Theater

Fall Theater Preview: The event’s the thing

Fall on Boston boards

By CAROLYN CLAY | September 14, 2010

ROCK OF AGES: The jukebox will be set to 1987 in this Tony-nominated musical at the Colonial.

Artistic directors have suddenly morphed into event planners. Both the American Repertory Theater’s Diane Paulus and the Huntington Theatre Company’s Peter DuBois speak of programming not plays but “events.” One such project — erstwhile Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer’s star turn as the androgynous MC of the ART’s Cabaret (at Oberon through October 29) — is already upon us. And it’s clear that it’ll be hard to promenade on the local Rialto this fall without bumping into one or another multi-faceted, multi-headed, or festival-style event.

FIFTH ANNUAL PROVINCETOWN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS THEATER FESTIVAL | September 23-26 | “Under the Influence” is this year’s theme, but it’s not what you think. There are plays making reference to Williams inspirations Eugene O’Neill and Hart Crane and the world premiere (by Beau Jest Moving Theatre) of Williams’s never-produced American Gothic, a riff on Grant Wood’s iconic painting of fun farmers. | Provincetown, various venues | $15–$47.50; $125–$500 festival pass | 866.789.TENN or twptown.org

THE LARAMIE RESIDENCY | September 24–October 2 | The birth of ArtsEmerson is an event in itself, and this residency by Tectonic Theater Project is among its first offerings. Moisés Kaufman’s troupe brings to town both The Laramie Project, which was culled from interviews conducted in the wake of the brutal 1998 murder of gay man Matthew Shepard near the Wyoming city of the title, and the world premiere of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, which was born of a return visit to learn how the hate crime had impacted the community in the long term. | Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont St, Boston | $15–$79 | 617.824.8000 or artsemerson.org

THE SHIPMENT | September 24-26 | Audacious young Korean-American playwright/director Young Jean Lee addresses “Black identity politics” in an irreverent amalgam that draws on minstrelsy and Richard Pryor to twist cultural images, says the New York Times, “like silly putty.” | Institute of Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Ave, Boston | $25; $22 members, students | 617.478.3138 or icaboston.org

ENRON | September 24–October 16 | Zeitgeist Stage Company takes on Brit writer Lucy Prebble’s “financial vaudeville” chronicling the crash of the energy giant — with music. | Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theatre, 539 Tremont St, Boston | $30; $20 seniors, students, previews | 617.933.8600 or bostontheatrescene.com

THE COVETED CROWN: HENRY IV, PARTS 1 & 2 | September 29–November 21 | Bard-centric Actors’ Shakespeare Project presents, in rep, Prince Hal’s epic journey from risky business to breaking Falstaff’s sodden heart. | Midway Studios, 15 Channel Center St, South Boston | $25-$48; $15 student rush | 866.811.4111 or actorsshakespeareproject.org

ROCK OF AGES | October 6-17 | The jukebox is tuned to 1987 in this 2009 Tony-nominated musical set on the Sunset Strip and channeling big hair and heavy metal. Promised are mini-flashlights for the audience, an “arena-rock love story” complete with deafening sound, and a score culled from the hits of Journey, Styx, and Twisted Sister, among others. | Colonial Theatre, 106 Boylston St, Boston | $33-$92 | 800.982.2787 or broadwayacrossamerica.com

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Warming up with the Boston theater scene's winter offerings
Although the whirlwind of Scrooges and Rockettes will soon be exiting stage left, the storm of winter theater continues unabated.
Review: The Laramie Residency
You can't accuse "The Laramie Residency" of being anything less than exhaustive in its four-and-a-half-hour series of interviews about the 1998 Matthew Shepard murder.
Review: Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation, Body Awareness, and The Aliens
Over the river and through the woods from Grover's Corners lies Shirley, VT, Green Mountain stand-in for college-centric Amherst, MA, where playwright Annie Baker grew up.
Boston’s Best Theater Productions of 2010
Renovation and reanimation were the news this year, and that led one to wonder: if the Fabulous Invalid is so sick, why does it need so many new cribs?
11 must-see plays of early 2011
With such tantalizers in the wings, it’s hard to grieve over the exit of all the Rockettes, Scrooges, and tipsy Welshmen that see out the old year.
Review: SpeakEasy makes the best of Nine
Music had better be the food of love in Nine , because there's little else in the Tony-winning show to indicate why its middle-aged, three-timing protagonist is such a chick magnet.
Review: The Druid’s fine trip to Inishmaan
Although Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan is the least likely of his plays to provoke a riot, as John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World did at its 1907 Dublin premiere, it is the most Synge-like of the Anglo-Irish dramatist’s works.
ArtsEmerson celebrates a legendary director
Sometimes Samuel Beckett is baggy pants whittled to the contours of a Giacometti sculpture. Eminent British director Peter Brook, now 86, not only gets that but also relates to it.
Abraham and company deliver the goods
The Rialto intersects Wall Street in Theatre for a New Audience's steely, droll, and deeply disquieting The Merchant of Venice (presented by ArtsEmerson at the Cutler Majestic Theatre through April 10).
Groundlings, rejoice: The 11 most anticipated theater shows of the fall
Fall came early to Boston boards this year, bringing with it "Summertime."
Laurie Anderson is still really good
If I hesitate to offer a review of Laurie Anderson's Delusion (at ArtsEmerson's Paramount Center through October 2), it's because I fear the whole thing will be just one big spoiler.
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Topics: Theater , SpeakEasy Stage Company, Theater, Huntington Theatre Company, More

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ARTICLES BY CAROLYN CLAY

TIR NA’S LONESOME WEST, A.R.T.’S WOODY SEZ | May 22, 2012
Suffice it to say that Leenane is no city of brotherly love.

XANADU FROM SPEAKEASY; AVENUE Q AT LYRIC STAGE | May 15, 2012
Those who know their Coleridge will recall that: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately roller-dome decree."

FELDER’S MAESTRO; ORPHANS’ MARY POPPERS | May 07, 2012
Hershey Felder's Maestro: Leonard Bernstein (presented by ArtsEmerson on the Paramount Mainstage through May 20) begins with black-and-white footage of its subject lecturing vigorously on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

ASP TACKLES TROILUS AND CRESSIDA | May 01, 2012
"All's false in love and war" might be a maxim for Troilus and Cressida.

TIGERS AT ZEITGEIST; YESTERDAY AT CENTRAL SQUARE | April 25, 2012
Forget the elephant in the room. Depression is a big cat in Tigers Be Still, a relentlessly quirky yet endearing screwball tragicomedy by Kim Rosenstock that debuted at New York's Roundabout Underground in 2010 and is getting a sweet Boston premiere by Zeitgeist Stage Company (at the BCA Black Box through May 5).