A handful of musicians—on the mandolin, the banjo, the fiddle, more bluegrass than the traditional, big-band orchestration—sit onstage, watching and reacting to the action. Actors enter and exit the barn-like auditorium through the same doors as the audience. Chili and cornbread are served at intermission. This Oklahoma!, then, wisely staged at the smaller Circle in […]
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Founded in 2003, the Red Bull Theater has long been a space space for the Jacobean playwrights who are often ignored by revival companies in favor of their precedessor, Shakespeare. In recent years, the company has added contemporary works to its roster, including Loot and The Mystery of Irma Vep, but it is nice to […]
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“In spite of what some people think, this show is actually quite carefully constructed,” Heidi Schreck says about one-third of the way into her play What the Constitution Means to Me. Audiences might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. What the Consitution Means to Me begins as a recreation of Schreck’s teenage years, when she would […]
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Leo (Daveed Diggs), an artist living in an unnamed metropolitan city, has been plagued by insomnia since childhood. His best friend, Ralph (Thomas Sadoski), bought him a white noise machine once, and while it helped Leo sleep, it blocked him artistically. He ditched the machine, and the insomnia came back—but not the work. When Leo […]
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We open with an esctatic funeral celebration led by the Jheri-curled Pastor Freeman (Marchánt Davis). Esctatic because Barack Obama has just won the presidency, and therefore Freeman is burying not only Righttocomplain, another victim of white supremacy, but their “suffering as people in this wretched land.” From now on, “the President of these United States […]
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Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations is about survival. In the near-sixty years since the band first formed, The Temptations have provided the soundtrack to integration, to Vietnam protest, even to the presidency of Barack Obama. They have gone through twenty-four members. Successive generations of musicians have lived through entire careers—indeed, […]
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The Irish Repertory Theatre continues its Seán O’Casey season with Juno and the Paycock, the second in his Dublin Trilogy. The eponymous peacock is “Captain” Jack Boyle (Irish Rep co-founder Ciarán O’Reilly), a lazy drunk who spends his days in and out of “snugs” with his buddy Joxer (John Keating) and dodging the admonitions of […]
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