From baseball to Shakespeare to male swans
By LIZA WEISSTUCH | March 10, 2006
As the winter wind makes fast tracks, it leaves a burgeoning crop of ancient masterpieces, world premieres, farces, and musicals to blossom come April. Boston Theatre Works slides right into the season with the New England premiere of Rebecca Gilman’s The Sweetest Swing in Baseball (April 13–May 6; BCA; 617.728.4321), where a young artist who’s landed in a psych ward finds an unlikely source of strength and support in archetypal bad-ass Darryl Strawberry. Gilman isn’t the only playwright riffing on familiar personalities. CRASHarts hosts the New York-based Civilians’ (I Am) Nobody’s Lunch (April 25–30; Zero Arrow Theatre; 617.876.4275), which raids popular culture to feed a musical investigation of how we acquire information and how what we learn has an impact on national identity.
The back story of the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch is told in tunes when Broadway in Boston brings the Tony-winning Wicked to the Opera House (April 12–May 14; 617.931.ARTS). New Repertory Theatre stages Ragtime (April 30–May 21; Arsenal Center for the Arts; 617.923.8487), the Tony-winning adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s epic novel of immigrants living out the American Dream. SpeakEasy Stage Company presents a song-laden tale of cultural and ethnic disparities in Tony Kushner & Jeanine Tesori’s Caroline, or Change (May 5–June 3; Calderwood Pavilion; 617.933.8600) — set in the tumultuous 1960s, it’s the story of a black maid working for a Southern Jewish family with a forlorn young son while trying to secure the best for her own children. Social obstacles are rendered obsolete in Pierre Marivaux’s Island of Slaves (May 13–June 11; ART; 617.547.8300); Robert Woodruff directs Gideon Lester’s new translation of this 18th-century French play by the author of La dispute about two servants and their respective masters and how the power dynamics shift when the four end up shipwrecked.
John Corwin is a contemporary scribe who pokes at society’s raw edges. Merrimack Repertory Theatre stages his workplace comedy RealHush-Hush (April 20–May 14; 978.454.3926), where, in a mysterious office, a young woman is caught in the crossfire of two men’s ambitions and bureaucratic manipulations.
At the Huntington Theatre Company, the King of Navarre and his posse of lords strive for power over themselves and their urges when they take a vow of chastity for the sake of their studies in Love’s Labour’s Lost (May 12–June 11; 617.266.0800). It’s the first time artistic director Nicholas Martin has helmed the Bard’s work in town. Shakespeare’s comedies come in couplets this spring as Actors’ Shakespeare Project presents All’s Well That Ends Well (April 20–May 14; 866.811.4111) at the Cambridge Family YMCA Theatre.
Related:
Players and painted stage, Meltdowns, Boston Theater Marathon 2008, More 
- Players and painted stage
It seems the fall theater season was shot from a gun this year, barely after the Labor Day picnic baskets had been packed away.
- Meltdowns
Like the bony, broom-riding icon of Oz it aims to exonerate, Wicked is neither all good nor all bad.
- Boston Theater Marathon 2008
- Love and death
Forget star-cross’d. At the American Repertory Theatre, Romeo and Juliet are just plain cross.
- Spring stages
As we recover from turning the clocks ahead and making our day’s journey into night a bit longer, area stages are taking a cue from Mother Nature.
- Groundbreakers
As the Huntington Theatre Company mounts Radio Golf , the ghost in the rafters is that of Wilson, who died last October at 60, soon after completing this final piece of his grand project chronicling decade by decade the African-American experience of the last 100 years.
- Primary colors
Now that the holiday hubbub is behind us, we have no dreams of white Christmases or visions of Sugar Plum Fairies to warm a theatergoer’s heart.
- The best on the boards
There have been a few muggings on the rialto this year.
- Best on the boards
Huntington Theatre Company artistic director Nicholas Martin recently announced that he would leave his post in 2008.
- Best on the boards
Huntington Theatre Company artistic director Nicholas Martin recently announced that he would leave his post in 2008.
- Chilly scenes in winter
The drama of the holidays (and I don’t mean A Christmas Carol) may be behind us, but there’s plenty more drama — and comedy and musicals — ahead to light up long winter nights.
- Less
Topics:
Theater
, Entertainment, Lorraine Chapman, Jack Neary, More
, Entertainment, Lorraine Chapman, Jack Neary, John Corwin, Rebecca Gilman, Brian Dykstra, Dance, Performing Arts, William Shakespeare, Boston Ballet, Less
