Nancy Grossman

After two previous appearances with the Celebrity Series of Boston in 2003 and 2011, the long overdue return of Patti LuPone to the stage at Symphony Hall on Tuesday night was an epic performance worth the wait. Enthusiastic entrance applause greeted Joseph Thalken (music direction and arrangements) and Brad Phillips (strings), but rose to Richter scale magnitude when Patti strode out.

It would take more than the fingers on two hands to count all of the holiday entertainment offerings in the Greater Boston area. But few can compete with Revels for staying power, now presenting its 53rd annual December production, Midwinter Revels: The Feast of Fools - A Medieval Celebration of the Solstice at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre.

Despite its somewhat whimsical title, playwright Brenda Withers has crafted a taut story that is more dramatic cat-and-mouse game than comedic Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Director Rebecca Bradshaw’s previous experience mounting the play at the Kitchen Theatre Company with this same trio of actors shows in their seamless chemistry and her nuanced pacing of the action.

Director Rosalind Bevan skillfully blends all the ingredients in this Boston premiere of Zora Howard’s 2021 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Drama.

What did our critic think of REVIEW: TORCH SONG at Moonbox Productions?

Have there ever been such devoted sisters as the four March girls, birthed by Louisa May Alcott in her postbellum semi-autobiographical novel LITTLE WOMEN? Director Ilyse Robbins shows her abiding affection for the story with her devotion to its heart and soul on display in the production of the 2005 Broadway Musical at Greater Boston Stage Company.

If you have yet to reach your fright limit for the Halloween season, you still have two chances to experience chills of the dramatic variety at THT Rep at the BrickBox Theater in Worcester. Reprising the production she created for small, socially-distanced audiences of 20 in the early days of the pandemic, Artistic Director Livy Scanlon is performing THE EDGAR ALLAN POE DOUBLEHEADER in front of 290 stadium-style seats.

Two hundred years after Washington Irving introduced the little hamlet of Sleepy Hollow and its superstitious denizens to the canon of American literature, the legend remains among the most enduring of stories that capture the imagination of adults and children alike, inspire questions about the supernatural realm, and scare the bejesus out of its audience.

JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE was the first Wilson play produced at the Huntington in 1986, the beginning of a 19-year relationship that saw all ten of his American Century Cycle plays chronicling the African American experience in the 20th century performed on the local stage.

The second and final production of Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston’s 2022 season is Stephen Schwartz’s PIPPIN, originally produced on the Broadway stage in 1972 with direction and choreography by Bob Fosse, and revived/reimagined in 2013 by Diane Paulus at the American Repertory Theater before going to Broadway. Undaunted by following in those two very large sets of footsteps, RMT Artistic Director Rachel Bertone forges her own path to stage a version that leads with an enlarged heart and a healthy helping of fun and whimsy.

What did our critic think of WEST SIDE STORY at Reagle Music Theatre Of Greater Boston: There's a new spring in the step of Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston in Waltham. Award-winning director and choreographer Rachel Bertone takes over as Artistic Director and opens the season with WEST SIDE STORY, with Dan Rodriguez by her side as music director.

THE CONJURORS' CLUB is an immersive virtual experience in which the audience gets to see their fellow patrons on the zoom screen, try their hand at sleight of hand, and have a close-up view of the tricks and illusions as the magicians ply their trade live. It may be the best opportunity you could ever have to “catch” how they do it, but here’s the one spoiler in my review: don’t count on it.

Fresh on the heels of a solid showing at the virtual 38th Annual Elliot Norton Awards, where the Boston Theater Critics Association recognized their achievements during the abbreviated 2019-2020 season with ten nominations and four wins, the Arlekin Players Theatre boldly launches a new production in cyberspace. STATE VS NATASHA BANINA is a live, interactive theater art experiment which manages to engage the audience as a collective and unified body, thanks to creative direction by Igor Golyak and Darya Denisova's uncanny portrayal of the adolescent title character.

The Boston premiere of Lucy Kirkwood's 2018 Tony Award-nominated play THE CHILDREN at SpeakEasy Stage Company is an affecting drama, thanks to a combination of the playwright's excellence at her craft, Director Bryn Boice's focus, and the trio of Elliot Norton Award-winning actors whose portrayals constitute a collective master class. Inspired by the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, THE CHILDREN puts issues of climate change, the environment, and a generation's responsibility for stewardship under an unforgiving spotlight, challenging the audience to engage in self-reflection.

HUNDRED DAYS and the intimate Black Box at the Umbrella Stage Company in Concord are a perfect match, not unlike Abigail and Shaun Bengson, the couple whose true story of their romantic and musical journey is told in this original song cycle. Staged like a concert before a few cabaret-style tables and rows of stadium seating, with the band seated behind the vocalists and totally engaged, HUNDRED DAYS has elements of ONCE with everyone having a grand old time making music as the vehicle for their storytelling.

David Valdes has seen the future and it doesn't look good. If you're already losing sleep over the onrush of climate change, if the rollback of environmental regulations makes your blood boil, and if you fret about the steady departure of actual scientists from government agencies, Valdes' play LAST CATASTROPHIST can feel like the final nail in the coffin, or it may be the clarion call that prompts you to action. Either way, this new play being staged by Fresh Ink Theatre Company under the direction of Sarah Gazdowicz makes you sit up and pay attention.

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court handed a narrow victory to a Christian baker from Colorado who refused for religious reasons to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. Hailing from a conservative North Carolina background, playwright Bekah Brunstetter is personally familiar with people like Della, the protagonist of THE CAKE, and ideally positioned to protect her and defend her humanity, while also setting her on a path to self-reflection and change. Although the story may be ripped from the headlines, Brunstetter tells it from the perspectives of a quartet of ordinary, yet multi-faceted characters, each of whom comes with a strong set of beliefs.

SpeakEasy Stage Company presents the New England premiere of Antoinette Nwandu's PASS OVER, in a co-production with The Front Porch Arts Collective. In this intense drama performed without intermission, two young Black men represent the lives of countless others like them who have dreams of reaching a promised land that is too often unattainable in these United States. With influences from WAITING FOR GODOT and the Old Testament saga of Exodus, and inspired partly by the killing of Trayvon Martin, PASS OVER is a haunting treatment of the present day state of affairs that proves discomfiting and cathartic on many levels. Directed by Monica White Ndounou and marked by a trio of vivid performances by Kadahj Bennett, Hubens a?oeBobbya?? Cius, and Lewis D. Wheeler.

MAYTAG VIRGIN is a slice of life, character-driven romantic comedy about two forty-something school teachers, both widowed, who meet cute in their connecting yards in a fictional town in Alabama. Good fences make good neighbors and their lack of one leads to many challenges, but they are both warm people with good (albeit broken) hearts who keep looking for a way to bond. David Adkins and Kati Brazda are seasoned actors who create indelible impressions of their characters as individuals, and then merge those impressions into a pair whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

From what I can tell, THE CHRISTMAS REVELS is one of those much-loved traditions that people look forward to revisiting year after year, like a performance of THE NUTCRACKER or A CHRISTMAS CAROL, or taking the kids to see Santa Claus. However, unlike those other holiday seasonal shows, the REVELS is billed as a celebration of the winter solstice, and it not only allows, but encourages (requires?) the audience to participate in a number of singalongs throughout the program. This year marks the 49th annual REVELS, but it was my first experience, which caused me to wonder what took me so long. Each year features a different cultural theme and this year's journey takes us back to the 1930s, to Dust Bowl-era America.