SINGING AND NOT Spring Awakening comes to town in the form of the original 1891 play and as the Tony-winning musical (seen here). |
Head to the American Repertory Theatre's Zero Arrow Theatre (www.amrep.org) for the world premiere of Christine Evans's TROJAN BARBIE (March 28–April 22). The Mattel-minted heroine ends up playing a central role in this contemporary tribute to Euripides's The Trojan Women. But the ancients have nothing on Batgirl and Wonder Woman, who are just a few of the strapping, sassy, sequin-sporting dames who come to the rescue in THE SUPERHEROINE MONOLOGUES (April 10-26) at Boston Playwrights' Theatre (www.bu.edu/bpt). John Kuntz teams up with Rick Park in this campy romp from Phoenix Theatre Artists and Company One.Salvation is an exercise in rhetoric for the adolescent outsiders in Stephen Karam's Off Broadway hit comedy, SPEECH AND DEBATE, which makes its Boston debut (March 27–April 25) at the Lyric Stage Company (www.lyricstage.com). Chazz Palminteri occupies the spotlight at the Colonial Theatre (www.broadwayacrossamerica.com) as he morphs into various characters to relate grisly stories rooted in his 1960s youth in A BRONX TALE (March 31–April 11). Palminteri's one-man show became the 1993 film in which he starred with Robert De Niro. It's a survival story, and so is THE WRESTLING PATIENT (March 27–April 11). This new play by Kirk Lynn, Katie Pearl, and Anne Gottlieb is based on the journals of Dutch writer Etty Hillesum, a Jew who turned to Jungian analysis to deal with the horrors of Nazi-occupied Holland. It'll be produced by SpeakEasy Stage Company (www.speakeasystage.com), FortyMagnolias Productions, and Boston Playwrights' Theatre at the BCA's Calderwood Pavilion.
There's romance aplenty as Actors' Shakespeare Project (www.actorsshakespeareproject.org) makes MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (May 14–June 14) at the Roxbury Center for Arts at Hibernian Hall. At the Cutler Majestic Theatre (www.maj.org), Vox Lumiere (www.voxlumiere.com) illumines THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (March 25-29) in a performance piece using live actors, a rock band, the silent film starring Lon Chaney, and light-show tricks. Love springs the eternal farce mechanism when Peter DuBois, artistic director of the Huntington Theatre Company (www.huntingtontheatre.org), helms the world premiere of David Grimm's Renaissance-set THE MIRACLE AT NAPLES (April 3–May 9) at the Calderwood Pavilion. And the libidinous turns litigious when the ART stages David Mamet's 2005 play ROMANCE (May 9-13), a courtroom farce that sits in judgment of comic characters running amok in the legal system.
So what happened to good old-fashioned love stories? Zeitgeist Stage Company (www.zeitgeiststage.com) offers a dark answer in SPRING AWAKENING (April 17–May 9) at the BCA. Frank Wedekind's once-banned 1891 play captures the tension between adolescent sexual urges and the oppressive moral code teens are held to in a rural German village. The play inspired the Tony-winning Broadway musical of the same name, the national tour of which touches down at the Colonial Theatre (April 28–May 24).
More lurid issues are set to music at the Calderwood when SpeakEasy stages JERRY SPRINGER: THE OPERA (May 1-30). At the Lyric, GREY GARDENS THE MUSICAL (May 8–June 6) is the story of Jackie O's oddball co-dependent relatives, notorious recluses in East Hampton. And a very different part of New York — Harlem — is the backdrop for AIN'T MISBEHAVIN' (April 10-12), the Tony-winning musical revue of Fats Waller tunes. American Idol champ Ruben Studdard stars in the 30th anniversary tour at the Strand Theatre (www.citicenter.org).
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- Tough neighborhoods
From Helen of Troy to Barbie of the plastic hourglass, men and girls have been inspired by impossible ideals of female physical perfection. Helen, of course, will always have Paris, whereas Mattel's muse gets stuck with Trojan Barbie.
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The cold season heats up on Boston boards
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The famously adventurous American Repertory Theatre is soon to be taken over by a woman who spent her summer directing . . . the vintage Broadway hits Kiss Me, Kate and Hair ?
- Ducks and dicks
If the American Repertory Theatre is renewing its vows to David Mamet, several of whose plays it premiered in the 1990s, the double bill of The Duck Variations and Sexual Perversity in Chicago will do nicely for something old and something blue.
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It's been a Buckingham Palace season on the local rialto.
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"You know," Paulus observes, "we are the American Repertory Theatre, and we haven't spent a lot of time in the repertoire on American drama."
- Looking back, going forward
Economic recession and post-racial themes abound in Boston’s early 2010 theater repertoire.
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The Seagull begins with a theatrical experiment — a brief symbolist drama dreamed by young Konstantin Treplev, who's struggling toward artistic expression while endeavoring to showcase his girlfriend and impress his actress mother.
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There is more pageantry than either Stalinism or Stoker in The Communist Dracula Pageant , Anne Washburn’s ambitious jumble of a Romanian-history play now in its world premiere from the American Repertory Theatre.
- Vintage Aquarius
Hair co-creator James Rado recalls a shady doc who showed up backstage to give the original cast amphetamine-laced "vitamin shots."
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It's freshman and sophomore year on the Boston rialto, with American Repertory Theater artistic director Diane Paulus introducing her first season and Huntington Theatre Company honcho Peter DuBois endeavoring to survive his second.
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Theater
, Entertainment, Peter DuBois, Robert De Niro, More
, Entertainment, Peter DuBois, Robert De Niro, Ruben Studdard, Chazz Palminteri, Anne Gottlieb, Lon Chaney, American Repertory Theatre, Christine Evans, Christine Evans, Less
