.