Free Man of Color, from playwright Charles Smith, skillfully and intelligently explores the issue of oppression. It is one of Mixed Magic Theatre’s strongest plays in recent memory. John Newton Templeton is a former slave who is studying at a university in Ohio in 1828. The university is overseen by Reverend Robert Wilson, who […]
There are musicals that can define you in a way; they speak to you at a time in your life. Twenty years ago, people my age saw that in RENT. We were young, we were trying to figure out who we were and pay our bills. And 20 years later, although we don’t have Jonathan Larson voicing […]
It is not every day that we have a chance to see Broadway caliber performances here in our creative capitol. PPAC is changing that this weekend with the national tour of If/Then. This beautiful show ran for a year on Broadway and is completing its tour in New England, with three of the Broadway performers, […]
There’s a moment in The Fantasticks where Henry, an old Shakespearean actor, puts on his doublet to recite. “It’s torn, I know – forget it,” he says, asking El Gallo (and the audience) to remove, in their imagination, “10 pounds of road dust from these aged wrinkled cheeks.” In the Contemporary Theater Company’s current production, […]
Two sound cues provide a bittersweet frame for the trajectory of The Buddy Holly Story, now in a swaggeringly triumphant run at Bill Hanney’s Theatre by the Sea in Matunuck. As the show opens, before the glittering ice blue curtain opens to reveal what seems to be the tiniest of sets, we hear a radio […]
If you’re anything like me, you read the Odyssey back in school and remember maybe a little about Odysseus’s wife Penelope. It’s not a spoiler for Epic Theatre’s production of The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood’s stage adaptation of her own novella, to say that director Kira Hawkridge takes inspiration for her stage pictures from Penelope’s most […]
For most of us, our daily lives are full to the brim with the stress of our “daily grind.” Our world is overwhelmingly focused on meeting our work, family and financial obligations and keeping up with everyone else on our shared societal treadmill. Dare to slow down and take a breath while the world […]
Tuesdays with Morrie is another triumph for 2nd Story Theatre, which seems to excel with intimate dramas. Once a week Mitch visits college professor Morrie Schwartz, who is dying of ALS, to offer him companionship and in the process, learns some lessons in life. The two men discuss growing older, love, life and of course, […]
This continues a series of interviews where Epic artistic director Kevin Broccoli interviews other ADs in the area to create a more in-depth conversation about theater in Rhode Island. This month’s interview is with Theatre by the Sea’s artistic director Kevin Hill. Kevin Broccoli: I ask all the Artistic Directors about the community they’re operating in. […]
Bullets Over Broadway is a simply horrible musical. Woody Allen wrote the book, which was based on his screenplay for the 1994 motion picture. I did not see the movie, but could it have been this witless? Nearly all of Allen’s jokes fall flat and almost every character is an overplayed fool. David Shayne (Michael Williams) is […]