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Review: Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation, Body Awareness, and The Aliens

Local troupes take a road trip to Shirley, VT
Over the river and through the woods from Grover's Corners lies Shirley, VT, Green Mountain stand-in for college-centric Amherst, MA, where playwright Annie Baker grew up.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | October 27, 2010

Review: Cherry Docs kicks over a hate crime

Shoe shocked
Cherry Docs , which is getting its area premiere by New Repertory Theatre, is named for a pair of steel-tipped, rose-hued Doc Martens combat boots.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | October 26, 2010

Review: The Method Gun

The Rude Mechs have a nutty Method
ArtsEmerson began its theatrical season by revisiting The Laramie Project , in which the Tectonic Theater Project interviewed Laramie citizens about the murder of Matthew Shepard.

By: ED SIEGEL | October 14, 2010

Interview: Drilling Ryan Landry and Molly Schreiber

A screwy turn
A screwy turn

By: MADDY MYERS | October 13, 2010

Muddled histories

ASP's Henry IV, Part I
The work of Actors' Shakespeare Project is generally smart and imaginative, so the company's thoroughly misbegotten Henry IV, Part I , the first half of ASP's The Coveted Crown (at Midway Studios through November 21), comes as a surprise.

By: STEVE VINEBERG | October 12, 2010

Review: Rock of Ages

Strip Mauled: Rock of Ages doesn't rock
At the start of the hair-metal musical Rock of Ages (at the Colonial Theatre through October 17), narrator Lonny (Patrick Lewallen) promises a night of sexy decadence and general kick-assery.

By: BRETT MILANO | October 12, 2010

Interview: Constantine Maroulis

On cracking Rock of Ages
There once was a time when the anthemic earnestness of '80s hard rock was considered giggle-worthy, and keeping a straight face while listening to self-helpy bombast ballads like "Don't Stop Believin' " and "Here I Go Again" was possible only with several veneers of snarky irony.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | September 30, 2010

Review: The Huntington's Bus Stop

All aboard for this smooth ride
Bus Stop is hardly a neglected masterpiece, or even William Inge's best play (that would be Picnic ), but when you watch Nicholas Martin's production, the Huntington's season opener (at the Boston University Theatre through October 17), you understand why it was a hit on Broadway in 1955.

By: STEVE VINEBERG | September 29, 2010

Review: The Laramie Residency

The Laramie Project updates itself at the Cutler Majestic Theatre
You can't accuse "The Laramie Residency" of being anything less than exhaustive in its four-and-a-half-hour series of interviews about the 1998 Matthew Shepard murder.

By: ED SIEGEL | September 28, 2010

Review: The Vibrator Play

Sarah Ruhl offers comic relief
Sarah Ruhl, the goddess of theatrical quirkiness, is back in Boston, and this time SpeakEasy Stage Company has its adventurous mitts on her.

By: ED SIEGEL | September 21, 2010

Review: The ART's Cabaret

Amanda Palmer's Kit Kat collaborative
The American Repertory Theater Cabaret is not some souped-up train carrying self-proclaimed Amanda Fucking Palmer through burgeoning Nazi Germany.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | September 16, 2010

Fall Theater Preview: The event’s the thing

Fall on Boston boards
Artistic directors have suddenly morphed into event planners. Both the American Repertory Theater’s Diane Paulus and the Huntington Theatre Company’s Peter DuBois speak of programming not plays but “events.”

By: CAROLYN CLAY | September 14, 2010

Review: Wicked; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee; The Real Inspector Hound

Spell casters
"It's a bit much," acknowledges the Wizard of Oz, emerging from under the neon-blue-eyed Lion King mask behind which he does his heavily amplified business in the Broadway blockbuster Wicked .

By: CAROLYN CLAY | September 07, 2010

Photos: Amanda Palmer rehearses Cabaret

Rehearsing the upcoming ART production of Cabaret
Rehearsing the upcoming ART production of Cabaret

By: DEREK KOUYOUMJIAN | August 23, 2010

Intriguing Love Song hums two tunes

Heart heist
The 2006 Love Song, to which Orfeo Group is giving a bristling Boston premiere (at Charlestown Working Theater through August 27), fields a catalytic intruder who is not what she seems.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | August 19, 2011

Review: An Ideal Husband

Wilde thing: this Gloucester Husband is not ideal
"Nothing succeeds like excess," Oscar Wilde famously opined.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | August 17, 2010

Spider man

Richard III weaves his web in Lenox
Dreams and portents loom large in Richard III . So it seems fitting that John Douglas Thompson's dynamic Dick Crookback should deliver the play's famed opening lines from a supine position on the floor, as if envisaging in slumber "the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York."

By: CAROLYN CLAY | August 15, 2010