Theater

Play by Play: April 10, 2009

Plays A to Z

By CAROLYN CLAY | April 8, 2009

OPENING

AIN'T MISBEHAVIN' | Erstwhile American Idol Ruben Studdard stars in this 30th-anniversary national tour of the Tony-winning 1978 musical revue by Murray Horowitz and Richard Maltby Jr. built on the tunes of composer, stride pianist, and 1930s Harlem fixture Thomas 'Fats' Waller, among them "Honeysuckle Rose," "This Joint Is Jumpin'," and "Your Feet's Too Big." Maltby Jr. is at the helm; the cast includes two other Idol alums, Frenchie Davis and Trenyce Cobbins. Citi Performing Arts Center and the City of Boston are the presenters. | Strand Theater, 543 Columbia Road, Dorchester | 866.348.9738 | April 10-12 | Curtain 8 pm Fri | 2 + 8 pm Sat | 3 pm Sun | $28-$58

ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY | Boston Children's Theatre brings to the stage children's author Judith Viorst's 1998 musical version of her popular 1972 tome about the title kid and a particularly rotten if hardly extraordinary 24 hours. | Grand Lodge of Masons of Massachusetts, 186 Tremont St, Boston | 617.424.6634 | April 18–May 3 | Curtain 2 pm Wed-Sat [Wed-Thurs April 22-23 only] | $12-$20

ANTIRETROVIRALS AND WATER REFUGEES: A LIVING NEWSPAPER ON HAITI | MIT Dramashop utilizes puppets, shadow theater, toy theater, video and audio sampling, and live brass music as it "looks at the past, present, and future of Haiti in terms of the politics of global health care as refracted through the work of Paul Farmer's Partners in Health organization and its fight against AIDS." MIT guest artist and puppeteer John Bell directs. Post-show discussions follow. | Kresge Little Theater at MIT, 48 Mass Ave, Cambridge |www.dramashop.mit.edu/tickets| April 9-17 | Curtain 8 pm Wed-Sat | $8; $6 students

CHARLOTTE'S WEB | Roll over, Beth of Little Women fame — there may be no bigger tearjerker in youth literature than the demise of the arachnid who befriends a pig in E.B. White's classic tale. It's brought to the stage by Joseph Robinette; Jane Staab directs a cast led by Merle Perkins, Robert Saoud, and Grace Brakeman. | Wheelock Family Theatre, 200 the Riverway, Boston | 617.879.2300 | April 10–May 10 | Curtain 1 pm Tues-Thurs [April 21-23] | 1 pm [April 24] + 7:30 pm Fri | 3 pm Sat-Sun | $15-$25; $10 Pajama Party Fridays; $13 Teens Take Charge

DAME EDNA: MY FIRST LAST TOUR | The lavender-locked, gladioli-hurling female alter ego of Australian comic Barry Humphries returns with "her new and uniquely intimate offering, which she created on her private multi-million-acre, possum-infested luxury estate in her native Australia." Don't sit too near the front unless you're into audience participation, which, whether you're willing or not, will ensue, as Dame Edna unleashes her sequined splendor and confides her deepest thoughts. | Colonial Theatre, 106 Boylston St, Boston | 800-982-2787 | April 16-19 | Curtain 7:30 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 2 + 8 pm Sat | 3 pm Sun | $50-$67.50 | Jim Sullivan's interview with Dame Edna in "Back Talk," on page 58

ENCORE! | Chamber Theatre Productions, which tours the country with stage adaptations of classic short stories intended for student audiences and others, makes a hometown stop. On the program are Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell Tale Heart, Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, W.W. Jacobs's The Monkey's Paw, Guy de Maupassant's The Necklace, and Mark Twain's The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. | John Hancock Hall, 180 Berkeley St, Boston | 800.225.7988 | April 14, 16 | Curtain 10:30 am Tues, Thurs | $15.75

HUMBLE BOY | The Publick Theatre comes indoors for the New England premiere of British playwright Charlotte Jones's Susan Smith Blackburn Prize–winning play, which, centered on a bee-keeping physicist, debuted at the Royal National Theatre in 2001. "Allusions to Shakespeare's Hamlet anchor this comedy as it takes the lid off the gardens of British suburbia to explore the physics of attraction and family and the complex struggle to be (and not to bee) in a constantly shifting universe." Diego Arciniegas directs; Nigel Gore, Nancy E. Carroll, and Stephanie Clayman are in the cast. | Boston Center for the Arts Plaza, 539 Tremont St, Boston | 617.933.8600 | April 9–May 2 | Curtain 8 pm Thurs-Fri | 3 + 8 pm Sat | 3 pm Sun | $32-$35; $20 April 9-11 previews

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST | Beth F. Miles, head of the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium's MFA directing program, is at the helm of Oscar Wilde's 1895 "trivial comedy for serious people." Trinity Rep regular Mauro Hantman stars as the identity-laundering Jack; Janice Duclos is the battle ax who won't let her daughter marry anyone descended from a handbag. | Trinity Repertory Company, 201 Washington St, Providence, Rhode Island | 401.351.4242 | April 10–May 10 | Curtain 7:30 pm Tues-Fri + 2 pm Wed [April 22, 29] | 2 pm [April 18, May 9] + 7:30 pm Sat | 2 pm [no April 12] + 7:30 pm Sun | $20-$60; $10 12th-row bench

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Topics: Theater , Entertainment, Music, Huntington Theatre Company, More

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ARTICLES BY CAROLYN CLAY

TWIN PEAKS | August 12, 2009
The bay of Ephesus laps Collins Avenue in Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's Latin-tinged, frisky if over-frenetic The Comedy of Errors (at the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common through August 16). It is not across sands of subtlety but through a spray of salsa that the perpetrators of this 1930s-South-Beach-set riff on Shakespeare's early comedy pratfall.

SEASONS' GREETINGS | August 04, 2009
It may not be December 1963, but oh what a night is Jersey Boys (at the Shubert Theatre through September 26) for boomers wishing to enjoy the soundtrack of their youth set against a mix of Forever Plaid and GoodFellas .

HARE BELLES | July 28, 2009
With apologies to Winston Churchill, The Breath of Life is a cliché wrapped in an enigma — or two. On the face of it, award-winning British writer David Hare's ruthless yet sentimental two-hander (at Gloucester Stage through August 2) is a standard confrontation between a betrayed wife and her husband's long-time mistress.

QUAKE AND SHAKE | July 22, 2009
A tenderhearted yarn spinner tells an anxious little girl a story about a talking bear hawking honey. A nerdy young debt collector comes home to find a six-foot amphibian bent on recruiting him to save Tokyo from a natural disaster. Both scenarios emanate from the brain of award-winning Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.

VIOLET HOUR | June 23, 2009
The color purple describes both kids' icon Barney and a bruise. And sure enough, both child-friendly uplift and florid abrasion are wound into the sprawling, heartfelt musical based on Alice Walker's Pulitzer-winning 1982 novel about a beaten-down young black woman learning to value herself over the course of 40 years in the first half of the 20th century.

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