LOUISA MAY ALCOTT’S LITTLE WOMEN: SURRENDER

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT’S LITTLE WOMEN: SURRENDER

For some reason, probably general curmudgeonliness, I tried to resist Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. I failed. Yes, the story is sentimental, but it’s about the importance of familial and romantic love — of kindness, honesty, and openheartedness. In this age, which...
A WONDERHEADS CHRISTMAS CAROL: ENOUGH ALREADY

A WONDERHEADS CHRISTMAS CAROL: ENOUGH ALREADY

I suggest a moratorium on adaptations of A Christmas Carol. We’ve had more than enough and some of them are good. In this variation from Victoria’s Wonderheads Theatre, there’s skill on display and some moments work but, as a whole, the evening is boring. The medium...
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH: GENEROSITY WINS OUT

THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH: GENEROSITY WINS OUT

Despite a bumpy start and hitches along the way, this journey is more than worth it. This United Players production is the premiere of a new adaptation, by Naomi Wright and director Sarah Rodgers, of Charles Dickens’s novella, A Cricket on the Hearth. The story, which...
BURNOUT PARADISE: WHY?

BURNOUT PARADISE: WHY?

You know the moody kid, the one hanging around at the edge of the playground at recess, the one watching all the other kids chasing each other and screaming with an enthusiasm that’s inaccessible to him? That’s who I felt like at Burnout Paradise: everybody else...
BETWEEN BREATHS: WAITING TO EXHALE

BETWEEN BREATHS: WAITING TO EXHALE

It takes too long to land but this production does, finally, make it home. Robert Chafe’s script, Between Breaths, is a meditation on death and joy, confinement and freedom, as embodied in the experience of real-life academic and conservationist Jon Lien. Lien, who...