Boston Metro Spotlight: February 2008

Thank the almighty theater gods for one extra night to take in a show this month. Speakeasy Stage is using Leap Day to launch the New England premiere of Some Men (February 29-March 29), Terrence McNally’s well-received dramatization/celebration of eight decades of gay history.

Wheelock Family Theatre takes a flying leap into February with Peter Pan (February 1-March 2). Rumors flurried for a while that Ryan Landry — whose Gold Dust Orphans carry on the grand Ridiculous Theater tradition in the gay nightclub Machine — might be conscripted as Captain Hook, but instead he’s reprising a juicy signature role unseen since his early days performing on a Provincetown porch: that of the “terribly misunderstood” Medea (February 14-March 15).

The American Repertory Company is also mining ancient history, via Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (February 9-March 16), with long-time company member Thomas Derrah in the title role and James Waterston as Marc Antony. Paris’s Arthur Nauzyciel directs, and Riccardo Hernandez’s sure-to-be-striking set promises “quotes from the America of the ’60s.”

Vermont’s Bread and Puppet Theatre had its roots in the ’60s and will persist in poking fun at the sociopolitical status quo during their annual visit to the Boston Center for the Arts’ Cyclorama (February 4-10). As per usual, one of the shows, The Divine Reality Comedy (touching on Guantanamo) is geared to mature audiences, but the other, The Divine Reality Comedy Circus, should suit all ages. (Notes founder Peter Schumann: “Some of the circus acts are politically puzzling to adults, but accompanying kids can usually explain them.”)

Also at the BCA, Centastage presents Plays on Tap (February 15-March 1), an octet of playlets by local authors, all set in bars and restaurants. The Lyric Stage brings Theresa Rebeck’s comedy The Scene — about a desperate down-on-his luck actor — to Boston (February 15-March 15).

The Factory Theatre, a fringe hotbed, harbors an assortment of endeavors: The F.U.D.G.E. Theatre Company with the Off-Broadway musical I Love You Because (February 2-8); Bad Habit Productions doing David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow (February 15-24); and SouthCity Theatre offering Burlesque Me If I Love You: A Vaudeville Rendezvous (February 28-March 2). The Boston Playwrights Theatre hosts Way Theatre Artists in Don DeLillo’s Love-Lies-Bleeding (February 15-23) and premieres Melinda Lopez’s Gary, a rock-centered “play with music” (February 28-March 16).

Touring shows in town include My Fair Lady, as staged by Matthew Bourne, at the Opera House (February 5-17); Rain – The Beatles Experience at the Colonial (February 6-8); and Attack Theatre’s Games of Steel — a combo concert/combat show — at the Cutler Majestic Theatre (February 22-24).

Beyond downtown, Watertown’s New Rep tackles Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House (February 27-March 23), with local luminaries Nancy Carroll and Paula Plum. Stoneham Theatre offers the U.S. premiere of a 1992 British drama, The Cutting (February 28-March 16), about a child psychiatrist (Rachel Harker) trying to reach a voluntarily mute woman accused of killing her mother.
In Lowell, Merrimack Rep offers the regional premiere of Keith Reddin’s political satire The Missionary Position (February 7-March 2). And in a nearby bar, fittingly, Image Theater debuts Kerouac’s Last Call by Patrick Fenton, a recreation of the 1957 send-off party for the city’s most famous native son, who was moving with his mother to Florida.

In the Berkshires, the now year-round Barrington Stage Company mounts Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted (February 14-24), with soap star Thom Christopher and Brian Hutchinson, who shone recently opposite Marisa Tomei in Will Eno’s Oh the Humanity at New York’s Flea Theatre.

Rhode Island can boast two productions well suited to Black History Month: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, adapted by Lydia Diamond, at the Providence Black Repertory Company (February 2-March 9), and Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha, directed by Lois Roach for Opera Providence (February 15-17). In addition, Trinity Rep presents Some Things Are Private (February 15-March 23), a new “docudrama” by Deborah Salem and Laura Kepley, who last year addressed the impact of the Iraq war at home in Boots on the Ground. The impetus this time is the controversy sparked by photographer Sally Mann (here portrayed by Anne Scurria) in the 1990s, when a collection of photos of her own children kicked up a censorious firestorm.