"Pinocchio' at the Arden

How Pinocchio's nose grew (and other Arden flights of imagination)

At the Arden Children's Theatre, literalness always takes a back seat to the imagination, and talented actors enlist their child audiences as co-conspirators in their deceptions.

Dan Rottenberg

May 28, 2013 · Articles · 2 minute read

Stoppard's "Heroes' at the Lantern (2nd review)

Waiting for Godot, or for Stoppard?

The audience was in stitches throughout much of Heroes. But the intellectual fireworks that accompany most Tom Stoppard scripts are largely absent here.

Jake Blumgart

May 27, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

Richard Foreman's "Old-Fashioned Prostitutes' in New York

Errant thoughts in the mind's field of vision

As with so many of Richard Foreman's experimental plays, what's on stage is a dramatization of the mind— his or ours— slipping and darting this way and that, propelled by desire and the dazzle of possibly actually knowing or grasping something.

May 27, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

Stoppard's "Heroes' at the Lantern (1st review)

Take that, Godot! Or: Band of brothers, refusing to go gently

Beckett's Waiting for Godot argued that life is absurd but suicide is no solution; there is only waiting. In Heroes, Tom Stoppard offers a new twist: Even in a world without purpose, he suggests, heroics are possible.

Marshall A. Ledger

May 26, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Robert O'Hara's "Bootycandy' at the Wilma

Alice (black, gay and male) in a 21st-Century Wonderland

The characters coping so ludicrously with issues of sexual desire in Robert O'Hara's stinging and original satire all happen to be black or gay (or black and gay)— that is, they're authority figures who've never exercised real authority.

Dan Rottenberg

May 24, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

"The Assembled Parties' on Broadway

Terms of estrangement

In Richard Greenberg's witty comedy drama, The Assembled Parties, life doesn't turn out as expected for an extended upper class New York family. But does Greenberg have a substantive message to deliver, or is he just out to entertain us with witty dialogue and plot contrivances?

Jane Biberman

May 21, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

Philip Dawkins's "Failure: A Love Story'

A whimsical survival course

Failure: A Love Story is an enchanting poetic fable in which members of the Fail family make the most of life's tragedies by spinning their own narratives to turn back the clock.

Jane Biberman

May 18, 2013 · Articles · 2 minute read

"Here Lies Love': Imelda Marcos in New York

Bedazzled

How could an entire starving nation fall under the sway of a dazzling charlatan like Imelda Marcos? The disco-style poporetta Here Lies Love will seduce you in much the same way. Unfortunately, it neglects to address the greatest irony of all: what happened to Imelda after the music stopped.

Carol Rocamora

May 18, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

Bruce Graham's "North of the Boulevard'

Bruce Graham grows up

Bruce Graham has written so many plays that it may be appropriate to describe his work as facile. But his last two works provide credible characters wrestling with difficult decisions.

Steve Cohen

May 11, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

"Orphans' on Broadway: The Boston Marathon link

Two abandoned brothers, then and now, or: Does this story sound familiar?

I saw Orphans when it opened in the 1980s, and remember being repelled by its violence and ferocity. Not now. This hilarious, harrowing absurdist drama sheds chilling insight into the two brothers charged in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Carol Rocamora

May 11, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read