5 Plays in 5 Days
Boston’s theater scene continues to grow in every dimension. In the 1990’s, when I first moved beyond touring Broadway shows to discover local theater, Boston supported a handful of companies and few people made a livelihood in live theater here. Now, there are more companies doing more kinds of plays than ever. I even know a few full-time actors who choose to live in Boston over New York because the pool is smaller while the opportunities are great! A few weeks ago I saw five plays in five days. And there were some I missed!
Noises Off
Lyric Stage
November 15- December 22, 2024
If you like slapstick, farce, Buster Keaton and Monty Python you will LOVE Noises Off. I know this for fact because I do not particularly like that kind of comedy, yet I was guffawing right along with everyone else. Act One of this play-within-a-play delivers a series of silly zingers during final dress rehearsal of a theatrical that appears doomed. In Act Two the set is literally turned around, so the audience is backstage during some provincial performance a month into the run. The same drivel we heard in rehearsal is now delivered to the rear wall, while the personal foibles of the off-stage cast are front and center. It’s perhaps the most perfect thirty minutes of choreography I’ve ever seen. Sardines fly, hatchets swing, lovers slap, then faint, then reconcile. It’s all hysterical. Act Three? Suffice to say this ain’t MacBeth. But if you want to know what happens…you’ll have to go see that for yourself.
How to NOT Save the World with Mr. Bezos
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
November 7–24, 2024
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre produces only new work, mostly by MFA Students in BU’s playwrighting program. I’m always intrigued by things that are still finding their way. And though some plays at BPT that are interesting in their own right, what’s usually most interesting is registering the ways in which fledgling playwrights hit and miss.
How to NOT Save the World with Mr. Bezos has a promising premise. A journalist (Becca A. Lewis) interviews Jeff Bezos (Mark W. Soucy) to explore the social consciousness of a billionaire who’s materially changed our world. I can imagine that a fascinating conversation. But the premise is undermined before the journalist even opens her mouth when she unbuttons her shirt to expose cleavage in a most unprofessional manner. Having abandoned verisimilitude, playwright Maggie Kearnan serves up virtually every theatrical trick in the book. There’s a black out, clothes come off, necks are sliced, blood spurts. The content of the so-called interview is lackluster since Jeff Bezos doesn’t spout anything we don’t already know, and the so-called journalist is a sham from the start. Fortunately, there’s this wonderful other voice: the fact checker (Robbie Rodriguez), who turns out to be more engaging than the main event. The play is too literal to come off as absurd; too spot-on to play as satire. But I give Ms. Kearnan kudos for tackling so much.
Soft Star
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
November 8–25, 2024
Soft Star, by Tina Esper, is Bezos’ polar opposite We follow a pair of lifelong friends in rural Minnesota as they navigate boys who become husbands, jealousy, and babies. The play has several well drawn insights into how we grow into adulthood, but ultimately the story’s too tame. Soft Star includes a few magical moments when Jane (Annika Bolton) displays her gift to nourish and communicate with birds. I look forward to Tina Esper giving us more of that magic.
Galileo’s Daughter
November 14 — December 8, 2024
Central Square Theater continues its admirable productions of plays that highlight women in science with Galileo’s Daughter. Italian scientist and heretic Galileo placed his eldest — illegitimate — daughter in a convent at a young age. 120 of her letters survive, portraying a devout daughter keenly interested in her father’s work. Those letters are the basis for the 1999 book, Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel, as well as this play. The story is touching, though hardly enough substance for a full-length play. Perhaps that’s why playwright Jessica Dickey inserted another character: the Writer, a contemporary New Yorker in Florence to research the letters. The theatrical device is compelling, but ultimately comes up short, as the Writer’s back story is offered in tiny nuggets, so the audience does not much care about her. Until, late in the play, we realize that she is the actual character going through a transformation, and we feel a bit cheated. As if the play is somehow mistitled. Nevertheless, the production is sharp and Diego Arciniegas as Galileo and a slew of other 17th and 21st century characters is just wonderful.
Tartuffe
November 9–24, 2024
Ten seasons in, Hub Theatre Company of Boston continues to dazzle on a dime. Lauren Elias, Founder, Artistic Director, frequent actor and all-around hilarious human being has made an astounding concept thrive: every seat at every performance of every Hub Theatre show is Pay-What-You-Like. I kid you not. Yet their productions are top notch. Tartuffe adds yet another quality notch to Hub’s belt of successes. Today is a perfect time to revisit Moliere’s satire on hypocrisy (in a witty translation by Richard Wilbur.) The set and costumes are a clever confusion of eighteenth-century French Court fashion layered over jeans from the actor’s home closets. The contrast works brilliantly, as does every contemporary touch director Bryn Boice brings to the play. The production sizzles with the gee-whiz enthusiasm of “Let’s put on a show.” The ensemble cast’s timing is impeccable: every joke in the script lands and the stage antics are hysterical. When Act One ended, with the audience howling, I could scarcely believe that time had passed. And Act Two was just as funny!
