Measure for Measure ★★★★ Is Gregory Doran currently our most accomplished director of anything William Shakespeare wrote for the stage—or is believed to have written? As artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he’s in a good position to jockey for the rating. He can assign himself as many productions as he likes and then do…
Beyond
The Feingold Column: Good Grief, America!
The cultural forms and images that make us human, that give shape and meaning and memory to our collective life as a species, are being increasingly forgotten.
From Providence: Its Prince Proves a Pretender
★★☆☆☆ A city celebrates its legendary political rascal, leaving open why he should matter to the rest of us
From Boston: The Purists (and Director Billy Porter) Keep It Real
★★★★☆ A Sunnyside, Queens stoop is the unlikely setting for a thrilling affirmation of how we can learn to get along
The Feingold Column: How the Musical Won
If music, as we’ve often been told, is the universal language, the Broadway musical seems at present to offer that language one of its broadest reaches
From Massachusetts: The Joy of Six
★★★★★ The “Divorced, Beheaded, Live” tryout tour of Henry VIII’s wives makes a turbocharged Cambridge stop
From Massachusetts: Fall Springs, A Fracking Good Time
★★★☆☆ Stale environmental satire is offset by sprightly songs and a swell cast at Barrington Stage
From Williamstown: Ghosts and Before the Meeting
At Williamstown, an O.K. revival and a superior modern premiere explore humanity at lowest ebb.
From Massachusetts: The Skin of Our Teeth and Tell Me I’m Not Crazy
Two American dramedies, one classic and the other newly minted, affirm humanity’s indomitable ability to renew in the face of chaos.
From Massachusetts: Gertrude and Claudius’s Time Is Out of Joint
★★☆☆☆ A Hamlet prequel out of a John Updike novel falls short of presaging the tragedy to follow