Everything old is new again with opera companies taking a little creative license with the classics.
BY: MEGHAN KAVANAUGH
-Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)
March 30-April 2 at the Boston Conservatory Theater
“Nothing in the material has changed, but we’re setting it in the present,” director Nathan Troup says of Mozart’s beloved comic opera. “We’ve chosen to set it right now and make it most accessible because it’s a fun story,” one right out of a rom-com that packs misunderstandings, machinations and double wedding bells into a single crazy day on a philandering one-percenter’s estate.
-The Merry Widow
April 29-May 8 at the Shubert Theatre
This English-language production by the Boston Lyric Opera features a new book by director Lillian Groag, who has set the action in Paris about a decade later than Franz Lehár’s original. “This production of The Merry Widow takes place in 1913 on the brink of World War I, a time when previous class struggles and social status were integral to self-identity and honor,” Groag explains, adding that the story of a wealthy widow and a bankrupt prince still “centers on bridging the divide between social classes and petty squabbles—he loves her, she loves him, comedic mayhem ensues.”
-Beowulf
May 20-28 at the Boston Conservatory Zack Box Theater
Led by director Andrew Eggert, with music and a libretto by Hannah Lash, Guerilla Opera’s world premiere adaptation of the epic poem sees Beowulf not as a monster-killing warrior, but as a former army medic caring for his elderly mother while dealing with his own PTSD. “The opera Beowulf…invites the audience to explore the psychology of a hero and to have empathy with a hero’s most complex inner battles,” Eggert says. “And it questions whether it is even possible to be a hero in our own time.”
-El Gato con Botas
June 16-19 at Hibernian Hall and June 24-25 at Villa Victoria
Opera Hub’s production of Xavier Montsalvatge’s Spanish-language opera isn’t quite the fairy talePuss in Boots you remember; for starters, it’s set in a high-end shoe factory. “We are trying to shake up the form of opera a little bit,” says Opera Hub artistic associate Adrienne Boris. “While we aren’t changing anything about the opera, making cuts or dumbing down the style of singing, we are working to make the opera engaging for younger populations newer to opera.”
Spring into Action: Theater
By Matt Martinelli | Photo Credit: Brigitte Lacombe | March 12, 2016
DON’T FORGET TO CHECK OUT THE REST OF OUR SPRING PREVIEW!
All About Eve
Award-winning playwright and activist Eve Ensler will star in the world premiere of In the Body of the World on May 10-29 at the American Repertory Theater’s Loeb Drama Center. Directed by Diane Paulus, the one-woman play was adapted from Ensler’s 2013 memoir about working in the Congo when she was diagnosed with cancer. She shared some unscripted thoughts on her latest project at the A.R.T.
IS THERE ANYTHING ABOUT A ONE-WOMAN PLAY THAT APPEALS TO YOU AS A VEHICLE? This is the third one-woman show I’ve done. It was The Vagina Monologues and thenThe Good Body. It wasn’t a conscious trilogy, but there are themes that overlap in all of them. I think it’s really about the body, and looking at the body, and how women are often exiled from their bodies when they’re violated or oppressed or there’s violence. And how the journey for so many of us is to come back into our bodies. I think that’s a lot of what the play is about.
WHAT WENT INTO THE CHOICE TO PLAY THE ROLE YOURSELF? I think it’s logical. But the thing about performing this piece, and going back to a period six years ago when I was very sick, is that it’s strange to be revisiting it in such a deep way. At the same time, what I really believe deeply is that once you go inside one person’s story in a very deep way, hopefully you connect to a much larger universal stream. I’m hoping that’s true of this and it will resonate with people on all different levels. Cancer is a piece of this story and maybe the vehicle of this story, but it’s not a play about cancer. It’s a play about Congo, a play about the body, a play about family, a play about love.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU? After In the Body of the World, Diane and I are cooking up a big show at A.R.T. that we’re going to do together, but we can’t really talk about it yet. … I really love working with Diane. I think she’s a real visionary director, and she has a very clear eye about drama and theater. And it’s wonderful working with such a powerful woman and such a brilliant artist on this play, which is very dear to me and very intimate and very vulnerable-making.
By Matt Martinelli | Photo Credit: Aaron Epstein
Character Study
Playwright Gina Gionfriddo is blunt about the main character’s shortcomings in Can You Forgive Her?, which will have its world premiere at the Huntington Theatre Company’s Calderwood Pavilion March 25-April 24. “She’s a very difficult, arguably unlikeable protagonist,” she says of Miranda, who’s searching for love, swamped by debt and fueled by anxiety and rage when she meets a stranger on Halloween. “It’s tricky when you have a character who’s made some very bad choices. You have to find the audience’s point of empathy and show them the flawed humanity of why those choices happened.” A two-time Pulitzer finalist for Becky Shaw andRapture, Blister, Burn, Gionfriddo has been tweaking the script with director Peter DuBois and hopes audiences will be open-minded about her dark comedy. “I think it’s OK to be entertained and intrigued by people whose actions you may despise. I think that we’ve gotten into a climate where we don’t want to depict characters that are ethically or morally compromised,” she says. “What I would say is ‘Give these characters a chance.’”
By Matt Martinelli | Photo Credit: Obehi Janice: Mona Maruyama; Marissa Chibas: Miranda Wright
Alone en Masse
One-woman shows are taking center stage throughout town this season. We delved a little deeper into two productions.
Obehi Janice recalls when she first heard Young Jean Lee was premiering We’re Gonna Die at Joe’s Pub in New York in 2011. “I remember thinking, ‘She’s gonna sing? And she’s a playwright? Well, damn!’ But it made so much sense to me. I couldn’t see the show, but I read reviews and thought, ‘This is the type of work I want to be doing.’ ” And it’s exactly the work she will do when she stars in Company One’s production April 20-29 at Oberon. Making its New England premiere, the cabaret-style show will have Janice singing pop-rock songs with a band—a first for the fast-rising local actress—in a weirdly singalong-worthy look at existential woes.
Cuba has been in the spotlight lately, but the country has been a constant in Marissa Chibas’ life. She has been performing Daughter of a Cuban Revolutionary for eight years, and she’ll take the show to the ArtsEmerson stage April 27-May 1. “We start off in a near-drowning experience I had on my honeymoon. And during those few seconds that I teetered between living and dying, these family stories rush into me,” says Chibas, who draws on the lives of three family members: her father, who worked with Fidel Castro, her uncle, a 1951 presidential hopeful, and her mother, a contestant for the Miss Cuba pageant crown.
By Matt Martinelli | Photo Credit: Bootycandy: Glenn Perry Photography; Premeditation: Ed Krieger
Cue the Applause
These shows are making their Boston debuts, but they’ve been vetted by audiences elsewhere—here’s a look at the accolades they’ve racked up.
Show: Bootycandy, playing at the BCA’s Roberts Theatre through April 9.
The Buzz: SpeakEasy Stage Company presents the New England premiere of Robert O’Hara’s saucy play about growing up black and gay, which earned four nominations for this month’s Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards and lives up to its name (be prepared for some nudity).
The Show: Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play, playing at the Lyric Stage April 8-May 7.
The Buzz: Calling all Simpsons fans! This post-apocalyptic dark comedy about survivors’ retelling of the show’s “Cape Feare” episode got some “Excellent” reviews in New York and a Drama League Award nomination.
The Show: Premeditation, playing at ArtsEmerson’s Paramount Center May 4-14.
The Buzz: The Latino Theater Company’s noir-inspired comedy follows two disgruntled housewives—one of whom tries to hire the other’s husband as a hit man—and was nominated for three Ovation Awards when it premiered in LA.
The Show: Matilda, playing at the Boston Opera House June 14-26.
The Buzz: Based on Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book, the musical about a telekinetic bookworm born into a family of boors won four Tonys and an unprecedented seven Olivier Awards.
By Matt Martinelli
More Debut Dramas
Health crises are at the heart of three new plays this season. First up, New Repertory Theatre is producing Blackberry Winter as part of a rolling world premiere, bringing Steve Yockey’s play about a woman coming to terms with her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease to Watertown’s Arsenal Center for the Arts on March 26-April 17. Next, Israeli Stage playwright-in-residence Hanna Azoulay-Hasfari presents the world premiere of Dina, a play about a cancer patient who commissions a film about her life that debuts with free performances at Brandeis on April 1 and BU on April 3. And on May 27-June 26, the Huntington Theatre Company stages the world premiere of Craig Lucas’ I Was Most Alive With You, which follows an ASL teacher faced with a devastating accident and features a cast that includes deaf actors performing in ASL.
By Matt Martinelli | Photo Credit: Hannah Lash: Alicia Packad
Opera’s On
Everything old is new again with opera companies taking a little creative license with the classics.
BY: MEGHAN KAVANAUGH
-Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)
March 30-April 2 at the Boston Conservatory Theater
“Nothing in the material has changed, but we’re setting it in the present,” director Nathan Troup says of Mozart’s beloved comic opera. “We’ve chosen to set it right now and make it most accessible because it’s a fun story,” one right out of a rom-com that packs misunderstandings, machinations and double wedding bells into a single crazy day on a philandering one-percenter’s estate.
-The Merry Widow
April 29-May 8 at the Shubert Theatre
This English-language production by the Boston Lyric Opera features a new book by director Lillian Groag, who has set the action in Paris about a decade later than Franz Lehár’s original. “This production of The Merry Widow takes place in 1913 on the brink of World War I, a time when previous class struggles and social status were integral to self-identity and honor,” Groag explains, adding that the story of a wealthy widow and a bankrupt prince still “centers on bridging the divide between social classes and petty squabbles—he loves her, she loves him, comedic mayhem ensues.”
-Beowulf
May 20-28 at the Boston Conservatory Zack Box Theater
Led by director Andrew Eggert, with music and a libretto by Hannah Lash, Guerilla Opera’s world premiere adaptation of the epic poem sees Beowulf not as a monster-killing warrior, but as a former army medic caring for his elderly mother while dealing with his own PTSD. “The opera Beowulf…invites the audience to explore the psychology of a hero and to have empathy with a hero’s most complex inner battles,” Eggert says. “And it questions whether it is even possible to be a hero in our own time.”
-El Gato con Botas
June 16-19 at Hibernian Hall and June 24-25 at Villa Victoria
Opera Hub’s production of Xavier Montsalvatge’s Spanish-language opera isn’t quite the fairy talePuss in Boots you remember; for starters, it’s set in a high-end shoe factory. “We are trying to shake up the form of opera a little bit,” says Opera Hub artistic associate Adrienne Boris. “While we aren’t changing anything about the opera, making cuts or dumbing down the style of singing, we are working to make the opera engaging for younger populations newer to opera.”
Stay a step ahead with our newsletter on the latest in Boston living.
Sign me upView All Events
Related Articles
Winter Olympics - Feb. 11
Weekend Ideas: January 8, 2014
Standing Tall
Troy Andrews credits New Orleans mentors for fueling his own mission...
Boozy Bonds
Meryl Streep tanks in John Wells’ adaptation of August: Osage County...
Home Again
Boston welcomes back guitarist Joey Santiago and the rest of the Pixies on Jan. 18 at a sold-out Orpheum...
Peter Simon - Flash Back
A shutterbug shares outtakes from his storied career...
Weekend Ideas: January 16, 2014
Weightless
Matthew Houck lets go to craft an ode to redemption...