Latest news with #CentralSquareTheater
Boston Globe
03-06-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
In 2025, the scandal at the center of ‘Mrs. Warren's Profession' lands differently
David R. Gammons's spare set is dominated by an oversized conference room table beneath a screen with mysterious flashing numbers and charts. The whole thing suggests an awkward marriage of the intellectual compartmentalization of the characters from ' Advertisement Within the sterile boardroom environment, we meet Vivie Warren (Luz Lopez), a no-nonsense, independent young woman fresh out of university, who prefers actuarial accounting to concerts and museums. Now that Vivie has graduated from the best schools money can buy and is of marriageable age, her mother Kitty Warren (Melinda Lopez), who kept her distance and the nature of her business a secret, decides it's time for a closer mother-daughter relationship. While condemning a society that condones poverty while denying economic opportunity and flouting a double standard for women, the true heartbreak within 'Mrs. Warren's Profession' comes from the fracturing mother-daughter relationship at its heart. It's a breakdown spurred by their conflicting views on how to earn a living without 'wearing out your health and appearance for other people's profit.' Advertisement The play's emotional strength emerges from the sparks that fly between these two ambitious, independent women and the gap between the assumptions and expectations parents and children often have for themselves and each other. When Vivie learns that the money that bought her education was earned through prostitution, she expresses shock and moral outrage. Her mother's impassioned defense is based on the choices available to women. Vivie is won over, until she learns her mother continues to operate her profitable network of brothels, at which point she disowns her mother, determined to make her way in the world without her. Nael Nacer and Wesley Savick. Nile Scott Studios Four men orbit this mother/daughter sparring match, representing aspects of the transactional world these women must navigate. They include Kitty's friend and confidante Praed (a dapper and dashing Nael Nacer), who makes a case for the artistic life; Sir George Crofts (an appropriately slimy Barlow Adamson), Kitty's business partner, for whom everything is a business deal, including an offer of marriage to Vivie; Frank Gardner (Evan Taylor), a shallow young bounder and Vivie's love interest, who sees her as his meal ticket; and Reverend Samuel Gardner (Wesley Savick), Frank's father and one of Kitty's former clients, who hides his profligate past behind the sanctimony of the church. Tucker earned an award-winning reputation for visceral co-productions between his New York-based theater company Bedlam and Central Square Theater, including 'St. Joan,' 'Twelfth Night,' 'What You Will,' ' Advertisement While the actors do clamber through an open window and sprawl around on the conference table, Tucker's approach tends to obscure, rather than reveal the essence of this play. That table also creates an uncomfortable distance between the characters, so that we never get close enough to see the cracks beneath Kitty's veneer of a successful businesswoman, or get past Vivie's arrogance. Each member of this company has moments when they shine, although oddly, it's the men who stand out – Nacer's suave and loyal friend; Adamson's rage at having his business deal rejected; Taylor's gold-digging eye on whoever can cover his bills; and Savick's blundering reverend, undone by the knowledge that Vivie may or may not be his daughter. But these singular moments never quite gel, and this production moves in fits and starts rather than the dynamic, fast-paced approach Tucker is known for. While it's true Shaw was eager to poke society in the eye with his strident messages – 'Mrs. Warren's Profession' was published as one of his trio of 'Plays Unpleasant' – if we don't have the opportunity to feel the tug of conflicting allegiances to this mother and daughter, we don't see the emotional price these women must pay, and we're left only with Shaw's polemic. MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION Play by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Eric Tucker, Bedlam, presented by Central Square Theatre through June 29. Tickets: $27-$103. 617-576-9278 x1,
Boston Globe
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Unpacking family baggage in Udofia's ‘Her Portmanteau' at Central Square Theater
Advertisement But compression does not equal contraction when a playwright is possessed of a vision as rich as Udofia's. The past lives vividly in 'Her Portmanteau,' as Udofia examines how choices made and actions taken, or untaken, have a way of reverberating down the years. A certain slackness creeps in a couple of times, but not enough to put a dent in the overall excellence of the coproduction by Central Square Theater and the Black-led Front Porch Arts Collective. Lorraine Victoria Kanyike and Patrice Jean-Baptiste in "Her Portmanteau." Maggie Hall Photography Directed by Tasia A. Jones, 'Her Portmanteau' features a flat-out wonderful cast of three: Patrice Jean-Baptiste as sixty-something matriarch Abasiama Ufot, facing hard questions from the daughter who was raised in Nigeria by Abasiama's former husband; Jade A. Guerra as that daughter, Iniabasi Ekpeyong, 36, whose own portmanteau is stuffed with emotional baggage; and Lorraine Victoria Kanyike as the dutiful Adiaha Ufot, 30, who tries to play peacemaker in the charged exchanges between Iniabasi and Abasiama. (Adiaha calls Abasiama 'Mommy.' Iniabasi emphatically does not.) Advertisement 'Her Portmanteau' concerns itself with matters of language and culture and legacy, and, writ large, the immigrant experience. But there's nothing generic about Udofia's characters. She has taken pains to craft individualized portraits of members of the Ufot family in all their complexity and, especially in Abasiama's case, contradiction. Udofia deploys silence in 'Her Portmanteau' to a much greater degree than in the first three plays. Guerra's Iniabasi says nothing for a long period after she arrives at the apartment, virtually chilling the air. When she does speak, it is to throw barbs at her mother, criticizing the ingredients she uses in meals, and, most damningly, describing Abasiama as to her face as a woman 'who can't even speak her real language. Yawping at me in English!' Udofia, who grew up in Southbridge, Mass., and attended Wellesley College, is an actor as well as a playwright. Indeed, she played Abasiama in ' Chunks of that dialogue are rendered in the Ibibio language, sometimes with subtitles that provide English translations, sometimes not. That approach is effective in terms of keeping both sides of the family's heritage on an equal footing, but it will likely make some members of the audience wondering what they've missed. This one did. Advertisement When it comes to the overpowering ending of 'Her Portmanteau,' though, no words are needed. HER PORTMANTEAU Play by Mfoniso Udofia. Directed by Tasia A. Jones. Coproduction by Central Square Theater and Front Porch Arts Collective. At Central Square Theater, Cambridge. Through April 20. Tickets $25 to $96. , or 617-576-9278 x1 Don Aucoin can be reached at
CBS News
17-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Cambridge theater and MIT mark 20 years of creating science based plays
CAMBRIDGE - This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Catalyst Collaborative, a relationship between Central Square Theater in Cambridge, and MIT. It's the longest ongoing partnership between a professional theater and a major research institution in the country, staging and creating plays dealing with science and technology. Combining science and theater The collaboration started in 2004, with a series of conversations in informal gatherings. Co-founder Debra Wise says, "We live in a place that can nurture this kind of program because there are people who expect to be provoked, challenged, as well as entertained when they come to the theater." Over the past two decades, the partnership has generated 35 productions, five new commissioned plays, and 10 world premieres. The latest piece, "Space", focuses on the history of female pilots and astronauts. Executive Director, Catherine Carr Kelly explains, "It amplifies these women, many of whom you might say, 'I remember hearing that name somewhere,' and some you would have no idea…. And it juxtaposes that with the congressional hearings about whether or not women should actually go to space or whether or not they're capable of going to space." MIT professor Alan Lightman is another co-founder. His novel, "Einstein's Dreams", was the first production born from the collaborative, and now dozens followed. "I think some of the scientists gave ideas, stories of science to the theater people, some of which later became plays. And I think the scientists learned the way that artists think," Lightman tells WBZ-TV. "Theater can be about everything life is about. The wonders of our natural world, how to understand it, how to understand our part in it," Wise says. More stories to be told on stage With the fast-growing field of artificial intelligence, Lightman knows there are many stories yet to be told. "When an AI can do many of the tasks that we human beings do, what does it mean to be human? We're redefining what it means to be human. And I think that these are issues that the Catalyst Collaborative at MIT can deal with in the future." For the audience, it's a unique experience "You can come to a play here, and you can have a conversation with a Nobel Prize-winning scientist about what was in the play. That doesn't really happen anywhere else," Carr Kelly explains. You can see "Space" at Central Square Theater through February 23rd.
