Dueling stages

By CAROLYN CLAY  |  December 20, 2011


LITTLE MEN

ArtsEmerson scored Lee Breuer's Obie-winning 2003 production of Mabou Mines DollHouse at the end of a world tour. Stuffed into a Victorian dollhouse, the staging of Ibsen's landmark melodrama was billed as a metaphorical rendering of the dramatist's feminism as "a parable of scale." Indeed, the men were all played by little people who fit comfortably in a space wherein regulation-size women were cramped and confined. Turning on a dime from inventive parody to painful feminist triumph, the production was a revelation.

READ the full review here.

Also giving her all for an undeserving male is Helena of All's Well That Ends Well, this year's Commonwealth Shakespeare Company offering of free Bard on Boston Common. Artistic director Steven Maler delivered his best work in years, a melancholy staging that ameliorated without glossing over the disturbing undertones of this so-called comedy centered on an enterprising woman who will stop at nothing to get a guy not worth having.

READ the full review here.

< prev  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |  6  |  7  |  8  |  9  |  10  |   next >
  Topics: Theater , Theater, Arts, reviews,  More more >
| More

Most Popular
Blogs
 More: Phlog  |  Music  |  Film  |  Books  |  Politics  |  Media  |  Election '08  |  Free Speech  |  All Blogs
ARTICLES BY CAROLYN CLAY
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   ARTSEMERSON'S METAMORPHOSIS  |  February 28, 2013
    Gisli Örn Garðarsson’s Gregor Samsa is the best-looking bug you will ever see — more likely to give you goosebumps than make your skin crawl.
  •   CLEARING THE AIR WITH STRONG LUNGS AT NEW REP  |  February 27, 2013
    Lungs may not take your breath away, but it's an intelligent juggernaut of a comedy about sex, trust, and just how many people ought to be allowed to blow carbon into Earth's moribund atmosphere.
  •   MORMONS, MURDERERS, AND MARINERS: 10 THEATER SENSATIONS COMING TO BOSTON STAGES THIS SPRING  |  February 28, 2013
    Mitt Romney did his Mormon mission in France. But there are no baguettes or croissants to dip into the lukewarm proselytizing of bumbling elders Price and Cunningham, two young men sent by the Church of Latter-day Saints to convert the unfaithful of a Ugandan backwater in The Book of Mormon .
  •   THE HUMAN STAIN: LIFE AND DEATH IN MIDDLETOWN  |  February 22, 2013
    The New York Times dubbed Will Eno a “Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation.”
  •   ZEITGEIST STAGE COMPANY'S LIFE OF RILEY  |  February 22, 2013
    Sir Alan Ayckbourn has written more than 70 plays, most of which turn on an intricate trick of chronology or geography.

 See all articles by: CAROLYN CLAY

LATEST SLIDESHOWS

All Slideshows