By James Foritano The F.U.D.G.E. Theatre Company has struck again! This time with a rousing production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice classic musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” The passions of greed, jealousy, despair, hatred, hypocrisy, overweening pride etc. are universal and in this production, all dance and song, illustrated with verve and ensemble precision. We’ve all, if only briefly, been the apple of someone’s eye; we’ve all, hopefully, been gifted at some time in our lives with a token of esteem that we’ve flaunted proudly and thereby enjoyed full-throated admiration, as well as duly virulent jealousy. When Joseph’s doting dad, Jacob, a full-bearded patriarch, gifts his favorite son with a “technicolor dreamcoat,” he not only swells Joseph with pride but plants a seed of jealousy in Joseph’s brothers that grows violent. Joseph’s brothers, … [Read more...] about F.U.D.G.E. at the Arsenal Center for the Arts

By James Foritano BOSTON - “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” currently on stage at the BU Theatre, is a volatile brew of sex and danger, exploitation, oppression, death and the devil. But you wouldn’t know that from the dilatory conversation of the ‘boys in the band’ — four black musicians assembled in a Chicago recording studio to rehearse and wait for the arrival of Madame ‘Ma’ Rainey. It is the 1920s and New Orleans-inspired music is leaking slowly northward as the Great Migration rolls from every southern city and hamlet towards Chicago’s burgeoning ghettos and jazz dens. This music, though, is not the ‘hot licks’ that will erupt from the horns and drums of isolated rebels, but the tamed product, the ‘jug band’ music, with just enough sass, but not too much, to enliven but not threaten white audiences. August Wilson’s finely-drawn characters practice that restraint, that affectionate … [Read more...] about “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” by August Wilson at the BU Theatre

By James Foritano BOSTON - “Time Stands Still” for this observer, stood far too still. Or, perhaps the dramatic arc lifted off the ground in a place where I wasn’t, and I never caught up. The play opens with James Dodd, played by Barlow Adamson, and Sarah Goodwin, played by Laura Latreille, in the living room of their Williamsburg Loft in Brooklyn. Somehow the symbolism seems just right, since the inside is furnished Yuppie tasteful but the large loft window admits a cloudy light definitely of this unredeemed, pre-gentrified world. James and Sarah, though a successful, upwardly mobile couple, in tune with their domestic interiors, also emit a murky light, as though their souls have been climbing rougher slopes than many of their ambitious peers. And they have. Both are photojournalists back from war coverage in a violent Muslim world, licking their wounds, “enjoying” the R&R of … [Read more...] about “Time Stands Still” by Donald Margulies at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston

By James Foritano CAMBRIDGE - “Photograph 51,” Anna Ziegler’s play which has just had its current run at the Central Square Theater extended through March 18, is about degrees of separation and loneliness between scientists and the human beings who inhabit them more or less uneasily. The Daniel Gidron-directed setting is the post-war race for, as James Watson terms it, ‘the secret of life’ or the double-helix structure of DNA. The race has narrowed to a team of Americans led by Linus Pauling at Berkeley, and two teams of British scientists: Francis Crick and James Watson at Cambridge and Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at King’s College, London. The first degree of separation is between winners and losers. Although science may be all about knowledge pieced together by generations of seekers, he (or she) who crosses the finish line first wins prizes, status, grants and all the … [Read more...] about Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51 at the Central Square Theater

By James Foritano BOSTON - “Monster” by Neal Bell, directed by Jim Petosa, is a full-bodied re-presentation of the enduring fable, first penned by Mary Shelly in 1818, of power run amok: Frankenstein. Lately, science has become so team and grant oriented that not many of us dream of brewing unique, not to say world-conquering, creations in our basement laboratories. Or maybe we do? Certainly, celebrity status is still highly coveted in our 21st century psyches, and “monsters” do run amok in the pages of celebrity magazines and TV — Mary Shelly’s dream re-clothed as “American Idol.” In any case, where better to view power running amok, or even just youthful energy, than the intimate venue of Studio #210 hosted by Boston University’s’s Boston Center for American Performance. Located at 264 Huntington Avenue, cheek-by-jowl with its much grander sister, The Huntington, Studio #210 … [Read more...] about Neal Bell’s “Monster” at the Lane-Comely Theater Studio #210