The production is uniformly well sung and acted, and that excuses a lot of the tomfoolery. Anderson Davis is a callow and suitably obtuse Frederic. Farah Alvin's Mabel, who first appears with a huge birdcatching net and wearing a birdcage on her back, is an oddly knowing and proto-feminist Mabel; when she looks at Frederic's pirate contract and deduces at once that he's still apprenticed, he exclaims, "You understand so quickly? It took me a whole song!" Huffman's Ruth is a nasally alluring mix of naive and naughty; defending her unchastity to Frederic, she argues, "The undisputed fact is/Things improve with practice." Ed Dixon is a model Major-General Stanley, not only in his patter song but in his mastery of the muted wink-wink. And Steve Kazee's Pirate King, too ballsy at the beginning, improves to marry hearty with hapless, as when at the end of "Cat-Like Tread!" he yells at his out-of-control crew, "No big finish!" They ignore him — you'll be glad they did.
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Fighting Rome, Lincoln Yule log, Sensations, More 
- Fighting Rome
It takes chutzpah for a first-time playwright to get into the ring with Bertolt Brecht.
- Lincoln Yule log
Abraham Lincoln, as he said in his second inaugural address, yearned to "bind up the nation's wounds." Since the great man was assassinated little more than a month later, he didn't quite get around to it. No worry, Paula Vogel has taken over the job with A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration.
- Sensations
Unlike its predecessor, the over-hyped Rent , Spring Awakening is the genuine item: a Tony-winning amalgam of theater and pop music that smells like teen fusion.
- Play by Play, May 8, 2009
Theater around town
- Play by Play, May 15, 2009
Theater in town
- Play by play: May 29, 2009
Boston's theater schedule
- Autumn garden
It's freshman and sophomore year on the Boston rialto, with American Repertory Theater artistic director Diane Paulus introducing her first season and Huntington Theatre Company honcho Peter DuBois endeavoring to survive his second.
- Doing the right thing
There are plenty of stories that harken back to a Golden Age, but Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird was different.
- Love and politics
In Boleros for the Disenchanted , Puerto Rican–born José Rivera looks beyond the fairy dust and sexual spark to probe the full meaning of “till death do us part.”
- Sympathy for the Devil
Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll at the Huntington; McPherson's The Seafarer at SpeakEasy
- Making magic
Ever since the Greeks learned to keep their masks on straight and not bump into the statuary, theaters and theatergoers have been learning more and more about how the magic works.
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Topics:
Theater
, John Cage, Boston University, William Shakespeare, More
, John Cage, Boston University, William Shakespeare, Monty Python, Johnny Depp, Theater, Huntington Theatre Company, Huntington Theatre Company, Huntington Theatre Company, Merce Cunningham, Less
