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magidI haven't stopped going to shows, but I have not managed to post about anything I've seen since... *pokes around LJ* um, last September (barring a couple of cabarets, that is). And that was the only one since last May. So, since I have completist tendencies, here's some pico reviews of what I saw during the last n months.
In approximately chronological order:
Over the summer I saw about half of The Complt Wrks of Wm Shkspr, Abridged at the Publick Theater, which was, as always, very funny, though there were challenges to an outdoor performance, namely, rain. It was raining a little much of the time, and got worse until the show was called.
However, this meant I still got to see the very short playlet beforehand, the exact title of which I've forgotten, about what happens after "happily ever after" for Disney princesses. A bunch of them met up at a bar, and we heard about marriage to a shoe fetishist, cultural assumptions of ethnicity, sleeping pills, and more. Cute, but not polished.
The HRDC put on Marat/Sade (Peter Weiss), which I'd heard of, but never seen. The full (sub?) title is "The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade," which covers quite a lot of the plot. It's a play within a play, where more of the story happens in the frame story of the asylum. Interesting, but it wasn't a fabulous show.
ASP put on The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare) in the basement of the Garage, that low-ceilinged dark space with pillars in the middle that they've used before, and to good effect. The show was set approximately in the 60s at some bar in MA, with classic rock in a juke box, MA accents at the very beginning, a pool table off to one side, and a bar (d'uh). There were some clever bits, and a lot of humor (I still can't believe I was the only one to crack up when a character came 'riding' in on his horse, his servant behind him banging coconut shells together), though the story is still left as a bit problematic in my head (brow beat/ starve/ sleep dep your honey until she's a doormat? lovely. not.). Still, they did a good job at making that less difficult, though I am unfortunately hazy on how (I really should have not let all this slide). One thing that stayed vivid: how some things I'd thought were decorations around one of the annoying in the middle pillars folded down at the end to become a circular table.
The Post-Meridian Radio Players put on The Gib Broadcast of October 30th, 1938 around Halloween. Like previous shows, voice performers were in period costumes, there was a Foley sound crew, and the style was very much of the 30's. Unlike other shows, there was also live music (yay, ENSMB), usherettes and other costumed folk meandering about before the show, including giving out an extra late edition period-style newspaper, and multiple stories. Which was an issue, in the end: a show that long, even with two intermissions, is too long. Everyone afterward agreed that it should have been cut, but there wasn't consensus about just where... The first act started with the Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour, a medley of music, which was later interrupeted by a reworking of the War of the Worlds to be in and around Boston, based on the original radio play. Of note: I went with my parents (my brother was in the show :-) *waves*), and my dad told me he remembered the original broadcast!
The HRDC also put on Attempts on Her Life (Martin Crimp), which was... interesting. Not in a good way. The best part about this was that they'd chosen a configuration of the space I'd not seen before, with the stage diagonally in the middle, one huge archway at the end with a scrim, the audience diagonally on two sides. As for the play itself, well, I suspect it might be better with professionals who have had some life experience, but as it was, it felt just like they were trying to be edgy for the sake of being avante-garde, sometimes with vignettes that made a little sense, but sometimes not, nor did they really link up. I was not the only one who would have left at intermission had there been one.
The Speakeasy Stage Company put on Reckless (Craig Lucas) at the BCA. It was a very odd Xmas show, a woman sent out into the night when her last-minute-regretting husband tells her the man at the door is an assassin he hired to kill her. She goes, with nothing, and her life changes, as she drifts into other choices entirely. The staging was amusing and clever (a couch turned around to become a car, complete with headlights; there were lots of interesting lights and doorways of varying size, with space behind partly shown by a scrim), while the play felt a bit less clear about what it wanted to be: humorous holiday story of the bizarre? sentimental family reunion? It wavered, which left it less strong than it could be, though I did get to laugh lots in the meantime (a woman pretending to be deaf to keep her husband, poisoned champagne murder, how one actress played so many therapists who were all different).
ASP's A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare), down in the For Point Channel space they've been using, was my least favorite of their productions so far. Some of it had to do with the acting: it was clear that while the principal characters were solid, a lot of the smaller, peripheral roles were played by younger/newer actors who didn't have the presence I would have liked, though I remain fangirlishly squeeful over John Kuntz. Mostly, though, it was the decision to have the play be set in a sort of punk rock urban grunge setting, the fairies looking more like 80s rockers than anything else (Joan Jett comes to mind), the set including trash and the hulk of a convertible, and so on. Not to my taste, unfortunately.
The Huntington's production of All My Sons (Arthur MIller) was excellent, marred only by issues that had to do with being the dress rehearsal rather than the 'real' show (odd lighting changes back and forth during a scene, making me wonder what the final verdict would be; the constant clickclickclick of a photographer taking publicity pictures; the oddness of having the two boys who were sharing the one kid role both doing part of it (one was obviously more used to being on stage than the other...)). I hadn't seen nor read this before, so I didn't know the story at all. It's not easy stuff, about a father's involvement in sub-par airplane parts that caused deaths in Vietnam, while one son was still officially MIA years later, and the mother was unwilling to give up hope, while the other son idolized his father. People changed over the course of the show, not always in easy ways, and it's interesting to think about the issues.
At Arisia, the Post-Meridian Radio Players presented Red Shift: Interplanetary Do-Gooder in The Upgrade Ultimatum, another live-action radio drama, this time with minimal live sound effects. It was hysterically funny, and likely would have been more so had I actually caught all the references (my favorite remains Marvin the paranoid android). Clever writing, fun and silly plot, plus seeing friends do interesting things with their voices :-)
I Sebastiani's The Cold Winter Night, which was performed in the Waltham Mills, was a commedia dell'arte show about a rich man marrying off his daughter. Much silliness, much over-the-top acting, which felt right for the genre. It was pleasant, but didn't hold a candle to my memories of the commedia-style show That's Amore done years ago at Brandeis, made up by the grad students there. It was interesting to be in the space, however, which I hadn't been to before (and might now go back for open studios, now that I'm sure where it is).
In approximately chronological order:
Over the summer I saw about half of The Complt Wrks of Wm Shkspr, Abridged at the Publick Theater, which was, as always, very funny, though there were challenges to an outdoor performance, namely, rain. It was raining a little much of the time, and got worse until the show was called.
However, this meant I still got to see the very short playlet beforehand, the exact title of which I've forgotten, about what happens after "happily ever after" for Disney princesses. A bunch of them met up at a bar, and we heard about marriage to a shoe fetishist, cultural assumptions of ethnicity, sleeping pills, and more. Cute, but not polished.
The HRDC put on Marat/Sade (Peter Weiss), which I'd heard of, but never seen. The full (sub?) title is "The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade," which covers quite a lot of the plot. It's a play within a play, where more of the story happens in the frame story of the asylum. Interesting, but it wasn't a fabulous show.
ASP put on The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare) in the basement of the Garage, that low-ceilinged dark space with pillars in the middle that they've used before, and to good effect. The show was set approximately in the 60s at some bar in MA, with classic rock in a juke box, MA accents at the very beginning, a pool table off to one side, and a bar (d'uh). There were some clever bits, and a lot of humor (I still can't believe I was the only one to crack up when a character came 'riding' in on his horse, his servant behind him banging coconut shells together), though the story is still left as a bit problematic in my head (brow beat/ starve/ sleep dep your honey until she's a doormat? lovely. not.). Still, they did a good job at making that less difficult, though I am unfortunately hazy on how (I really should have not let all this slide). One thing that stayed vivid: how some things I'd thought were decorations around one of the annoying in the middle pillars folded down at the end to become a circular table.
The Post-Meridian Radio Players put on The Gib Broadcast of October 30th, 1938 around Halloween. Like previous shows, voice performers were in period costumes, there was a Foley sound crew, and the style was very much of the 30's. Unlike other shows, there was also live music (yay, ENSMB), usherettes and other costumed folk meandering about before the show, including giving out an extra late edition period-style newspaper, and multiple stories. Which was an issue, in the end: a show that long, even with two intermissions, is too long. Everyone afterward agreed that it should have been cut, but there wasn't consensus about just where... The first act started with the Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour, a medley of music, which was later interrupeted by a reworking of the War of the Worlds to be in and around Boston, based on the original radio play. Of note: I went with my parents (my brother was in the show :-) *waves*), and my dad told me he remembered the original broadcast!
The HRDC also put on Attempts on Her Life (Martin Crimp), which was... interesting. Not in a good way. The best part about this was that they'd chosen a configuration of the space I'd not seen before, with the stage diagonally in the middle, one huge archway at the end with a scrim, the audience diagonally on two sides. As for the play itself, well, I suspect it might be better with professionals who have had some life experience, but as it was, it felt just like they were trying to be edgy for the sake of being avante-garde, sometimes with vignettes that made a little sense, but sometimes not, nor did they really link up. I was not the only one who would have left at intermission had there been one.
The Speakeasy Stage Company put on Reckless (Craig Lucas) at the BCA. It was a very odd Xmas show, a woman sent out into the night when her last-minute-regretting husband tells her the man at the door is an assassin he hired to kill her. She goes, with nothing, and her life changes, as she drifts into other choices entirely. The staging was amusing and clever (a couch turned around to become a car, complete with headlights; there were lots of interesting lights and doorways of varying size, with space behind partly shown by a scrim), while the play felt a bit less clear about what it wanted to be: humorous holiday story of the bizarre? sentimental family reunion? It wavered, which left it less strong than it could be, though I did get to laugh lots in the meantime (a woman pretending to be deaf to keep her husband, poisoned champagne murder, how one actress played so many therapists who were all different).
ASP's A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare), down in the For Point Channel space they've been using, was my least favorite of their productions so far. Some of it had to do with the acting: it was clear that while the principal characters were solid, a lot of the smaller, peripheral roles were played by younger/newer actors who didn't have the presence I would have liked, though I remain fangirlishly squeeful over John Kuntz. Mostly, though, it was the decision to have the play be set in a sort of punk rock urban grunge setting, the fairies looking more like 80s rockers than anything else (Joan Jett comes to mind), the set including trash and the hulk of a convertible, and so on. Not to my taste, unfortunately.
The Huntington's production of All My Sons (Arthur MIller) was excellent, marred only by issues that had to do with being the dress rehearsal rather than the 'real' show (odd lighting changes back and forth during a scene, making me wonder what the final verdict would be; the constant clickclickclick of a photographer taking publicity pictures; the oddness of having the two boys who were sharing the one kid role both doing part of it (one was obviously more used to being on stage than the other...)). I hadn't seen nor read this before, so I didn't know the story at all. It's not easy stuff, about a father's involvement in sub-par airplane parts that caused deaths in Vietnam, while one son was still officially MIA years later, and the mother was unwilling to give up hope, while the other son idolized his father. People changed over the course of the show, not always in easy ways, and it's interesting to think about the issues.
At Arisia, the Post-Meridian Radio Players presented Red Shift: Interplanetary Do-Gooder in The Upgrade Ultimatum, another live-action radio drama, this time with minimal live sound effects. It was hysterically funny, and likely would have been more so had I actually caught all the references (my favorite remains Marvin the paranoid android). Clever writing, fun and silly plot, plus seeing friends do interesting things with their voices :-)
I Sebastiani's The Cold Winter Night, which was performed in the Waltham Mills, was a commedia dell'arte show about a rich man marrying off his daughter. Much silliness, much over-the-top acting, which felt right for the genre. It was pleasant, but didn't hold a candle to my memories of the commedia-style show That's Amore done years ago at Brandeis, made up by the grad students there. It was interesting to be in the space, however, which I hadn't been to before (and might now go back for open studios, now that I'm sure where it is).