Nancy Grossman News

a?oeUnlike any THE SEAGULL you can ever imaginea?? sums up the Arlekin Players Theatre production of Anton Chekhov's classic. An original adaptation with script translation by Ryan McKittrick, Julia Smeliansky, and Laurence Senelick, and directed by Igor Golyak, it features imaginative staging and the work of a stellar ensemble. Performance highlights provided by Anne Gottlieb, Nael Nacer, Eliott Purcell, and Irina Bordian.

Hub Theatre Company of Boston concludes its seventh season with an ambitious undertaking, the time-bending, courtroom dramatic comedy, THE LAST DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT by Pulitzer Prize winning and Tony Award nominated playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis. Boston audiences will recognize his name from two acclaimed productions at SpeakEasy Stage Company in recent years, THE MOTHERf**kER WITH THE HAT and BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY. First staged Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in 2005, THE LAST DAYS is set in Hope, a corner of Purgatory, where a trial is being held to determine Judas' fate: should he ascend to Heaven, or remain in Hell for his crime of betraying Jesus?

Ronán Noone is an Irish-American playwright, an immigrant, who writes about what he knows and what he has lived. In his most recent work, THE SMUGGLER, which won the Best Playwright award at the 1st Irish Festival of New York, 2019, he allocates much of that knowledge and experience to the protagonist, Tim Finnegan. Taking on the role and commanding the stage at Boston Playwrights' Theatre, award-winning actor Billy Meleady's masterful performance gives a solo piece the effect of an ensemble of players telling the story.

It's probably just a coincidence, but two fine plays currently running at two award-winning regional theaters share an unusual commonality. Both focus on the issue of white privilege and the prevailing attitude that acknowledging its existence will end it. In THE THANKSGIVING PLAY at Lyric Stage Company of Boston, the idea is to honor Native Americans in an elementary school play without benefit of any of them participating. In ADMISSIONS, receiving its Boston premiere at SpeakEasy Stage Company, a couple of white liberal educators work hard to expand racial diversity at their small New England prep school, but their progressive values are tested when their exceptional son's Ivy League dreams are derailed. Remarkably, there are no indigenous people or people of color on stage in either production, an intentional, pointed omission by the playwrights.

Get in the mood for the rapidly approaching holiday season by going to the Lyric Stage Company of Boston's production of THE THANKSGIVING PLAY, a sharp and funny satire by Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse that holds a mirror up to reflect the craziness of political correctness on steroids. How does a quartet of white theater artists tell the Thanksgiving story and honor Native American Heritage Month in a 45-minute elementary school play without offending anyone while being historically accurate? Very carefully, and not without numerous false starts, each one more ridiculous than the last, until not to decide is to decide.

With the term a?oewitch hunta?? being bandied about ad nauseam in our national discourse, it seems an ideal moment to look back upon the actual witch hunt that occurred in Essex County, Massachusetts, at the end of the 17th century. SALTONSTALL'S TRIAL: THE SALEM WITH TRIAL'S UNTOLD STORY, a new play by Michael Cormier and Myriam Cyr at the Larcom Theatre in Beverly, does just that. It is a smart, ambitious production with a commanding performance by Elliot Norton and IRNE Award-winning actor Benjamin Evett in the title role and a 20-member ensemble representing the accused women, town residents, clergy, and officers of the Court.

BroadwayWorld presents a comprehensive weekly roundup of regional stories around our Broadway World, which include videos, editor spotlights, regional reviews and more. This week, we feature Once On This Island, The Light in the Piazza, Sweeney Todd and more!

Merrimack Repertory Theatre, in a co-production with Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago and City Theatre in Pittsburgh, presents Lauren Yee's CAMBODIAN ROCK BAND, a play that fuses history, family legacy, and rock concert to illustrate the power and importance of music. It focuses on a daughter's attempt to unearth family history by journeying to Cambodia, her father's homeland, and searching for a survivor from a brutal Khmer Rouge prison whose testimony could seal the fate of its tyrannical overseer.

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW was a staple of the Harvard Square entertainment scene from 1984 through 2012, enjoying an astounding 28-year run of Saturday midnight screenings at the late AMC Loews Theater. Just around the corner, Moonbox Productions returns to its Cambridge roots and blasts into its tenth season with THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW, the live musical version at a pop-up venue at 25 Brattle Street. The venue, a once and future retail site, has a strangely appropriate ambience, an air of temporariness that is in sync with the secret of the creepy country estate where the story takes place. The cast is loaded with triple threats who can sing, dance, and act, but the number one reason to see the show is Peter Mill's performance as Frank N. Furter

The National (non-equity) Tour of THE SPONGEBOB MUSICAL settled in at the Boch Center's Wang Theatre this week and brought out families and children raised on the beloved Nickelodeon series. Joining a long list of animated shows adapted into Broadway musicals, this one is set apart by the clever collaboration with a wide variety of popular artists who composed individual songs, seamlessly curated, orchestrated, and arranged by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winner Tom Kitt (of Next to Normal). Based on the television series by Stephen Hillenburg, it was conceived and directed by Tina Landau and features a book by Kyle Jarrow, but the eclectic score is the crème de la crème of THE SPONGEBOB MUSICAL.

Playwright Lindsay Joelle introduces us to the unique world of the Rebbe's loyal foot soldiers who travel around Manhattan in a Mitzvah Tank, performing good deeds and spreading the gospel of the Chabad-Lubavitch to non-observant and alienated Jews. In its New England premiere at New Repertory Theatre, under the direction of Celine Rosenthal, TRAYF focuses on the relationship between best friends Zalmy and Shmuel as they explore the boundaries of their faith and friendship.

North Shore Music Theatre presents Andrew Lloyd Webber's SUNSET BOULEVARD, starring Alice Ripley as the fading Hollywood star, Norma Desmond. The show runs through October 6.

BroadwayWorld presents a comprehensive weekly roundup of regional stories around our Broadway World, which include videos, editor spotlights, regional reviews and more. This week, we feature ALMOST FAMOUS, Rob McClure As MRS. DOUBTFIRE, and more!

The red velvet curtain rises on about a dozen pairs of feet tapping up a storm, but there are a few hundred more dancing their way out of the Umbrella Community Arts Center after they pay a visit to 42ND STREET, the blockbuster grand opening production of the Umbrella Stage Company, Greater Boston's newest professional theater in Concord. The 344-seat, state-of-the-art main stage is airy and comfortable, with a generous rake to provide unobstructed viewing from every row. Kicking off the season with the quintessential backstage musical is a stroke of genius that celebrates the performing arts and generates excitement for the Umbrella.

In the annals of musical theater, Norma Desmond is one of those larger than life characters, like Mame Dennis, Dolly Levi, and Eva Peron, who cries out for an actor with a specific and rare combination of skills to play the role. Tony Award-winner Alice Ripley ascends to playing the faded silent-screen star in the North Shore Music Theatre production of SUNSET BOULEVARD, after originating the role of Betty Schaefer in the 1994 original Broadway cast which starred Glenn Close. In so doing, Ripley joins the pantheon of singular talents who have put their personal stamp on the musical iteration of Norma, stepping out of the shadow of the indelible mark Gloria Swanson made on celluloid in Billy Wilder's 1950 film.

TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS is a play that will make you laugh, tug at your heartstrings, teach you to appreciate little things while not sweating the small stuff, and, ultimately, make you glad you decided to spend 85 minutes at the theater. The season-opener at Merrimack Repertory Theatre is based on the memoir by Cheryl Strayed, a?oeTiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar,a?? and adapted for the stage by Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding). Living up to their newly-minted mission statement at the starting gate, Merrimack a?oebring(s) joy to our art forma?? with the dramatization of real letters submitted to Strayed's advice column and her empathetic, down-to-earth responses.

Playwright Patrick Gabridge, the 2018-2019 Mount Auburn Cemetery Artist-In-Residence, is presenting THE AMERICA PLAYS, the second series of site-specific plays, following THE NATURE PLAYS produced in June. Whereas the earlier work explored the richness of the natural environment at the Cemetery, this series of five short plays brings to life the founder, sculptors, strong women of the era, and a compelling immigrant story about some of Mount Auburn's Armenian denizens. Guiding the audience from site to site through the lush grounds enhances their connection to the elements of the stories being told and grounds the drama in the flora and fauna of the landscaped jewel.

LAST NIGHT AT BOWL-MOR LANES is a nostalgia piece in more ways than one. Now having its world premiere to open Greater Boston Stage Company in Stoneham's 20th season, the play by Producing Artistic Director Weylin Symes imparts a feeling of community, close friendships, and enjoyment of simple pursuits that is rapidly receding in our techno-centric world. Set in a bowling alley on the brink of becoming a Walmart, it challenges us to find ways to stay connected to the people and places that matter most, even as the wrecking ball of progress swings wildly around us.

Rachel Bertone has set the bar high for the 45th anniversary season of the Lyric Stage Company with her pitch perfect production of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. Assuming the mantle of both director and choreographer, with the dependable Dan Rodriguez as music director by her side, Bertone and her design team capture the grit and the innocence of the story set in the early 1960s, while finding ways to punctuate it with flashes of contemporary pizzazz. Puppet designer Cameron McEachern has crafted an Audrey II without gender bias on its menu, and despite being voiced by a woman (Yewande Odetoyinbo), the plant is no shrinking violet.

Gloucester Stage Company is the first theater in the country to produce THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT following its SRO limited run on Broadway. Based on the 2012 essay/book co-written by John D'Agata and Jim Fingal, the play explores the conflict between an unorthodox author (D'Agata) and the young fact-checker (Fingal) assigned by his magazine editor to vet a groundbreaking piece about a teen's suicide in Las Vegas. GSC mounts its production with local luminary and Academy Award nominee Lindsay Crouse, New York and Off-Broadway actor Mickey Solis, and recent Harvard University graduate Derek Speedy, making his Gloucester debut, under the direction of the estimable Sam Weisman.