“Once in a lifetime” is how Nashville music producer Sam Phillips described the December night in 1956 when music legends Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley gathered in his Sun Records studio and jammed. The play capturing that session, Million Dollar Quartet, helps Theatre by the Sea relaunch production after a […]
Shakespeare wove wisps of fanciful fairies, enchanted forests and dreams of love throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but Director Fred Sullivan Jr. and The Gamm Theatre pushed the fantasy world into overdrive for a production that teleports the audience to a land of sweetness, laughter and passion. Gamm ends its 37th season with its first-ever […]
Passion and good intentions do not translate into a solid theatrical production, otherwise the current show at Barker Playhouse would automatically be a hit. The seven-person cast in “Putting it Together,” a musical review of dozens of songs by the great composer Stephen Sondheim is certainly enthusiastic, but the show simply appears too ambitious for […]
RI jokes aside, the absurdity of reality provides enough fodder for Warwick comedian Ray Harrington to get up on stage and make people laugh. Again and again and again. Harrington – whose status as a Maine transplant gives him some leeway when it comes to dissing such local culinary staples as wieners (“hotdogs with hot […]
Some plays are difficult to understand or follow, and don’t adhere to the basics of plot development with protagonists and antagonists facing off before jaunting happily off into the sunset. Sueño, now on stage at Trinity Repertory Company, is just such a piece, seemingly airy and darkly comedic on some levels yet complex and multi-layered […]
Teen angst – heck, angst in general – has never felt as raw and overwhelming as in the first act of the Tony Award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen. On stage at the Providence Performing Arts Center – two years after it was rescheduled due to the pandemic – the production is a magical blend of […]
The premise – a Polish blues musician, a frustrated factory worker, a misunderstood prep student and a blustery Italian mailman meet at a bus stop – sounds like the lead-in to a joke instead of 95 minutes that might change your outlook on life. Ironbound, a gritty play by Pulitzer Prize-winner Martyna Majok, peeks at […]
The Gem of the Ocean was a slave ship, but the gem of Trinity Repertory Company is the searing emotion conjured as part of a riveting retelling of August Wilson’s play by the same name. Chronologically, Gem of the Ocean is the first in Wilson’s Century Cycle plays relaying the 20th-century Black experience. It is […]
In the midst of a wintery pandemic surge, every heart needs to see Ripcord, a light but purposeful show on stage at Barker Playhouse. The RI premiere of David Lindsay-Abaire’s piece combines perfectly timed snark, delivered by skilled actors, and soothing reminders that life is precious. While Director Karen Besson comes onstage to introduce the […]
It’s deep in the second act when the purpose of the painful scenes and demeaning words becomes clear; as one actor says, “The point of this whole thing is to make you feel something.” The actor is referring to a scene in An Octoroon, on stage now at The Gamm Theatre, in which a Native […]