Theater News

Boston Spotlight: October 2005

A Time to Embrace Otherness

Paul Bonin-Rodriguez inFringe and Fringe Ability
(Photo © Deborah Ortiz)
Paul Bonin-Rodriguez in
Fringe and Fringe Ability
(Photo © Deborah Ortiz)

Lest we forget that New England once specialized in the persecution of perceived misfits (“witches” were once hung right on Boston Common), a number of area theatres are offering a reparative antidote: productions that celebrate those who march to a different drummer.

The Theatre Offensive’s month-long Out on the Edge Festival, a showcase for “the diverse realities of queer lives,” marks its fourteenth year with a lineup featuring Paul Bonin-Rodriguez in Fringe and Fringe Ability (an extrapolation of his “Texas Trinity,” about a Dairy Queen defector coping with the aftermath of the 2004 election), October 13-16; Jackie Hoffman’s unexpurgated “gay-themed Jewish” cabaret/rant, The Kvetching Continues (which enjoyed a record run at New York’s Joe’s Pub), October 19-23; Varla Jean Merman retro-vamping as Girl with a Pearl Necklace (October 25-29); and a trio of staged readings (November 5-13).

The festival’s home is the Boston Theatre for the Arts, where other GLBT offerings figure prominently this month. Boston Theatre Works introduces New England audiences to Patricia Kane’s Pulp, a cabaret-style “play with music” (by Amy Warren and I Am My Own Wife‘s Andre Pleuss) riffing on steamy 1950s lesbian pulp fiction, at the BCA through October 15. Bill Brochtrup, who played the gay clerk on NYPD Blue, stars in Richard Kramer’s Theater District, about the turmoil that erupts when a teenage boy moves in with his father and gay partner; it plays at the Calderwood Pavilion within the BCA through October 29.

Provincetown denizens got a peek at Ryan Landry’s latest, Cinderella Rocks, this summer; now Bostonians get to enjoy his musicalized, Ludlamesque take on the classic fairy tale at The Machine October 6 – November 12.

Boston is double-booked busy. On the heels of the American Repertory Theatre’s searing chamber Carmen (Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s Christina Baldwin makes it a must-see and must-hear, through October 8), ART turns its satellite Zero Arrow Theatre over to the English-language premiere of Humberto Dorado’s The Keening (October 14-November 13), about a plañidera — professional mourner — caught up in Colombia’s political and drug wars. Closing its mainstage production of The Real Thing October 9 (the cast, understandably, doesn’t measure up to their Broadway predecessors, but Kris Stone’s set dazzles), the Huntington turns its attention to the world premiere of Stephen Belber’s Carol Mulroney at the Calderwood Pavilion October 14 – November 20. Ana Reeder plays the beleaguered title character, who seeks sanctuary on a roof, to evade a possibly treacherous friend (Johanna Day), a New Agey husband (Tim Ransom), and an overbearing father (Larry Pine).

A raft of touring shows is sweeping into town. The Julie Andrews The Boy Friend, embarked on a national tour after its summer-long incubation at Goodspeed, and takes over the Shubert October 11-23; it bumps the North Shore Music Theatre’s fresh and exemplary Camelot, with Maxime Alvarez de Toledo as an utterly dreamy Lancelot, which must shutter October 9. NSMT will be moving back to its Beverly digs, dramatically resurrected after a July fire.

Meanwhile, Broadway in Boston offers three imports: Hairspray October 4-16 and Billy Crystal’s 700 Sundays October 18-19, both at the Opera House, and Tuesdays with Morrie at the Colonial October 18-30. It’s not a big-ticket tour, but eagerly awaited nonetheless: New York’s Keen Company is bringing its production of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1931 comedy The Breadwinner to the Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell October 6 – November 2.

Among the home-grown productions that warrant attention is the Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s King Lear, to be staged at a Boston University College of Fine Arts black box through October 23:Alvin Epstein, supported by an ensemble of top local actors, plays the faltering king. And for Halloween thrills and chills, there’s a new adaptation of Dracula at the Stoneham Theatre October 20 – November 6; the neo-burlesque Boston Baby Dolls in Out for Blood at the Cambridge Family Y October 21-29; and — at Shakespeare & Company out in Lenox October 29-30 — The Tell-Tale Poe, a three-part spree of readings featuring F. Murray Abraham and local girl turned Hollywood star Elizabeth Banks. Another Berkshires draw is Songs of Innocence and Experience, a trial run of a Blake-based musical piece by William Finn (class of ’74) at the spanking-new Williams College ’62 Center for Theatre & Dance October 7-8.

Prior to its long winter sleep, tourist-wise, Cape Cod offers two last-gasp productions: Meryl Cohn’s new lesbian comedy And Sophie Comes Too at the Provincetown Theater Company October 8-15, and, at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre October 13-November 6, a new play by co-founder Gip Hoppe, Mercy on the Doorstep, about a Christianity-pusher trying to convert her evil, alcoholic stepmother.

In Rhode Island, Trinity Rep’s delightful Mystery of Edwin Drood continues through October 9, overlapping slightly with the rarely produced Williams melodrama Suddenly Last Summer (up through November 6). Also in Providence, the fringy Perishable Theatre mounts Mickey Birnbaum’s dark coming-of-age comedy Big Death & Little Death October 7-29. In nearby Pawtucket, the Gamm Theatre’s Crime and Punishment got a reprieve, by popular demand, and has been extended through October 16.

In Connecticut, the Goodspeed Opera House revels in the gospel musical Abyssinia (a co-production with NSMT) through December 4. In New Haven Yale Rep assays a new adaptation of The Cherry Orchard October 7-29, with a Broadway-seasoned cast; the New Theatre alternate is British playwright Martin Crimp’s postmodern policier, Attempts on Her Life, October 11-15. The Hartford Stage debuts David Cale’s C&W musical Floyd and Clea Under The Western Sky October 13 – November 3, and at the Westport Playhouse, October 27 – November 12, new artistic director Tazewell Thompson directs The Immigrant, Mark Harelik’s musical homage to his grandfather, a Russian Jewish peddler plying his trade in early twentieth-century Texas. Talk about your tough crowds — but rich material.