Friday, April 4, 2025
This is the most slickly engaging of Mfoniso Udofia’s scripts so far, its domestic melodrama enlivened by welcome humor, detailed characterizations, and moments of pathos.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:12PMMonday, March 31, 2025
We desperately need plays and musicals -- produced by local companies with courage and nerve -- that acknowledge that the cancer of autocracy is here, today, and becoming stronger. That is t…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:06PMThursday, March 20, 2025
The Russian dramatist's expansive application of ridicule, his picture of human society as an endless chain of fools fooling fools fooling fools, couldn't be more fitting -- it is a funhouse…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:18AMWednesday, March 12, 2025
Why did I help organize the Climate Crisis Cabaret? Because these are not normal times. And we need more theater like it.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:32PMWednesday, February 26, 2025
It is always a pleasure to see Ibsen on stage, but this staging of one of his masterpieces is generally humdrum.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 06:32PMSunday, February 23, 2025
Revelatory reunions are a standard dramatic set-up, which explains why it takes quite a while for "The Grove" to gather some theatrical steam.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:54PMWednesday, February 5, 2025
This moving, at times beautiful, production evokes Michael K's vision of purity, a rejection of collective cruelty and madness that asserts human dignity's last stand -- as an animal.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:02PMSunday, February 2, 2025
Our critics salute the year's outstanding productions.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:06AMSunday, November 17, 2024
Abigail C. Onwunali's powerhouse performance is memorable, but the mechanics of Mfoniso Udofia's play don't always match the lead's boundary-stretching strengths.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:12PMMonday, September 23, 2024
"Leopoldstadt" is one of Tom Stoppard's most heartfelt and expansive works, its poignant storyline inspired by events in his own life.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:24PMSunday, September 15, 2024
Cinematic in inspiration, Diane Paulus's direction whips up terse bursts of adolescent energy, tapping into a cocky hunger for self-destructive combat.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:06PMTuesday, August 27, 2024
"It’s not just some generic 'evil' "The Arsonists" protests, it is willful blindness to fascist and authoritarian agendas. Denial and hiding behind “bourgeois” comfort is the theme."
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:06PMSunday, July 28, 2024
A relaxed, humane kindness shines through this staging of Shakespeare's hymn to reconciliation.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:42PMSaturday, June 8, 2024
The Lyric Stage Company's production of David Henry Hwang's Obie award-winning play is serviceably absorbing.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:12PMThursday, May 30, 2024
The script is representative of the pitfalls of current theatrical minimalism -- less can so easily be less.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:06AMMonday, April 22, 2024
"We need hope in the possibility of change in order to survive what’s coming."
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:24AMSunday, February 25, 2024
If only "Becoming a Man"'s pathos were less streamlined, its theatricality more ambitious.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:36PMSunday, February 18, 2024
By Bill Marx Must the stage only discreetly charm the bourgeoisie? “I have long argued that theater alone cannot achieve any social change,” posited the Scottish dramatist and director J…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:54PMTuesday, February 13, 2024
The time is overdue for a substantial discussion of what is happening (or not happening) in Boston-area theaters. Just don't expect to see anything in our sheepish mainstream media.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:36PMSunday, January 21, 2024
Set in New York in the mid-'50s, "Trouble in Mind" is a backstage dramedy that draws on the genre’s interest in the ambiguities of role-playing to condemn racial bias.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:02AMTuesday, October 24, 2023
The journalistic value of blathering out weekend tips to the ears of the comfortable in a social media world awash with likes is dubious.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:03PMSunday, October 1, 2023
In "Fat Ham," Black pain and repressed desire are transformed into a celebration of liberation and empowerment -- once the villain de jure, the violent, tyrannical patriarchy, has been dispa…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:33PMThursday, September 28, 2023
Dramatist Donald Margulies seems to be putting his hand on the heart of the heartland -- as well as taking the pulse of a pair of aging boomers.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:03PMSaturday, September 23, 2023
Canada is far enough from New York and Broadway to ignore their siren drum beats.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:07PMTuesday, September 5, 2023
For a semi-Shavian like myself, the Shaw Festival once again proved that it was the place to be.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:55PMSaturday, July 29, 2023
This uncomplicated version of Shakespeare's tragedy comes off as a rousing tale of murder under a starlit Boston sky that obligingly lights Macbeth's "black and deep desires."
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:25AMThursday, June 29, 2023
Anna Ziegler's play is based on a true story that still resonates powerfully: how science (and society) hides uncomfortable truths.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:33AMSunday, June 11, 2023
In the Actors' Shakespeare's Project's likable staging of As You Like It, love looks pretty durable.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 03:13PMThursday, June 8, 2023
The Gaaga's humor is driven by rage, anger, and disgust, emotions that are not often found in our domesticated (for easy consumption) theater scene.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:13PMMonday, March 20, 2023
How can we create theater that practices critique and empathy in relation to climate change that simultaneously challenges and lifts us, provokes and provides a muscular hope?
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:52AMMonday, March 6, 2023
If the production sends at least some of the audience members back to the magnificent poetry of The Canterbury Tales, it would have done a mitzvah.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:53AM 
