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Theater

Derailed

2nd Story strips Streetcar of its angry soul
If A Streetcar Named Desire were a person, it wouldn't be able to sleep at night, tossing and turning in a fever sweat, aching for basic human connection.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 05, 2009

Amy Lynn Budd tackles a tumor in My Brain
Some people feel uncomfortable dealing with those, even friends, who look and act normal but are among the walking wounded with some deadly disease or another.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | April 29, 2009

Myth understanding

Searching for self in Trinity's Shapeshifter
Trinity Repertory Company has been developing and is staging Shapeshifter , by Laura Schellhardt, which will have its world premiere May 1-31.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | April 28, 2009

As young lovers do

Spring Awakening's musical bruises
The rock extravaganza Spring Awakening promotes the cliché of adolescent pain to serious grown-up status.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | April 22, 2009

Trivial pursuit

Trinity Rep's winning Earnest
It's difficult to put on an awful performance of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest .

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | April 22, 2009

Old horse, new saddle

Trinity Rep finds importance in Earnest
But what about this matter of throwing a saddle on an old warhorse again? Well, the rider this time around thinks that the play is still as frisky as a colt. She hasn't directed this before, but she has seen it five or six times.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | April 07, 2009

Life and how we live it

The Other Shore searches for meaning
We're far too close to life to see it accurately, aren't we? With noses pressed up against our problems and delights, we need our perceptive artists — such as Chinese playwright Gao Xingjian — to remind us of what's really going on.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | April 07, 2009

The show's the thing

A Chorus Line lifts spirits at PPAC
Admittedly, other musicals had to come before it for A Chorus Line to make any sense. But apart from that, the essence of musical theater is all there in this frisky colt of a theatrical warhorse.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | April 01, 2009

A living history

Twilight revists the King riots
Since Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is set in a specific place and time, some theatergoers will want to relegate its incidents and attitudes — which surround the Rodney King riots — to history.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 24, 2009

Muddled musical

A mostly rotten Scoundrels
We sure do love our stage rascals.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 24, 2009

Home unsweet home

2nd Story's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
European existentialist philosophers grandly designated fear and trembling — and subsets — as the default state of the human condition.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 18, 2009

Ideas and emotions

The Gamm delivers Grace at a fever pitch
Grace takes place in the recent memories of the title character as well as in her difficult present. The basic concern here, which nags her like a toothache, is the non-existence of the divine.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 17, 2009

Review: Secret Rapture

Trinity can't rescue Hare's play
Art is artifice, as we all accept. But sometimes it's hard for artists to take a deep breath and skillfully apply more of the latter to amplify the former.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 04, 2009

Currency Events

The Precient Bad Money at Perishable
Meg Miroshnik's new play, Bad Money , at Perishable Theatre (through March 8), couldn't be more timely to the current economic situation.

By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | March 04, 2009

The Secret Rapture at Trinity Repertory Company

Trinity's Rapture spans the compassion spectrum
David Hare's The Secret Rapture , which Trinity Repertory Company is presenting through March 29.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 24, 2009

Dramatic Success

Arts thrive at the Courthouse Center
The little black box theater that is West Kingston's Center Stage, with little room for scenery, has to be ingenious with its space.

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 25, 2009

In war and love

PBRC'S A Time of Fire burns slowly
PBRC'S A Time of Fire burns slowly

By BILL RODRIGUEZ | February 18, 2009

Mixed Magic's When Fate Comes Knocking

Living history
It's been said before and it'll be said again: the election of Barack Obama casts a new light on the Civil Rights Movement. Or, in Ricardo Pitts-Wiley's words, "We get to tell the story in a different way."

By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | February 12, 2009

Black power

Trinity Rep's powerful Raisin In the Sun
The centerpiece of George C. Wolfe's 1986 satire The Colored Museum is a scathing sketch called The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play . A Raisin in the Sun is the über-mama-on-the-couch play

By CAROLYN CLAY | February 12, 2009