Theater
Anyone who has sat through a commercial for one pill or another will recognize and acknowledge the satiric thrust of this enjoyable 1920’s French farce.
Multiple Google searches suggest that no one is celebrating the 400th anniversary of the second of Ben Jonson’s tragedies. I don’t think I will live to see a production of CATILINE, but attention should be paid to this awkward but powerful script. Filled with moral strength, perceptive realpolitik, and rich poetry, it proffers a brilliant serio-comic meditation on political gangsterism.
A fascinating adaptation, well worth the trip to out-of-the-way Chester, MA, TURN OF THE SCREW is never less than interesting and often all-absorbing — especially when actress Allison McLemore lets loose.
In BUG, a deranged veteran fights for his “freedom” against phantoms in a hermetically sealed echo chamber that he is willing to blow up for the good of mankind. As The Tea Party would have it: Either change the government or shut it down.
A busy month of theater, especially for off-speed, postmodern romances, while old-timers such as the Gershwins and Tennessee Williams receive some attention as well.
In the perceptive hands of director Joann Green Breuer, the combination of scripts (stretching from the 1940’s to the 1970’s) proffers a compelling meditation on Tennessee Williams’ exploration of women and desire, as well as some surprising spins on his classic plays.
Dramatist Jason Grote spins a postmodern, political variation on Scheherazade in his play 1001, and while it skimps on the imaginative playfulness of other versions, its time-tripping allusiveness has a scruffy intellectual charm.
While by no means the headiest permutation of commedia dell’arte, Shakespeare & Company’s production of THE VENETIAN TWINS is skillful as anything a commedia enthusiast might hope to see.
In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argues that American culture is becoming dumber and dumber—plays like Matt & Ben suggest that we have entered the afterlife. Matt & Ben by Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers. Directed by M. Bevin O’Gara. At the Central Square Theater, 450 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA, through August…
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