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Boston Globe
a day ago
- 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
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Two strangers carry a budding romance, and a cake, across New York
The musical, by Jim Barne and Kit Buchan, makes the most of Tutty's irresistible charm as the naïve fish-out-of-water, in contrast to Pitts's jaded Robin. Tutty and Pitts have terrific chemistry, and Tutty absolutely delivers on Robin's description of Dougal as 'a Golden Retriever with less boundaries.' His opening number, 'New York,' perfectly captures Dougal's childlike excitement about his 48-hour adventure in a city he expects to be defined by the cherished movies he's seen (including 'Taxi Driver,' 'Midnight Cowboy,' and 'Big'). Advertisement Despite her eye rolls, it's clear Robin finds his comically dorky impersonations more endearing than she'd like to admit. Tutty has impressive vocal chops and dance moves, both of which feel wild and free — when he lets them explode — even though we know they were precisely rehearsed and choreographed. Advertisement Pitts's character is explored in 'What'll It Be,' a heartfelt ballad set in the Bump and Grind, the coffee shop where Robin works, as she wonders what will be next for her. Pitts, too, is a stunning singer and actor, giving the audience a haunting tour of her childhood neighborhood in 'This Is the Place' with all the love and regret that can entail. Tutty and Pitts in "Two Strangers." Nile Scott Studios and Maggie Hall Director and choreographer Tim Jackson moves his two performers effortlessly up, down, and around Soutra Gilmour's inventive baggage claim area set. Gilmour's piles of suitcases turn to provide different scenes, even as an outer turntable allows the actors to cover a lot of ground — a visit to the ice rink at Rockefeller Center, a sumptuous Plaza hotel room, an Uber ride and a coffee shop, and even a Chinese restaurant. Gilmour's collection of seemingly nondescript luggage also provides a delightfully surprising array of closets and cabinets as needed. Every inch of the space is employed in a climactic booze-fueled spree through New York, courtesy of Dougal's estranged father's credit card. Despite the limitations of creating dance routines that can be safely executed on a narrow, moving turntable, the couple's fearless energy, whipped up lighting, and spot-on timing (watch for the appearance of his tux jacket) are perfectly combined. Barne and Buchan's musical numbers are pleasantly, sometimes humorously derivative, with a special nod to Stephen Sondheim's patter songs in 'The Hangover Duet.' Jeffrey Campos leads the crisp five-piece band (keyboards, guitar, bass, drums and percussion). Advertisement The magical moments emerge from the clever and funny banter between Dougal and Robin, which reveals more about their characters than the exposition-heavy phone calls and letters that slow the action down. This is perfectly summed up by a subplot in which Dougal helps Robin find a match on a dating app. His sweet understanding of what she's looking for could have been more deeply explored. 'Two Strangers' finishes with a big, heartwarming number, 'If I Believed' — spoiler alert, there is snow — leaning more into cliché than necessary. Like a Hallmark movie, 'Two Strangers' boasts enough humor and whimsy to be sweet and superficially appealing, but at the end, all we're left with is the superficial. TWO STRANGERS (CARRY A CAKE ACROSS NEW YORK) Musical by Jim Barne and Kit Buchan. Directed and choreographed by Tim Jackson. Music direction by Jeffrey Campos. A Kiln Theatre production, produced by the American Repertory Theater. Loeb Drama Center, Brattle Street, Cambridge, through July 13. Tickets from $35. 617-547-8300,
Boston Globe
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘Two Strangers' is an homage and a rethinking of the rom-com
Advertisement That perspective is an essential part of 'Two Strangers''s leading man, Dougal (Sam Tutty). Through the chipper Brit's eyes, New York is a fairy tale, the kind of place where meet-cutes happen atop the Empire State Building, rival booksellers fall in love over email, and one-handed bakers take Cher to the opera. At the musical's start, Dougal, exhilarated, has just arrived in the city for the first time for the wedding of his father, whom he's never met. Waiting for him at the airport is the bride's sister, the flinty, cynical Brooklynite Robin (Christiani Pitts). Dougal hopes that she'll be his ticket to a true New York adventure, and he gets his wish when the pair is tasked with picking up and transporting the wedding cake across the city — the kind of forced proximity that inevitably turns two strangers into something more. Advertisement This summer's run at the ART marks the North American debut of 'Two Strangers,' a milestone that still feels surreal to the musical's creators. 'If Jim and I had known that it would go this far, I don't think we would have ever attempted to write it out,' Buchan said with a laugh. When they set out to create the show in 2016, Buchan said, their goal was to write 'the smallest possible musical,' focusing on ordinary people over a short period of time. They landed on a proper two-hander, featuring only a pair of actors. Jim Barne (writer and composer), Kit Buchan (writer and composer), Asmeret Ghebremichael (associate director and choreographer), and Tim Jackson (director and choreographer) at rehearsal. Nile Scott Studios But when Buchan and Barne brought director and choreographer Tim Jackson into the fold to bring their book and music to life, 'Two Strangers' suddenly started to feel a lot larger. Jackson (who is no stranger to small-but-mighty shows, having just choreographed Broadway's recent ' Jackson, in collaboration with the show's designer, Soutra Gilmour, worked out a way to stage 'Two Strangers' that would capture the scope and hum of their metropolitan setting while still keeping the focus on their two actors. The musical's clever, singular set is a turntable topped with a sprawling pile of suitcases, which can open to become pieces of furniture and other props representing locations within the city. 'It doesn't feel like a little boutique-chocolate-box mini musical,' Buchan said. 'It feels more fully-fledged than Jim and I ever could have dreamed.' And audiences' reactions weren't so mini either: The show's Off-West End and West End productions, in 2023 and 2024 respectively, were both extended due to popular demand. By the time 'Two Strangers' closed in London's West End last year, it had amassed a veritable fan base (in the process of reporting this story, I came across a 13-page Google Doc, made by a fan who saw the show six times, that describes 'Two Strangers' in painstaking detail for those who couldn't make it to the theater in person). Advertisement One audience member, Buchan remembers, reported that they expected more actors to emerge at the end of the show for the curtain call — only to remember, with amazement, that the musical was performed by two actors alone. Part of 'Two Strangers''s appeal for audiences is that it is a love letter to the immensely popular rom-com, a genre that Buchan, Barne, and Jackson have long adored. The show's tight two-character focus is inspired by Richard Linklater's intimate 'Before' trilogy, and the character Dougal is fueled by a balanced diet of American romantic comedies, from 'While You Were Sleeping,' to ' But the team is also careful to note that 'Two Strangers' is no simple love story. 'I think the generation that grew up watching very open-eyed rom-coms now has a slightly different relationship to them,' Barne said. 'We still want rom-coms, but we also want a tiny bit more reality stirred into it.' So, Buchan said, they had Dougal and Robin come together at 'the intersection where fantasy and reality meet' — where cinematic romance crashes into the truths of contemporary life. Advertisement And, while there are undeniable sparks between Dougal and Robin, the 'rom' in this case refers less to the characters' relationship with each other and more to their feelings about themselves. 'It's about these two people learning to love themselves a little bit more,' Jackson said. 'It's about falling in love with yourself by being in the orbit of someone else.' In other words: Your favorite rom-com may have taken you to this New York before — but don't be so sure that you know exactly where 'Two Strangers' is headed. TWO STRANGERS (CARRY A CAKE ACROSS NEW YORK) At ART's Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St, Cambridge. May 20-June 29. Tickets start at $43.
Boston Globe
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘Jaja's African Hair Braiding' deftly blends comedy and conflict
But a number of the shop's stylists and customers — and the actors who play them — are also ready for their close-up on Janie E. Howland's carefully detailed set. Sooner or later the play gives it to them. From left: Ashley Aldarondo, Dru Sky Berrian, and MarHadoo Effeh. Nile Scott Studios Advertisement They include Bea (Crystin Gilmore), an immigrant from Ghana who had entered into a green card marriage with a man from her church and dreams of opening her own salon; Miriam (MarHadoo Effeh), from Sierra Leone, who had to leave her young daughter behind when she immigrated to the US; Aminata (Kwezi Shongwe), originally from Senegal, who is caught in a turbulent marriage but seems to be vacillating on whether or not to end it; Ndidi (Catia), originally from Nigeria, who yearns to return to her home country and resume her acting career; and Jennifer (Hampton Richards), a customer who wants to be a journalist and is a model of forbearance, no matter how long it takes to braid her hair. Advertisement But the most compelling figure onstage at the Roberts Studio Theatre is one of the quietest: Marie, the 18-year-old daughter of the mostly unseen Jaja, an immigrant from Senegal. A valedictorian of her high school class, Marie is an aspiring writer who is running the shop for her mother. In Dru Sky Berrian's wonderfully precise, largely inward performance, we become aware not just of Marie's smarts and ambition but also of her anxiety — the submerged fears of someone who can sense the ground shifting beneath her. 'Jaja's' is comedic until it isn't. Bioh doesn't entirely finesse the transition to wrenching drama, as the play takes a sudden hairpin turn with a development quite literally torn from the headlines. But narrowly defined structural cohesion matters less by that point than your degree of emotional investment — and it's likely to be high — in the fates of Bioh's characters. In broad strokes, the late-in-the-play development in question does cast an illuminating retrospective light on much that came before it. You understand the precariousness of circumstance that underlies — or generates — the extravagantly expressive, seize-the-day spirit manifested by most of the salon's stylists and customers. In Williams, 'Jaja's' has a director who is clearly on Bioh's wavelength. Over the past decade-plus, Williams has displayed a knack for untangling the most difficult dramatic knots until she achieves lucidity. She's brought that skill to a varied palette of works that have been epic or intimate or somewhere in between, with a partial list including Advertisement Williams has repeatedly marshaled the collective force of a large cast while also ensuring that individual faces and voices are seen and heard, and in 'Jaja's' she does it again. Jaja, the salon's owner, an immigrant from from Senegal, is unseen for most of the play, but MaConnia Chesser makes her brief appearance a memorable one. On this day, Jaja is slated to be married at City Hall to a white man, of whom daughter Marie does not approve. (Jaja's dress is just one piece of the excellent work done by costume designer Danielle Domingue Sumi). Chesser's Jaja appears to be indomitable, but seeming and being are two different things. In the hair braiding salon, the employees and the customers, whatever their different personalities, are defined by their humanity. The same cannot be said of those whose goal is to turn their lives upside down. JAJA'S AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING Play by Jocelyn Bioh Directed by Summer L. Williams Presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company. At Roberts Studio Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts. Through May 31. Tickets start at $25. 617-933-8600, Don Aucoin can be reached at
Boston Globe
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Anne Bogart's Boston Lyric Opera ‘Carousel' spins in circles
Like her 'South Pacific,' Bogart's 'Carousel' is metatheatrical, at least in theory. Press releases indicated the company is a 'traveling group of outsider artists' that puts on a production of the musical at an abandoned amusement park. Sara Brown's weathered wooden sets, including a towering roller coaster and a rotating circular dais, hinted at that intention; as did the colorful costumes, wigs and makeup by Haydee Zelideth and Earon Chew Nealey, which included plenty of ruffled skirts and neon-colored hair, a leather vest on the carousel barker Billy Bigelow (the outstanding baritone Edward Nelson), and one eye-catching tiger onesie. Theatrically post-apocalyptic and rough around the edges, it felt like a cousin of the 'Traveling Symphony' Shakespeare troupe as depicted in Emily St. John Mandel's National Book Award-nominated ' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up That framing device also did its part to explain the over-the-top acting of some of the side characters, for example Theophile Victoria's David Bascombe. The script makes Bascombe out to be a condescending enforcer of masculine Christian morality; Victoria, clad in a sweeping coat and top hat, gave the role a preening high camp twist. Advertisement However, in the program, Bogart's director's note indicated that the players are 'a group of refugees' that arrive from 'a great distance, seeking to gain access and acceptance.' This was represented by the tall rolling fences that took the place of curtains, behind which the company assembled during the overture and entr'acte, as well as actors dressed as unsmiling security guards positioned at either side of the stage throughout the show and intermission. Initially it seemed the guard characters were intended to be on the audience's side of the fourth wall, as they pointedly refused to interact with the actors' antics during the joyous clamor (choreographed by Shura Baryshnikov) of 'June Is Bustin' Out All Over,' but when a character called the police within the musical, those guards were the ones who answered the call. Otherwise, the refugee angle went unexplored, and it felt like a cheap afterthought. Jamie Barton as Nettie and the cast of Boston Lyric Opera's "Carousel." Nile Scott Studios Under all the colorful ruffles and found-object props, it was still 'Carousel,' played mostly straight. The company deployed a robust orchestra under the baton of David Angus, and a strong cast to carry the score and story of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 80-year-old musical. Advertisement Making her BLO debut, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton brought a terrifically full voice and overflowing heart to Nettie Fowler. Soprano Brandie Sutton, also a BLO first-timer, wore her fast wits like a crab wears its shell during her first scenes as Julie Jordan, making her later resignation to Billy's abuses even more tragic. Nelson was a compelling and emotionally infuriating Billy; already giving the impression of a confused and terrified young boy in a man's body, 'Soliloquy' only sealed that deal. Might we see him as Sweeney Todd in a few years? Soprano Anya Matanovič's effervescent Carrie Pipperidge was a delight, as was tenor Omar Najmi's stuffed-shirt Enoch Snow; their 'Say something soft and sweet' / 'Boston cream pie!' squabble earned several giggles. Baritone Markel Reed, as the scheming, strutting Jigger, snatched attention during 'Stonecutters Cut It on Stone' with an immaculate comic verse sung up an octave. Abigail Marie Curran's Louise landed onstage like a hurricane in the Act II dream ballet, wild-eyed and barefoot; her thrashing, whirling limbs beat at the bars of an invisible cage. (Costume team: nice job dressing the kids in Act II in a mixture of their parents' signature colors.) But 'Carousel' sung well still has the problem of being 'Carousel,' in which a teenage girl earnestly asks her mother if it's possible for a man to hit you but it feels like a kiss, and that mother saying 'it's possible, dear,' as the music swells. Nicholas Hytner's acclaimed 1990s production changed the tenor of that scene by having Billy Advertisement This production almost seemed to rush through that scene, crossing fingers no one would remember it in the wake of the uplifting graduation address given by the Starkeeper/Dr. Seldon (played by Boston Foundation president and CEO Lee Pelton) and subsequent finale-reprise of 'You'll Never Walk Alone.' The ultimate scene on Friday encapsulated many of the problems with this 'Carousel,' as the house lights illuminated and Pelton addressed the audience, with the company standing behind him. Were we meant to be the townsfolk, in-universe? Were we meant to be the audience of the traveling troupe? A community with the power to welcome refugees, which might choose not to? No one seemed to know. When Pelton asked a question that begged for a loud and affirmative audience response, I heard one lonely 'yes' from somewhere nearby. Before people join up with any cause, they need to know they're not just spectators. Some need to know that simply watching is no longer an option. This 'Carousel' had the opportunity to jolt us out of our comfortable seats; instead, it turned us in circles. A.Z. Madonna can be reached at
