Category Archive: Reviews

LeFranc‘s ‘The Big Meal’ satisfies at Zeitgeist Stage

  BOSTON — Large themes are played out around the tables of unnamed restaurants in the Midwest in Dan LeFranc’s “The Big Meal,” a Zeitgeist Stage production now at the Black Box Theatre… Continue reading

Blue skies turn stormy in Nora’s tense ‘Grounded’

CAMBRIDGE — The image of the fighter pilot — nurtured and reinforced in movies such as “Top Gun” — is that of a swashbuckling, hard-livin’, hard-playin’, hard-drinkin’, and hard-lovin’ daredevil, who yearns to… Continue reading

Gandiello’s ‘Oceanside’ a promising, flawed debut

LOWELL — It’s exciting when a new playwright  gets his first fully-staged professional production.  It’s even more exciting when that world premiere boasts an excellent cast, a strong set of designers and an… Continue reading

Flat Earth’s ‘Terra Nova’ packs a powerful punch

WATERTOWN — Where does duty to God and country end and duty to family begin? Does not outweigh the other? And do you, as family man, have the right to seek your glory… Continue reading

Lyric’s ‘Intimate Apparel’ a pitch-perfect production

BOSTON — Many blacks who migrated north from the South in the decades after the Civil War in search of a better life found heartbreak. They found racism didn’t stop at the Mason-Dixon… Continue reading

Fiddlehead’s ‘The Wiz’ is a warm, winning musical

DORCHESTER — It would be a shame if The Winter of Our Discontent caused many strong productions to go unnoticed or unappreciated. It’s hard enough to get people out to the theater in… Continue reading

Don’t be a putz! Get to Brustein’s ‘The King’

WATERTOWN –– The millions of Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe to Western Europe and America in the late 19th-early 20th Centuries brought with them their hopes, their dreams, and a language: Yiddish.… Continue reading

‘Second Girl’ chronicles Irish immigrants’ struggle

BOSTON — The young women came to these shores by the droves from Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, seeking a better life but in many cases finding only backbreaking… Continue reading

ArtsEmerson’s ’Breath’ is passionate, powerful

BOSTON — Roland Hayes was not your typical concert singer. Even if it were only the fact that he was an African-American, the son of a slave, who grew up in the segregated… Continue reading

Parks’ ‘Father’: Greek poetry meets the Civil War

CAMBRIDGE — I knew the time I spent translating Homer’s “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad” from the ancient Greek into English at B.C. High decades ago would come in handy someday. It has… Continue reading