I have a rule. Read the book first. Always. I never deviate from it. Matt Damon was nominated for an Oscar and virtually everyone I know has seen the movie. I haven’t read the book thanks to my ever growing “to read” pile, combined with my book buying addiction. (Although I bought The Martian, and […]
Becky’s New Car was written as a birthday gift from a husband to his wife, and in many ways it rings like permission to make mistakes. It was not, however, the writer’s wife who was on the receiving end of the production, but the wife of the Seattle commercial realtor who commissioned the piece. Written […]
Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound is like a family holiday dinner at your aunt’s house; everyone is there, and you know you’ll be chided for your life decisions, patted on the back by an understanding distant relative, cry in the bathroom, find the humanity in one of your parents, be extremely annoyed with your sibling and […]
The Catholic Church has been embattled in scandal about priest sex abuse since the original reporters of Spotlight (same as the recent film) broke the story in Boston. However, the current production of Mass Appeal, playing at 2nd Story Theater in Warren, shows that a variety of closed-minded biases have existed in the church for […]
Racism is the curse of American history and slavery was America’s original sin. Abraham Lincoln warned that expiating the sin of slavery might demand that “every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.” Seven score and 11 years later, #BlackLivesMatter is a hashtag adopted as the […]
In his book Group Psychology and the Analysis of Ego, Sigmund Freud defined libido as “the energy….of those instincts which have to do with all that may be comprised under the word ‘love.” The play My Husband’s Wild Desires Almost Drove Me Mad, playing through the end of March at the Arctic Playhouse, explores libido […]
The theatrical trilogy has a long pedigree, reaching back as far as Aeschylus’ Oresteia. We, as a collective audience, have now come to expect stories to come in threes. Whether it is Wagner, Lucas, Tolkien, Coppola, Simon or McDonagh, it seems that three is the magic number, even if that final installment gasps across the […]
The touring production of the beloved The Sound of Music, now being performed at Providence Performing Arts Center, is an unqualified triumph. The singing is first-rate, the Rodgers and Hammerstein songs are all gems, and the show looks fabulous, from the sets to the costumes. Kerstin Anderson is an enormously likable and attractive Maria, who […]
In a season that included a prom combined with Pride and Prejudice, a meaty discussion on censorship and a piece that examined how we look at our bodies, Epic Theatre is about to open The Italian Wife, an adaptation from local nationally known best-selling author Ann Hood. So how does a story like this fit […]
Not five minutes into the new “sci-fi” play Sans Everything, a very lanky, very nude and very bearded man rolls onstage after being mysteriously birthed via a very industrial looking curtain. Wordlessly, he takes his first staggering breath and starts to acclimate himself to this strange new world where the only sound is the repetitive […]