Fresh off a road trip from Richmond, Va., where they were invited to perform with Amaranth Arts as part of their Great Friends Touring Project, Island Moving Company had one more stop before returning home to Newport. On Friday, October 10, they presented “A Thousand Reflections” at Rhode Island College’s Sapinsley Hall. This one-evening-only performance […]
Epic Theatre Company has been on a roll lately, with superior productions of Angels in America and Compleat Female Stage Beauty. Unfortunately, Stop Kiss, which examines the close friendship between two women, aims for high drama but ends up being deadly dull. Callie (Lauren Odenwalder) meets Sara (Kerry Giorgi), a St. Louis native who moved […]
2nd Story Theatre is presenting Enron, a wickedly funny satire of corporate greed and deception. It is also one of the year’s best shows. In late 2001, Houston energy company Enron went out of business. At the time, it was the largest corporate bankruptcy in history. Enron’s founder was Ken Lay (Tom Roberts), who left […]
Ocean State Theatre Company’s new production of the classic Broadway musical, My Fair Lady, is a triumph. My Fair Lady, adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play Pygmalion, and with a book and score by Lerner and Loewe, centers on Eliza Doolittle (Jessica Wagner), a London flower peddler who agrees to take speech lessons from […]
He’s King Midas with a curse He’s King Midas in reverse -Graham Nash Like Ovid’s original collection of myths, Mary Zimmerman’s beautifully elegiac Metamorphoses defies categorization. Zimmerman’s series of transformative tales are presented in something of a Reader’s Theater style, but to pigeonhole the work into so narrow a definition is to do the play […]
The Wilbury Group opens its fifth season with the Rhode Island premiere of This Beautiful City by Steven Cosson and Jim Lewis. Cosson is the artistic director of The Civilians, a New York theater company that develops their work by interviews, research and community residencies, combining journalism and art to explore current issues. The play, which […]
The Counter Productions Theatre (CPT) Company burst into the consciousness of the Rhode Island theater world this year with a bang. At the 2014 Motif Theater Awards, CPT was nominated in six categories, and won in four. Although the CPT just completed its third season in RI, Ted Clement and Christine Fox, the heart, soul […]
As more new theater companies emerge across the state, particularly in the Providence/Cranston area, diversity and choice clash with opportunity and availability. Audiences and resources are stretched thin and the most immediate practical need – performance space – becomes a literal showstopper. Many theater companies form with a wealth of talent, but no place to […]
Motif seeks to recognize the excellence in local theater at many different levels. We polled the critics and the theater companies themselves – about their own best work, and the best work they saw – and then over 2,500 of you, our theater-going readers, voted for your favorites. The results were announced at our awards […]
Starting this weekend, Rhode Island’s own Radioactive Theater Company will debut its latest production: Guido’s: Scenes from a Restaurant. Written by Rhode Island natives Shannon McLoud and Stephen Nani, Guido’s chronicles the story of love, from the optimism of that first date to depressing reality of life with kids. To set the stage, you’re first […]