Boston Spotlight: November 2005
George Dvorsky, Milton Craig Nealy, and Bill English
in The Full Monty
(Photo © Paul Lyden)
Even as we hasten to polish off that surplus Halloween candy, the holiday season is fast upon us, full of treats of the theatrical kind.
Everyone was delighted that true tragedy was averted at the North Shore Music Center, even though a summer fire shut the place down for four months. Now, they’re back in business with The Full Monty, starring a sextet of Broadway vets including George Dvorsky and Darren Ritchie. (November 1-20). Come see the guys in the nude and in the round!
That show boasts a superb book by four-time Tony Award winner Terrence McNally, and so does John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Tony winning Kiss of the Spider Woman at SpeakEasy Stage (November 4- December 3). Meanwhile, the Wang Center is home to the first Boston production of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, a musical extravaganza based on the beloved 1954 Bing Crosby-Danny Kaye-Rosemary Clooney film vehicle (November 25-December 31).
Those seeking lighter fare, relatively speaking, can also check out the Huntington Theatre Company’s production of Wendy Wasserstein’s female-bonding comedy The Sisters Rosensweig, starring Maureen Anderman, Mimi Lieber, and Deborah Offner (November 4-December 4); Permanent Whole Life, Zayd Dohrn’s scathing look at the insurance biz, at the Boston Playwrights Theatre (November 3-20), and Women on the Verge of HRT by Marie Jones (Stones in his Pockets) at the Sugan Theatre (November 4-19).
There is also plenty of provocative drama on tap this month. Caryl Churchill’s controversial cloning nightmare A Number continues at Lyric Stage (through November 19); The Art of Sacrifice, a new drama by Anthony Clarvoe about father-and-son chess rivals, runs at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre (November 10-December 4); the Wheelock Family Theatre — bucking the “good will toward men” spirit that prevails this time of year — is mounting an adaptation of that high school favorite, Lord of the Flies (through November 20); and The American Repertory Theatre will present Polish director Krystian Lupa’s production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters (November 26-January 1).
With the summer strawhats shuttered, the New England action now centers on Connecticut. The Goodspeed Opera House will be presenting a workshop production of Jeremy Desmon’s romantic new musical The Girl in the Frame at the Norma Terris Theater (November 3-27). In New Haven, The Long Wharf Theater hosts two-time Tony nominee Ernestine Jackson as Billie Holliday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill through November 20, while nearby Yale Rep presents the East Coast premiere of Amy Freed’s Safe in Hell, directed by Mark Wing-Davey, in which famed Puritan Cotton Mather battles the Devil (November 11-December 3).
Of course, family fare is everywhere this season. Vermont’s Bread and Puppet Theater should meet with a warm reception when it settles into the Cambridge Family YMCA to present The National Circus and Passion of the Correct Moment (November 13-20) for adults and a special youth-oriented program, The Circus of the Correct Moment (November 19-20); the Stoneham Theatre has fashioned a comic Christmas Story (November 25-December 23) out of the 1983 movie (based on the novel by Jean Shepherd) about a little boy dead-set on scoring a BB gun from Santa. Finally, Providence’s Trinity Rep serves up its 29th annual edition of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (November 11-December 24). Bah, humbug, indeed.
