When the curtain rises this weekend on Attleboro Community Theatre’s production of Paul Rudnick’s I Hate Hamlet, the highlight of the night — as with many productions of the play that have come before it — promises to be the swashbuckling swordfight between the ghost of John Barrymore and a young television star who he […]
Six will enter, only one will emerge victorious. The stakes could not be higher. Well, okay, they could absolutely be higher; it’s not a Hunger Games-type situation. It’s a spelling bee, where nerdy and awkward adolescents duke it out to see who can be the nerdiest and most awkward. Swamp Meadow Community Theatre’s production of […]
Storming into Providence to baptize the unbelievers is the return of The Book of Mormon, the insanely irreverent Trey Parker/Matt Stone/Robert Lopez concoction that upends the classic buddy quest (and, yes, Lord of the Rings is certainly referenced) and manages to skewer both America and religion in one fell swoop. Two young Mormons are sent […]
After having a delicious pre-theater meal at Cafe Cazzata (try the Chicken Bocchino, it’s to die for) with my life partner, Troy, we decided to jet over to historic Woonsocket, Rhode Island, to see Lenny Schwartz’s newest screwball farce, #MeThree: A Guide To New Beginnings. Now, Troy, being German, typically prefers more highbrow theater like […]
Rhode Island provides audiences with hundreds of opportunities each year to see live theater being performed. However, it is far rarer to be able to see it being created in front of your eyes. This weekend, The Wilbury Theatre Group is offering just such a glimpse with their annual Festival of New Works. Throughout the […]
In response to Christian criticisms of the portrayal of Jesus Christ put forth in Godspell, composer Stephen Schwartz added the following note to the script: “Godspell is about the formation of a community which carries on Jesus’ teachings after he has gone. In other words, it is the effect Jesus has on the others which […]
The new original play Me Three: A Guide to New Beginnings by Lenny Schwartz could charitably be described as genre-defying, swinging between farce and serious social critique, or less charitably as careening wildly from one random thing to another. What could be a passable magical-realist comedy – the advertising describes it as “darkly funny and […]
“Who will provide the grand design, what is yours and what is mine? ‘Cause there is no more new frontier, we have got to make it here Don Henley, “The Last Resort” The wanderlust and notion of manifest destiny that drove our forefathers west spoke to the American character, warts and all. Alongside noble ideals […]
The show that has been dubbed “the best musical of this century,” The Book of Mormon, returns to PPAC this month. Irreverent, unconventional and insanely popular, Mormon still has the ability to shock while providing a superior musical comedy experience. The musical stretches all boundaries of conventional taste, but contains a warmhearted core that continues to […]
For my money, and for as silly and irreverent as it truly is, there is almost no musical more difficult to pull off well than Little Shop of Horrors. Equal parts comedy and tragedy, camp and melodrama, it straddles so many lines that it’s nearly impossible to hit the right balance. Play it too hard […]