A staged reading of TRANS was held June 1 and 2 at the URI Feinstein Providence campus. Steven Pennell, coordinator of the Urban Arts and Culture Program at URI, conceived TRANS as an oral history project focusing on the lives of transgendered individuals. Playwright Frank Toti, Jr., who also directed, focuses on six characters […]
Playwright Nick Albanese has high hopes for his hit one-man show, The Last Sicilian. Albanese intends to perform the show in New York next January, and he launched an online funding campaign (gofundme.com/thelastsicilian) to allow him to bring the project to the 13th Street Repertory Theatre Company for a tw0-week run. Albanese took questions from the […]
Marilyn Monroe was a world famous sex symbol and one of Hollywood’s top movie stars in the 1950s, and nearly 55 years after her death, she remains a major cultural icon. Barbara Schweitzer’s MM is a surreal psychodrama that takes place inside Monroe’s mind in the moments following a drug overdose on the night of […]
Young Frankenstein is a cheerfully silly musical featuring excellent performances and superb choreography, performed May 5 through 7 at the Stadium Theatre. The show was adapted from the 1974 film directed by Mel Brooks, who wrote the music and lyrics. Frederick Frankenstein, a brilliant but eccentric scientist, inherits his grandfather’s castle and encounters a […]
Neil Simon is one of America’s most successful playwrights for a reason. He is skilled at crafting funny dialogue and memorable characters while reflecting our common humanity. That is why it is sad to report that Rumors, now being presented by Swamp Meadow Community Theatre, is one of Simon’s weaker efforts. The talented cast […]
Chicago is a musical with a lot of punch. This sizzling production with songs by the famed composers Kander and Ebb tells the tale of vixens Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly in the world of 1920s Chicago. Roxie shoots her no-good lover and hires hotshot attorney Billy Flynn to defend her in court. While […]
Jonas Hassen Khemiri‘s Invasion! holds a mirror up to our own preconceived notions about other races and cultures, particularly the Arabic male. One of the most acclaimed novelists and playwrights active in Sweden, Khemiri has been vocal about his discomfort in that largely homogeneous society as the bi-racial child of a Tunisian father and a […]
The Providence Performing Arts Center (PPAC) hosts the 20th Anniversary Tour of the classic musical, which features dazzling performances and a lot of heart. Composer Jonathan Larson did not live to see the global phenomenon his show would become, famously dying from an aortic aneurysm the night after the final dress rehearsal just before its […]
Encore Repertory Company has continued its winning streak with a dazzling, high-energy production of Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, a musical retelling of the story from the Book of Genesis. Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice created a jaunty score for the show, which features several memorable tunes. This is a “sung […]
Burbage Theatre Company’s production of Nicky Silver’s The Altruists is about a group of liberal activists who claim to care about women’s rights, gay rights, the plight of the homeless and other social issues, but are so self-centered and shallow they really seem incapable of doing anything. Director Vince Petronio says of the characters, “They […]