Manic Pixie Dream Girl. In popular culture, the young female character who cures the despondent male protagonist of his sadness through her sheer quirkiness. Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days of Summer, Natalie Portman in Garden State, the list goes on. Manic Pixies are kind of a problematic trope that feeds into the Nice […]
The latest production of West Side Story at Theatre by the Sea features some terrific singing and dancing, as well as a wonderful score by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. This is a good-looking show, featuring terrific costumes and sets. Unfortunately it feels too by the numbers, as if the creative team were merely […]
Plays that tackle political commentary face the challenge of staying relevant in a constantly shifting world. The world of 1992, when AR Gurney’s The Fourth Wall first appeared on stage, is very different from the one in which we live today. Thus, when Roger Williams University decided to put on the play to kick off […]
Bill Hanney’s Theater by the Sea continues its summer 2016 season this week with their second offering, West Side Story, the classic American musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet set amidst the backdrop of interracial gang warfare and urban strife. Those only familiar with the multi-award winning film are often surprised at the subtle differences […]
Living in the big city, like Providence, can be fun. But sometimes, it’s good to get away from the city, especially in the summer. The Theatre Company of Rhode Island, at the Purple Cat Winery in Chepachet, presents the play Angel Street (Gaslight), through June 26. It’s the story of a husband versus his […]
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 […]