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CAROLYN CLAY

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I loves you, Porgy

The A.R.T. streamlines a classic
So shoot me, Porgy purists. To my mind, the retooling of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess for American Repertory Theater is compelling enough to push past quibbles.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | September 02, 2011

Brits, Yanks, and Horovitz still fighting over Beverley

Dockside doll's house
What if Nora Helmer had waited until she turned 70 to slam that door heard 'round the world?

By: CAROLYN CLAY | August 30, 2011

Tina Packer tackles Molly Ivins

Patriot game
Red Hot Patriot is the work of twin-sister journalists Margaret and Allison Engel, the former the head of the Alicia Patterson Foundation, which awards journalism fellowships, the latter communications director for the University of Southern California.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | August 23, 2011

Intriguing Love Song hums two tunes

Heart heist
Comedy and metaphor collide in the plays of John Kolvenbach.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | August 11, 2011

All's Well on Boston Common

Love sick
I think of Measure for Measure , with its fanatically chaste heroine, and All's Well That Ends Well , with its lovely lass in pursuit of a lout, as Shakespeare's "Smart Women, Foolish Choices" plays.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | August 08, 2011

Visiting Shakespeareans are two for two

Propeller flies
Hie thee to the Boston University Theatre, where the BU School of Theatre and the Huntington Theatre Company are presenting England's Propeller theater company in Richard III and The Comedy of Errors in rep (through June 19).

By: CAROLYN CLAY | May 26, 2011

Speakeasy's The Drowsy Chaperone; Gold Dust Orphans' Peter Pansy

The Drowsy Chaperone is receiving a rousing wake-up call from SpeakEasy Stage Company (at the BCA's Calderwood Pavilion through June 5).

By: CAROLYN CLAY | May 23, 2011

Animal Crackers; plus Passing Strange and At Home at the Zoo

Marx madness
The classic Marx Brothers films are like anarchy in a bottle.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | May 12, 2011

ASP serves up Antony and Cleopatra

Egyptian dish
In Antony and Cleopatra, the Brangelina of the ancient world are transported from messy, histrionic life to the realm of legend. Audiences at Actors' Shakespeare Project's streamlined, slightly rearranged presentation of the play are less likely to be transported.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | May 09, 2011

Company One's Book of Grace

America play
America, from sink to shining sink: that's the real subject of Suzan-Lori Parks's domestic explosion, The Book of Grace.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | April 26, 2011

Underground Railway Theater cracks Breaking the Code

Top secrets
Turing is no grandstanding stammerer. The occasional, pained hesitation is a small if integral part of a portrayal that captures the decorated Turing's almost giddy passion for mathematics and his prophetic belief in the development of computers.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | April 15, 2011

merchant of venice review at cutler majestic theatre

Abraham and company deliver the goods

Mighty merchant
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).

By: CAROLYN CLAY | April 01, 2011

ArtsEmerson celebrates a legendary director

Brook marks
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.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | April 04, 2011

The Select (The Sun Also Rises); Educating Rita

English 101
It's a tough assignment: to create a forward-moving play out of the tightly orchestrated aimlessness that is Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises .

By: CAROLYN CLAY | March 25, 2011

Elevator Repair Service tackles Hemingway

Road trip
Road trip

By: CAROLYN CLAY | March 18, 2011

Review: Zeitgeist Stage's My Wonderful Day

Child's play
"Little pitchers have big ears," the saying goes. In My Wonderful Day, which is getting its Boston premiere from Zeitgeist Stage Company (at the BCA Plaza Black Box through March 26), the little pitcher also has a notebook in which she is inscribing the title essay. And what a day for it!

By: CAROLYN CLAY | March 17, 2011

Carolyn Clay reviews Prometheus Bound, Reasons To Be Pretty, DollHouse

Betrayal
Dionysius does not appear in Prometheus Bound, but that doesn't stop the American Repertory Theater from turning the 2500-year-old shout-out against tyranny attributed to Aeschylus into a bacchanal (at Oberon through April 2).

By: CAROLYN CLAY | March 11, 2011

Review: The Hotel Nepenthe; Ti-Jean & His Brothers; Pussy on the House

Islands in the storm
"Only connect," advises E.M. Forster, failing to add, "And be weird." John Kuntz, however, hears that double directive, perhaps blowing in the wind, and responds with The Hotel Nepenthe .

By: CAROLYN CLAY | March 02, 2011

The A.R.T.'s 21st-century Ajax

Soldier's tale
An embittered soldier who snaps and commits a heinous act of violence? It's a wonder Sophocles's Ajax isn't performed as often as Hamlet .

By: CAROLYN CLAY | February 22, 2011

Review: The Druid’s fine trip to Inishmaan

Cripple kicking
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.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | February 04, 2011

Review: SpeakEasy makes the best of Nine

Less than 10
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.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | February 01, 2011

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