Producer and Director of National Geographic's LION Faith Musembi went backstage at The Lion King Broadway to learn how Head of Puppets Lynda White and her team bring lions from the savanna to the stage.
By Bob Abelman Renaissance Faires and Festivals are, among many things, immersive, inclusive, and highly participatory forms of theater. King Richard’s Faire, which is New England’s larg…
Director Diane Paulus’s high-spirited A.R.T. adaptation of Ionesco’s anti-conformist play sometimes overplays its comic business, but John Turturro’s scruffy, strident, anguished Beren…
Double Edge Theatre revives its 2015 roaming spectacle of ecological grief, political resistance, and communal art.
Commonwealth Shakespeare Company celebrates its milestone season by revisiting A Midsummer Night’s Dream, reaffirming its mission to make Shakespeare a truly public art.
This crisp revival turns emotional recoil, backward chronology, and elegant restraint into a sharp study of infidelity.
Playwright Miranda Austen ADEkoje revisits an 1895 gathering of Black women activists, uncovering the tensions, ambitions, and humanity behind a historic coalition.
Arlekin’s high-energy adaptation underscores absurdism’s resonance in an age of conflict.
S. Asher Gelman’s script opens as a rare, bracing political drama before collapsing into conventional family melodrama.
Despite striking choreography and a tour-de-force lead, the A.R.T.'s adaptation of Black Swan can’t escape the film’s excesses—or its own thin score.
Sharon Rothstein’s sharp drama shifts the focus from censorship to the corrosive culture of public shaming.
Jonathan Spector’s successful satire finds biting comedy—and uneasy truth—in the limits of well-meaning consensus.
Gabriel Graetz and Paul Melendy power Charles Ludlam’s camp classic, even as a stripped-down design leaves some comic potential untapped.
"The Maids" uses video and fantasy with purpose, while "Kenrex" turns a grim murder story into empty showmanship.
After a year of safe revivals and recycled material, companies hint at change—but caution, celebrity casting, and déjà vu still dominate the lineup.
After a year of safe revivals and recycled material, companies hint at change—but caution, celebrity casting, and déjà vu still dominate the lineup.
Set amid the rituals and turmoils of barrio life, this contemporary take on "Oedipus Rex" trades Sophoclean complexity for theatrical vitality.
Two beloved cult properties arrive on Broadway with formidable casts and decades of devotion behind them – but conjuring darkness turns out to be harder than it looks.
The smoke drifting over the set is a metaphor for the mind-fogging rhetoric of Willy Loman’s phony boosterism. He has been adrift in an American dream that was a lie all along.
SpeakEasy Stage’s musically rich production grips with its performances, even as the drama struggles to fully deepen its tale of a crisis at sea.
By Christopher Caggiano Two productions set out to reinvent Lloyd Webber’s back catalog. Only one of them succeeds. A confession: I’ve never been a big fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber. I will…
In this high-energy comedy of creative frustration, history"and hubris"repeat themselves to hilarious effect.
With its production of "Charlotte's Web," WFT has created a lovely, balanced experience -- by turns obvious and full of nuance -- that offers life lessons in the value of multigenerational s…
A renovated and flexible performance space with unlimited free parking is what every theater company from Boston to Portland dreams of.
The proceedings are continually involving, each of the performers supplying sufficient dramatic weight and interacting as a credible ensemble of characters rather than caricatures.
The play is preachy. But John Lithgow is magnificent.
I'm thinking that a one-person performance of "Hamlet" by a Brit transwoman might get under Trump's necrotic skin.
"Suffs" bounces through a timeline of conferences, direct actions, interpersonal snits, and self-questioning over whether the entire endeavor is really worth it.
Daniel Okrent's "Art Isn't Easy" is an engaging if familiar introduction to one of theater's most complex figures " though seasoned Stephen Sondheim devotees may find themselves wanting more.
"Rhinoceros" is a powerful wake-up call that, whether we like it nor not, we are writhing on the horns of a dilemma.
In his speculative play "The Antiquities," dramatist Jordan Harrison has no trouble envisioning earthlings in the post-human age.
Come for the frolic and high energy professional stagecraft; stay to experience this creative ensemble's answer to: Who the hell are we, facing the end?
Is anyone surprised that playwrights like Kearnan are creating works that show us women who are resourceful -- and ready to fight back against their oppressors?
Keiko Green's play about the end of the world is a robust vaudevillian entertainment.
"Achieving some sort of balance is key; to capture the heart and soul of who we are, and to present that on our stages, so that we continually challenge audiences and surprise ourselves."
Director Tony Estrella's version of Ibsen's tragedy smooths out an energetic path -- the action moves along with compelling alacrity.
Meeting today's challenge"harnessing the performing arts to prepare the next generation to sustain democracy"requires broader collaboration not only with schools and community partners but a…
Joshua Harmon's play offers numerous instances of familial turbulence, moments of rhapsodic relief and -- to avoid spoilers -- revelations of how guilt and hostility fuse to create irreparab…
The true star of the Lyric Stage production is Aimee Doherty, who is marvelous in the role of Penelope.
A consistently engaging and engaged, insightful, humorous, scarily moving, polished contemporary drama with a premise to die for.
A new year is beginning, so it is as good a time as any to check in with a few actors with Boston roots or performance experience, to explore what it means to pursue the dream of being an ac…
Protecting live theater, along with the other arts that the NEA has supported, is urgent, and it begins, as it did with me, by loving theater, either as a regular member of the audience or a…
Is it possible to separate the art from the artist or, in the case of Rhode Island's Contemporary Theater Company, the artist's husband?
If there is power in being invited, for the space of 80 minutes, to suspend our fear of where things are going, this show is a place where we can feel safe to do just that.
"Job" is not so much a game of cat-and-mouse as a highly pressurized coffee klatch.
"Wonder" aspires to make us more empathetic and to help us "choose kind."
Sometimes the stranger is someone who is very well known to us, like a father whose strange ways include a devotion to a certain story about a childhood in Wales.
Our critics salute the year's outstanding productions, with some commentary on the state of the art.
The 2025 version of the Revels once again fills historic Sanders Theatre with comedy and music, while at the same time encouraging us to reflect on the things that are important in life -- f…
Two versions of "Hedda Gabler" -- one gratifying, the other gauche.
If John Lahr could learn, even in his eighties, to cut back on his own self-adoration and stop being so damned starstruck, the razzle in his profiles would dazzle all the more.
