Theater

Play by play: November 20, 2009

Plays from A to Z

By JEFFREY GANTZ | November 18, 2009

OPENING

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS | The American Repertory Theater makes its first Loeb Drama Center appearance of the season with this holiday musical with book and lyrics by Randy Weiner and music by Obie winner Diedre Murray. Part of new ART artistic director Diane Paulus's "Shakespeare" season, it got a thumbs-up from the New York Times— "This rousing musical has taken the plot from The Winter's Tale, tossed out anything resembling Shakespearean language, and achieved a hypnotic effect with musical numbers that leave the audience whooping" — so never mind that the language is the best part of any Shakespeare play and just enjoy the R&B and gospel treats. The cast includes Gregg Baker, Mary Bond Davis, and Jeanette Bayardelle; Paulus herself directs. | Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St, Cambridge | 617.547.8300 | November 21–January 3 | Curtain 7:30 pm Tues-Wed [no November 25] | 2 pm [December 31] + 7:30 pm [no Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Eve] Thurs | 8 pm [no Christmas Day] Fri | 2 pm [no November 21, 28] + 8 pm Sat | 2 + 7:30 pm [no evening November 29 or January 3] Sun | $25-$75; $15-$65 seniors; $20 student rush

A CHRISTMAS CAROL | Trinity Repertory Company's annual rendition of Dickens's holiday classic is down to one cast this year, with Timothy Crowe as Scrooge, Mauro Hantman as Bob Cratchit, Barbara Meek as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Fred Sullivan Jr. as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Joe Wilson Jr. as Marley, Rachael Warren as Fan, David Rudi Utter as young Scrooge, and Monica Willey as Belle. No mention of the third Spirit, so we're assuming the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come will be playing itself. Birgitta Victorson directs. | Trinity Repertory Company, 201 Washington St, Providence, Rhode Island | 401.351.4242 | November 20–December 27 | Curtain 7:30 pm Tues-Fri [no Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day; Christmas Eve @ noon + 5 pm] | 2 pm [no November 21] + 7:30 pm Sat | noon + 5 pm [2 pm only November 22] Sun | $40-$65; children ages 2-14 $10

HEROES | Merrimack Repertory Theatre presents the New England premiere of this Tom Stoppard adaptation of the Olivier Award–winning drama by French playwright Gérald Sibleyras in which three combat survivors of World War I find themselves stranded, 40 years later, in a veterans' home, alone with their injuries, their memories, a 200-pound stone dog, and a masochistic nun. Carl Forsman directs; Ken Tigar, Jonathan Hogan, and Tony winner Ron Holgate make up the cast. The approximately 90-minute performance will run without intermission. | Merrimack Repertory Theatre, 50 East Merrimack St, Lowell | 978.654.4MRT | November 19–December 13 | Curtain 7:30 pm Tues [November 24] | 2 + 7:30 pm Wed [November 25] | 7:30 pm Thurs [no Thanksgiving Day] | 8 pm Fri | 4 pm [no November 21] + 8 pm Sat | 2 + 7 pm [no evening December 13] Sun | $26-$56; $23-$51 seniors; $15 students [balcony]

MACHINAL | The Boston Conservatory Theater Ensemble presents Sophie Treadwell's 1928 play based loosely on the true story of Ruth Snyder, a Long Island housewife who went to the electric chair after conspiring with her lover to murder her husband. Clark Gable played the lover in the original 1928 Broadway production. Doug Lockwood directs. | Midway Studios, 15 Channel Center St, Boston | 617.912.9222 | November 19-22 | Curtain 8 pm Thurs-Sat | 2 pm Sun | $22; $12 seniors; $7 students

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Related: Play by Play: November 13, 2009, No country for old men, Being Scrooge, More

Play by Play: November 13, 2009
Boston's weekly theater schedule
No country for old men
Louis de Rougemont makes James Frey look like a documentarian. A sickly Victorian lad who arose from his cot, knocked around the Southern Hemisphere for a while, and returned to England with a hifalutin new moniker and captivating tales of seafaring perils and aboriginal idylls, he was the subject of a popular serialized autobiography.
Being Scrooge
Over the 33 years that Trinity Rep has been staging A Christmas Carol , many actors playing Ebenezer Scrooge have growled and grumped, cantankered, and curmugeoned around the stage.
Christmas present
Christmases come and Christmases go, as psychedelic wrapping paper gives way to orderly Republican stripes, as sweet little Jimmy grows into gruff Uncle James.
Joyful noise
From the clamorous arrival of some ghetto hot wheels to a scorching gospel finale, Best of Both Worlds warms up The Winter's Tale . The third entry in American Repertory Theater's Shakespeare Exploded! Festival, this sizzling and soulful gloss on the Bard's late romance mines Shakespeare's time- and realm-hopping fairy tale.
Play by play: December 18, 2009
Boston's weekly theater listings
2009: The year in theater
A quick look at this past year in Boston's theater scene.
52 ways to leave 2009
Your usual lackadaisical approach to New Year's Eve — just see what happens and go with the flow — is not going to cut it this year. Sure, the end of this decade may not have the same kind of new-millennium pressure riding on it as the last one, but the plunge into 2010 is a milestone nonetheless.
Play by Play: January 1, 2010
Boston's weekly theater listings: January 1, 2010
A Rhode Island filmmaker’s tribute to the Good War
Amid the moral ambiguity of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — the handwringing over weapons of mass destruction, drone attacks, and the rights of detainees — there is something startling about the raw patriotism of the documentary Navy Heroes of Normandy .
Brown's theater juggernaut fires up again
The Brown/Trinity Repertory Theatre, a summer program that cultivates promising young playwrights, is set to launch this year's slate of three plays on July 7. Expectations are high.
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Topics: Theater , Scott Edmiston, Joe Wilson, Paula Plum, More

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ARTICLES BY JEFFREY GANTZ

MAMA KNOWS BEST: THE HUNTINGTON'S FEEL-GOOD A RAISIN IN THE SUN | March 19, 2013
Fifty-four years after its groundbreaking Broadway premiere, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun remains as dense, and as concentrated, as its title fruit.

LIGHT WAVES: BOSTON BALLET'S ''ALL KYLIÁN'' | March 13, 2013
A dead tree hanging upside down overhead, with a spotlight slowly circling it. A piano on stilts on one side of the stage, an ice sculpture's worth of bubble wrap on the other.

HANDEL AND HAYDN'S PURCELL | February 04, 2013
Set, rather confusingly, in Mexico and Peru, the 1695 semi-opera The Indian Queen is as contorted in its plot as any real opera.

REVIEW: MAHLER ON THE COUCH | November 27, 2012
Mahler on the Couch , from the father-and-son directing team of Percy and Felix Adlon, offers some creative speculation, with flashbacks detailing the crisis points of the marriage and snatches from the anguished first movement of Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony.