(L-R) Claire Kennard, Lindsay Lee Alhady, Major Attaway, Delaney Benson, and Meridien Terrell in the North American Tour of SPAMALOT. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.

Presented by Boch Center Wang Theatre
Book and Lyrics by Eric Idle
Music by John Du Prez & Eric Idle
Directed & Choreographed by Josh Rhodes
Music Directed by Jonathan W. Gorst

October 8 – 11, 2026
Boch Center Wang Theatre
270 Tremont St
Boston, MA 02116

Runtime: 2 hours and 20 minutes, including intermission.

Review by Helen Ganley

BOSTON — Arthurian Legend – a literary colossus within British history. The lore encompasses the trials, feats, and follies of King Arthur and his knights within the kingdom of Camelot. These narratives bestow their readers with messages of honor and chivalry. Spamalot, based around these foundational mythologies… Does not … (in the best way!) Spamalot, or as it’s properly titled and subtitled, Monty Python’s Spamalot; A musical lovingly ripped off from the motion picture “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” takes inspiration from an already vaudevillian and slapstick movie and cranks the silliness up tenfold in the way only theater can. Although the main quest is reminiscent of the original fables, King Arthur and his knights seek the holy grail, the show’s series of vignettes shows the team encountering outrageous and nonsensical barriers.

The knights of the Round Table are a ragtag team, including Sir Robin (Sean Bell), Sir Lancelot (Chris Collins-Pisano), Sir Galahad (Leo Roberts), and Sir Bedevere (Ellis C. Dawson III). Bell is animated and flamboyant, his coquettish cowardice discarded during his impressive rendition of “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway.” The quartet brings distinct and enthralling energy, creating almost a sense of surprise at their masterful harmonies during “Knights of the Round Table.”

Reigning over his knights is King Arthur (Major Attaway) and his guiding compass, The Lady of the Lake (Amanda Robles). Attaway has nonchalant energy that creates a tonal hilarity from its contrast to the outrageousness occurring onstage. Robles is a vocal dynamo, showcasing operatic soprano, jazzy riffs, and classic Broadway vibrato during “Diva’s Lament.”

A notable standout was Steven Telsey as, well, eight different roles. Although differentiated through costumes and makeup, Telsey was unmistakable throughout the show with his telltale physicality and vocal chops. Whenever he was onstage, I found myself pointing to my companion, indicating that he was back onstage, which never failed to excite us both.

Technically, the show is a tour de force. The orchestra backs the entire production (Jonathan W. Grost), although occasionally a bit loud, while intricate projections dance across the set (Paul Tate DePoo III). Each costume (Jen Caprio) is tactful and distinct, especially The Lady of the Lake’s shimmering sequins and blue velvet robe. Spamalot is as ridiculous as it is entertaining – for both fans of the movie and those who
haven’t seen it (e.g., me). The Boch Center Wang Theatre’s production is sure to make you want to get up and sing along… which you should prepare to do!

Photo of cast by Jim Sabitus.

Presented by the Umbrella Stage Company 
Story and Book by Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming 
Music and Lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe
Directed by Jeremy Johnson
Music directed by Jeff Kimball
Choreography by Sara Andreas

September 25 – November 8, 2026
Umbrella Arts
40 Stow St.
Concord, MA 01742

Online playbill

Approximate run-time: 1h 55m, 15m intermission

Critique by Diana Lu

CONCORD, Mass. — Bat Boy: the Musical has the dubious yet rarefied honor of being the worst show I’ve ever seen. This is not altogether bad publicity: it’s managed to stay rent-free in my brain all week. I fully expect to think about this show at least once a month for the rest of my life. Perhaps not my Roman Empire, but certainly my Portuguese, or Dutch East Indies Empire.

Inspired by an infamous 1992 tabloid, this 1997 off-Broadway musical tells the story of a half-human, half-bat child found in a cave. The bat boy (Johnny Shea) is taken in by a village veterinarian’s kindly wife (Amy Barker), who teaches him manners, BBC English, and how to give and receive love. The fanatically religious townsfolk alternately revile and accept the Bat Boy, whose primary conflict is wrestling with his deadly vampiric nature. Mayhem and hilarity ensue.

Johnny Shea’s lead performance was the best thing about the show. He played Edgar the Bat Boy with sincerity and gravitas that grounded the outlandish mess around him. Watching him serve high tea in a British accent while wearing vampire fangs, pointy ears and a bald cap was also the most camp the show managed to muster.

Amy Barker is a stellar actor who played Meredith with tenderness and complexity that made her character’s gradual reveals throughout the second act believable. Maria Silva Norris’s portrayal of Reverend Hightower was as hilarious as her gospel solo was breathtaking. 

Cameron McEachern and Sarabeth Spector created a set that coherently morphed from bat cave to church pews to living room to enchanted forest with minimal props. Meagan Bello’s costumes combined with Briana Fallon’s choreography created clear and intentional transitions of the actors from one character to another that became some of the funniest moments of the show.

In general, the cast and crew did the best they could with a difficult book. I also think intentional camp is especially difficult to pull off in theater because the medium is already so…well, theatrical. It’s hard to hit the right balance of exaggeration and seriousness that camp requires when everything already has to be exaggerated to even be readable from the nosebleed seats.

In Bat Boy’s case, the directorial choices often felt too cartoonishly unserious and self-aware to effectively convey a camp aesthetic. My main grievance about this is that it makes the problems with the book more glaring. I won’t even go into the narrative messiness. It’s the asymmetrical treatment of men’s vs. women’s humanity that really bothers me about this show.

Bat Boy is a supernatural metaphor for a lot of painful experiences of queerness, particularly of gay men in the 80s and 90s: AIDS stigma, isolation and othering, institutional persecution. The book was written with the intent to portray these traumas safely filtered through the aesthetized lens of camp, and to its credit, does so effectively.

The female characters, on the other hand, are rendered at best as infrastructure in a man’s story, simultaneously hypervisible as spectacle and invisible as narrative. They are the primary drivers of Edgar’s healing narrative in a naturalized way that erases the labor required for that healing process. And the story just rawdogs the suffering of Meredith, Shelley, and even Mrs. Taylor, often for comedic effect.

A different approach to camp might have allowed this production to make up for some of the compassion the book misses, but it didn’t. This is particularly sad as a failure in artistic direction because there is so much more public awareness of care work and sexual violence today than when Bat Boy was written 30 years ago. I don’t begrudge the writers for having the blind spots they did in 1997. But there is no excuse for a production team that demonstrates zero interest in looking directly at them in 2026.

Photo via www.cactusheadpuppets.com/touring-shows

Presented by Puppet Showplace Theater
By CactusHead Puppets
Featuring John Regan and Megan Regan

November 11, 14, & 15, 2026
32 Station Street
Brookline, MA 02445

Review by Maegan Clearwood

BROOKLINE – As artists and arts institutions struggle to secure funding more than ever, Puppet Showplace Theater offers a critically important program: The Incubator for New Work, which provides time, space, and feedback for puppeteers to tinker with new projects.

I was lucky enough to see one of these burgeoning creations, a preview performance of Dig Down Deep: A Cave Adventure by CactusHead Puppets. It was a particularly unique opportunity to see a work-in-progress, because the most valuable feedback in the room came from the children in the front rows.

As evidenced by the giggliness in the room, Dig Down Deep certainly has enough gags, playfulness, and puppetry magic to keep any young audience engaged.

The adventure follows Jamie, a child who loves learning about science, but struggles with social and sensory challenges at school. They refuge in a cave, where two companions – Fish and Echo – let Jamie be themself. Jamie is called to adventure when Echo disappears, leading them into the deepest, darkest depths of the cave.

The audience is introduced to the world of the play before Jamie’s story begins, as John and Megan heave a boulder onto a platform, then break it open to reveal the cave inside. There are some amusing slapstick moments during this opening bit, but I noticed the audience getting quite restless toward the end, so the opening may benefit from some trimming.

John and Megan Regan manipulate a variety of puppets along Jamie’s journey, most of which are quite small: Jamie treks up and down John’s arms to reach the cave and leaps from one child’s open hand to the next as they search for Echo. The use of bodies as set pieces is one of the play’s most enchanting elements, stretching the bounds of the audience’s imagination and transporting us to a world where any object can come alive.

John and Megan’s vocalizations for the puppets are cute, but often mumbled, making it hard to understand what the characters are saying. They are accompanied by delightful spooky sound design, giving the cave an otherworldly dimension.

Jamie is a compelling protagonist by means of representation. Although never explicitly stated, they are implied to be nonbinary and autistic. It’s heartening (and important, particularly given the young audience) to see Jamie navigate the world in their own way.

Jamie’s internal journey needs clarification, particularly during the ending, which wraps up the plot but neglects the overarching message. The play opens like a fable, with a direct introduction to the story’s status quo and central conflict, so it feels unbalanced when it ends on such an open-ended note. I was hungry for a return to Jamie’s life outside the cave so we could see how much they changed.

Dig Deep Down has its official premier in November, so audiences can embark on this adventure with Jamie again quite soon.

Image via SAATh Fest.

Off-Kendrick’s South Asian-American Theater Festival (Saath-fest)
Presented by Off-Kendrick

September 18-20, 2026
The Dorothy and Charles Mosesian Center for the Arts
321 Arsenal Street
Watertown, MA 02472

Review by Diana Lu

WATERTOWN, Mass. — SAATh is not just an acronym; the name also means “to come together.” The South Asian American Theatre festival therefore is a rare occasion that South Asian storytelling communities all over America can come together and be centered. 

SAATh-fest is the flagship event for Off-Kendrick, a non-profit experimental theater group founded in 2008 by Bengali Bostonians. Kendrick means “center” in Bengali, so Off-Kendrick means off-center in Benglish. In the 18 years since its founding, Off-Kendrick has grown from a small group focusing on Bengali plays about the immigrant experience to an established cultural authority bringing original plays written and performed by artists across the South Asian diaspora to stages in New England.

This year’s Saath-fest appears to be Off-Kendrick’s most ambitious and impressive event yet. The festival featured theater written and performed by South Asian artists from Chicago to New Jersey to Boston, representing a great diversity of South Asian ethnicities, regions, and languages. 

The themes of the plays maintained Saath’s commitment to women’s stories, supporting children and their artistic growth in theatre, and also broadened to include South Asian perspectives and connections with East Asian communities. This year’s headliner play for both Saturday and Sunday was about the consequences of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and another play explored the iconic “butterfly dream” paradigm for questioning reality by Chinese philosopher Chuang Tse.

Each play was thought-provoking and well performed as standalone pieces, exploring universal themes with specificity and depth, and covered the past, present, and future of South Asia and beyond. Standouts for me included the student-choreographed tiger dance in The River Swells, part of the Kids-Kendrick section written and performed by young artists of Boston. American Bhoot featured a talented all-female cast narrating a harrowing tale of one immigrant mother’s journey from Wall Street associate to unhoused and starving, the result of narcissistic abuse and two patriarchal societies that failed her. Thaniyavarthanam was similarly themed, showing how one’s family system can be both the source of love, support, and protection, yet also the source of unimaginable harm. Modern Love Jaisa, was a charming collection of desi American romance vignettes that reminded me of Love, Actually.

Each play was followed by a discussion with the artists and directors, which imbued a sense of intracommunity dialogue and connection between storytellers and audience throughout the festival. I was particularly moved by the panel discussion with Kids-Kendrick playwriting workshop leaders. They spoke to the importance of community support in fostering creativity and storytelling for diaspora children. The audience full of doting parents seemed to really appreciate that perspective and it was personally inspiring for me to hear.

At the same time, I found the festival’s organization surprisingly frustrating, especially considering this was the fifth year of SAATh. Though the individual performances were deeply engaging, this energy didn’t build because it wasn’t ever carried from one play to the next. Transitions lacked energy, flow and efficiency. Both days I attended were so behind schedule that the audience was confused and needed to be continually corralled. Because of the scheduling issues, I didn’t have time to stay for the final play either night. 

The overall experience felt disappointingly amateurish, which was a disservice to the ambitious artistic vision of the event. I hope this improves in the future, because the festival itself has so much going for it. Off-Kendrick’s stated purpose for SAATh-fest is to bring diverse South Asian communities together through theater, storytelling, and dialogue. I was personally impressed and inspired by the work I saw, and I feel there is so much potential for SAATh to connect with wider audiences and communities. That all makes the audience experience and the infrastructure surrounding the performances just as important as the artistic programming.

SAATh has already created something unique and important: a space where South Asian artists and audiences can come together, see themselves reflected, and experience the connection of common humanity. With a stronger sense of cohesion and care in the festival’s execution, Off-Kendrick could become the major South Asian theater festival I know  it has the potential to be.

Anthony T. Goss as Johnny and Deannah “DRIPP” Blemur as Avery. Photo: Benjamin Rose Photography

Presented by SpeakEast Stage Company
By York Walker
Directed by Dawn M. Simmons
Featuring: Crystin Gilmore, Anthony T. Goss, Sydney Alicia Jackson, Deannah “DRIPP” Blemur, Kayla Sessoms

Sep. 25 through Oct. 17, 2026
Boston Center for the Arts

Critique by Kitty Drexel

TLDR: The cast & crew had a rough night on Wednesday. Covenant is Sinners meets Paranormal. Sorta.

BOSTON — Sometimes, the well-prepared elements of a play don’t meld during a performance. Only the muses know why. That appeared to be the case of the cast and crew of SpeakEasy’s Covenant on Wednesday evening: Actors lost their energy halfway through their lines and looked uneasy on stage, a sound cue misfired, tech persons were accidentally revealed during set changes. To these we say, let she who’s never persisted through a wonky performance cast the first stone.

We, the audience, can chalk these foibles up to the mysteries of live theatre. Mistakes happened; the actors kept going. They finished strong, and that’s what matters most. We commend the Covenant cast and crew for their hard work turning the production around. It isn’t easy and displays both good technique and a solid community foundation.    

From what we surmise, Covenant is based on the myth and fact of Delta bluesman Robert Johnson.  Folk history says Johnson made a midnight deal with the Devil at a crossroads to sing and play the guitar. He left home unable to play. He returned six months later with some skill. Rumors spread like wildfire. The truth is more mundane: Johnson found a human teacher. (Or, perhaps, a gremlin convincingly dressed as a human teacher…) He made some recordings. He passed away at the ripe age of 27. 

Johnson’s story and more helpful information are found on the SpeakEasy’s dramaturgy website. I wish SpeakEasy had put more significance on the Johnson myth. One needs to know about it to appreciate this play. I urge potential members to check out the dramaturgy website before attending. Read about Johnson online because his myth adds necessary context to the production. As SpeakEasy has reduced its playbill pages to reduce its carbon footprint, we must now take initiative to complete our pre-show education. 

Covenant dreams of being the small stage version of Sinners meets Paranormal – minus the vampires and jump scares. In this play, Johnny “Honeycomb” James (Anthony T Goss) returns home to Hartwell County, Georgia after making it big as a juke joint singer and traveling musician. It’s 1936, and he’s come home to marry his childhood crush, Avery (Deannah Dripp Blemur). Avery wants to leave her small town with Johnny, but her god-fearing Mama (Crystin Gilmore, who wields christianity like a weapon) refuses to allow it. As Avery and Mama play out their mother/daughter dispute in their unhappy home, Avery’s sister, Violet (Sydney Alicia Jackson), and Violet’s best friend, Ruthie (Kayla Sessoms), witness their falling out. Covenant is a play about the secrets we keep and stories we don’t tell. 

To be completely frank (with all due respect to Goss’s many talents), if Honeycomb James sold his soul for the voice and playing we heard on Wednesday night, Honeycomb was solidly conned. And, depending on your perspective, that’s the entire point. Honeycomb might have been a smooth-talking cutiepie with nice hands who made a deal with a fallen angel, or he was a young man with an okay voice and an untuned guitar. It doesn’t matter whether Honeycomb actually made a deal. It matters that people believed he did. Rumors like that attract patrons. A venue owner knows that big crowds mean more money in their pockets. 

If you see this production, you’ll discover that Honeycomb’s story is the least interesting plot thread of this play. I will only say that the production takes a surprisingly queer turn. When we say the LGBTQ+ community has always existed everywhere, we mean it. 

As explained above, this performance took its time to blossom on Wednesday night. The production excelled during the cast’s inter-scene monologues. In them, each character divulges their darkest day through third-person narrative. Each actor gets to tell the story that broke their character’s heart. We watch them break all over again. It’s tragic and beautiful.  

This SpeakEasy production isn’t my favorite. Covenant is a curious beast; it has little scares and big surprises. There are freakier Halloween experiences out there for folks looking for a big scare. It isn’t for everyone, but it might be for you. 

Can’t pay full price for tickets? Try any of SpeakEasy’s discount programs. 

Photo Credit to Nile Scott Studios.

Presented by Greater Boston Stage company
By Paul Pörtner
Co-Directors: Liv Dumaine and Tyler Rosati
Cast: Alex Leondedis, Mark Lineham, Joseph Marrella, Cheryl L. McMahon, Sarah Morin, Tyler Rosati, Ceit Zweil

September 25 – October 11, 2026
Greater Boston Stage Company
Stoneham, MA 02180

Review by Craig Idlebrook

STONEHAM, Mass. — In order to successfully break the fourth wall in theater, you must first construct a full room.

That’s what makes farcical, audience-participation comedies so tricky to pull off. Casts are often better at either world-building or audience participation, and it’s less common to be strong at both. Luckily, audiences are very forgiving when they get to be in on the joke.

That may be why the silly whodunnit Shear Madness is one of the longest-running non-musicals in the world. Based on a German play with a similar premise, this slapstick comedy has been making audiences guffaw since its premiere in 1980. A flimsy murder mystery set within a hair salon, the script’s central contrivance is that it allows space for audience members to share clues and question suspects to solve the mystery.

Greater Boston Stage Company’s production of this chestnut was my first time seeing Shear Madness, and I struggled to buy into the first third of the play. While the cast bought into their broad characters and committed to the physical comedy needed, I found myself questioning what decade they were supposed to inhabit. Landline phones and Olivia Newton-John posters mixed with references to Drake Maye and dead cell phones.

Also, there were several killer jokes within the snappy banter that fell flat because some lines felt delivered for rim-shot moments. I wished instead those same lines were played dry and quick to allow the audience to realize the humor more naturally.

And while much of the important action takes place between four and five in the afternoon, the clock on the wall was clearly showing the ten o’clock hour. All this is to say that while I knew the play was not supposed to be Shakespeare, my mind too often wandered.

Most of the production’s peccadillos were forgotten, however, when the lights were raised and we were brought in to take part in some detective-adjacent work.

Joseph Marrella was the able ringleader of this part of the play as the lead detective, Nick O’Brien. His natural delivery and nearly unflappable stage presence reminded me of my favorite high school teachers. With O’Brien taking the lead, the cast listened deeply to each other and worked together to hash out the various theories suggested in a mixture of scripted and improvised dialogue.

Some of this momentum was stripped away, however, when the action downshifted back to script to reveal the true murderer. Alas, here the play jarringly slipped into melodrama.

All in all, this production of Shear Madness was a close shave at times, it but ended up leaving its audience with the fun feeling of a good blowout: unsubstantial, but a lot of fun in the short term.

Cast members of “All My Sons;” Photo by Benjamin Rose.

Presented by Lyric Stage of Boston
By Arthur Miller
Directed by Scott Edmiston
Compositions by Oleg Smirnov

Sep 23 – Oct 18, 2026
Lyric Stage
140 Clarendon Street
2nd Floor
Boston MA 02116

Critique by Kitty Drexel

TLDR: The Lyric’s production of All My Sons is sad, is triumphant. This family needs therapy. 

BOSTON — Arthur Miller’s All My Sons forces its male characters to face the consequences of their unscrupulous actions as businessmen, patriarchs, and neighbors. As they do, their female counterparts, their wives, sisters and mothers, perform the emotional and other invisible labor necessary to clean up the figurative and literal messes their men have made. This play contains themes such as survivor’s guilt, profit over principles, and the disillusionment of one white nuclear family’s American Dream after WWII, among others. The Lyric Stage’s production, directed by Scott Edmiston, runs in Boston through October 18. 

Each character of All my Sons intertwines with the next. Over three acts, we learn how the cast of characters are intentionally and unintentionally woven into each other’s half truths, secrets, and lies. It begins with self-made businessman Joe Keller (Bill Mootos) and neighborhood scion, a man who prides himself on building a manufacturing business for his nuclear family with his wife Kate (Laurie Marie Duncan) in Ohio. Their first son, Larry, was a pilot who went MIA during the war. Their second son, Chris (Mark Souza), survived as a decorated soldier and works in Joe’s factory. Years later, Joe, Katie and Chris still wrestle with Larry’s disappearance. 

Just before the show begins, a midnight storm has decimated Larry’s memorial tree planted in the Keller backyard. We watch the playfully intelligent Keller family contemplate the tree’s remains from Janie E Howland’s quaint, Norman Rockwellian set design the next morning. Then, Annie Deever (Josephine Moshiri Elwood, who plays her joy with sincere innocence and sadness with crushing angst), Larry’s now grown, high school sweetheart, enters. She’s visiting the Keller family from New York and hopes that Chris will give her a reason to stay in Ohio. But she has reason to believe that not every family member would welcome her staying. 

While Annie is reacquainting herself with the Keller’s, her brother George (Quinton Kappel) is visiting their father, Steve, across the state in a Columbus penitentiary. Steve and Joe were once business partners. A controversy involving a shipment of parts from their factory landed Steve and Joe in jail; Joe was acquitted; Steve was not. George’s return to the Keller home sheds new light on the manufacturing controversy. By the end of the play, both the Kellers and the Deevers will learn new truths about the Keller family that will alter their relationships forever. Miller shows us once again that all of this could have been prevented with rigorous, destigmatized family therapy.  

Allison Beauregard, Cara Clough, Chris Heuisler, Julian Hirschfield, and Eric McGowan play the Kellers’ charismatic neighbors. 

The Lyric Stage and Director Edmiston deliver a triumph of a production. From its casting to the smallest design details, All My Sons delivers excellence to the Boston masses. At the center of this triumph are actors Elwood, Souza, and Duncan as the surviving Keller family members. Elwood and Souza battle each other for patriarchal dignity. They are two men struggling under the weight of society’s expectations of men while desperately searching for life’s meaning. Miller loves to watch his male protagonists suffer. Elwood and Souza suffer beautifully under the direction of Edmiston’s astute direction. 

Duncan as Kate is warm, graceful and utterly devastating. At once, Duncan is smart and thoughtful only for her to change tactics in the middle of a line to reveal Kate as a broken woman barely holding on to her sanity. Kate made her sons her entire personality. To reveal her vulnerabilities, to give into doubt about her family’s ethical purity is to accept that her family has faults. Her mind is a Jenga puzzle; if one block falters, her psyche will fall to pieces.  

Costume designer Chelsea Kerl slyly dresses her cast in clothing that spans the decades and slyly shows us the inner workings of the play’s characters. The men wear trousers that land on the natural waist. The women wear kicky dresses that rest at the shin and nylons with a seam up the back. Characters begin the play in bright, sunny blues, browns, greys and the occasional green. As the drama builds, so do their colors darken. By the end, with one striking exception being a cheerful, yellow sweater vest, pivotal characters wear navy and black to express the darkness of their minds. 

The costumes match the blues and yellows used in Karen Perlow’s lighting design: A blue spotlight shines on characters during dark, solitary moments; Yellow shines like the sun across the set during the moments when the characters are or are attempting happiness. The dominant color flows one color to another over three acts to indicate how well the characters are coping with unexpected revelations.   

The unity of this production’s design elements matches the unity of its actors and creates a cohesive production worth making time to see. All My Sons premiered on Broadway in 1947 at the Coronet Theatre. It was directed by Elia Kazan and ran for 328 performances. That’s not possible for our dear Lyric due to its season’s constraints. Our fingers are crossed that the Lyric’s production extends for as long as possible so many folks can see it. Cancel what you must and check out All My Sons before it closes. 

Can’t afford a ticket? Check out the Lyric Stage’s discounted ticket options: https://www.lyricstage.com/ticket-information/lyric-for-all/

Giamatti and Turturo in “Rhinoceros.” Photo by Hawver and Hall.

Presented by American Repertory Theater
By Eugene Ionesco
Translated by Derek Prouse
Directed by Diane Paulus

Aug. 14 – Sept. 27, 2026
Loeb Drama Center

Digital Playbill

Critique by Kitty Drexel

Runtime: Two hours, including one fifteen-minute intermission.

TLDR; Famous people on stage! Timely politics on stage! Vote the rhinoceri out.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Boston’s arts journalism is awash with news about the American Repertory Theatre’s production of Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. Rightly so, it’s a grand production worthy of its hype. Director Paulus is finally meeting a political moment as it occurs. She’s invited a grand, New York- and L.A.-based cast to play in Cambridge, MA. (Hello, Bostonian understudies! I appreciate you.) Ionesco’s plays lack universal appeal. Thanks to Derek Prouse’s translation, this charismatic production comes as close as one might get. 

Ionesco’s Rhinoceros dwells under the umbrella of the dramatist movement, the Theatre of the Absurd. TOTA, a 1950s & 1960s American and European theatre movement based on Albert Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942), posits the nihilistic/absurdist/existentialist belief that human existence is without meaning or purpose. Rather than do as Camus suggested, which was to find joy in the absurdity, playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco (the Romanian Beckett), Jean Genet (the French Ionesco), and Harold Pinter (the British Genet) decided to be depressed. 

Thanks, Reddit.

Whether because of their depression or otherwise, the absurdists’ absurd plays tossed out their days’ traditional theatre structures and disregarded performance precedents. Their plays’ characters were unconventionally anxious and remained dramatically unresolved through the end of the play. The playwrights philosophized to their audiences: if life has no meaning, then humanity has no direction.    

Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros is like an anti-Waiting for Godot. Spoiler alert: In Beckett’s 1952 play, Godot infamously never arrives despite Vladimir and Estragon’s waiting. In Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, despite generations of illicit Asiatic and African poaching trades decimating their populations, a rhinoceros disrupts a provincial town in France within minutes of the first scene. It’s a placid Sunday morning. Jean (Paul Giamatti) and Berenger (John Turturro) are enjoying a friendly glass of wine served by a perky waiter (Clay Singer) at a cafe. A grocer (Peter Francis James) and his wife (Kristine Nielsen) run their business while a Housewife (Harriet D. Foy, who is shamefully underutilized in this production) takes her cat for a walk. 

The first rhinoceros arrives, and the townsfolk are appalled. Daisy (Broadway, off-Broadway actress and T.V. and film chameleon Tatiana Maslany), as in a young woman as fresh as a daisy, rises to the occasion to assert the legitimacy of the rhino’s appearance and to calm the townsfolk. Her selflessness is so modest and self-sacrificing that all the men around her fall in love (much to her chagrin). 

No one has seen a rhinoceros in this town in years, the townsfolk cry. They doubt whether a rhinoceros was seen. Not in their town. Not when rhinoceroses have been banned since childhood. People exaggerate, after all. The witnesses must be mistaken. Yet, over three acts and a great range of ridiculous human behaviors, the townsfolk come to realize that a rhinoceros did rampage through their town. In fact, rhinoceri are showing up everywhere: workplaces, schools, homes, even the church! The rhinos will keep showing up until someone does something about it. 

It should be obvious to nearly anyone with a basic understanding of WWII politics and an internet connection that Rhinoceros is not really about a misplaced odd-toed ungulate. Rhinoceros allegorizes an isolated society’s fight against the inescapable lure of group thought from an insider’s perspective. One could easily replace Ionesco’s rhinoceros with another propagandized group thought event, and audiences would still resonate with it: christian nationalism, wokeism, the Marines, LulaRoe, patriarchy, feminism, A.I. in schools, the internet, ‘Bama Rush culture, incel culture, Beatlemania, Antivaxxers, the malicious scourge known as culottes, etc. 

Yes, Ionesco’s pachyderm metaphor could represent any historical movement, but in the A.R.T.’s production, per Ionesco’s intention, the rhinoceros represents totalitarianism, fascism, and authoritarianism. Ionesco wrote it after WWII in response to Hitler and his failed Nazi experiment. It’s the very political group a certain pedophilic oligarch shit-staining the Epstein Files and his wimpy crony cucks lionize. And Paulus chose this play because it directly reflects the absurdism playing out in the U.S.’s political theatre today. Ionesco’s play shows and tells us it’s not a matter of if an individual conforms to societal pressure, but when. Theatre of the Absurd, indeed. 

Equally as absurd, at least to this critic, was the audience’s response to two of the play’s stars, Giamatti and Turturro, and not its third, Maslany. Giamatti and Turturro, excellent actors who deserve praise for their work in this production, received applause upon making their first entrance. They hadn’t done anything except arrive at their mark on time. Boomers, y’all know they’re supposed to do that, right? Clapping at an actor’s first moment onstage is as absurd as clapping after a plane landing. It’s their job. Their characters’ motivation is the actor’s paycheck received at intermission. Please wait until the end. 

Meanwhile, Maslany may have a shorter career, but only because she is decades younger than her costars. Give her time. She’ll catch up. The kids in the audience, who didn’t clap along with their parents and grandparents, are, as they say, alright. 

While we’re discussing the talents of Giamatti and Turturro, they perform beautifully together. The two have such sympathetic stage chemistry as arguing friends that they could be brothers. In a key Act Two scene, Turturro assists Giamatti’s unbridled physical comedy through a violent transformation. Berenger takes to Jean’s bedside; Jean becomes violently immodest upon the person of Berenger as the scene unfolds. In this play, Berenger (Turturro) and Jean (Giamatti) are loyal friends. In another world, they could be lovers. 

Fake news: Maslany and Turturro. Photo by Hawver and Hall.

Rhinoceros truly becomes a work of absurdist theatre when Ionesco shows us kind, intelligent Daisy who has a bright future ahead of her picking drunk, slovenly, spiritually and fiscally impoverished Berenger as her romantic partner. He has nothing to offer her except an ouroboros of poverty and alcoholism. While we can see Turturro’s huggably muscular arms from the nosebleeds, we cannot in good faith believe Beringer is as devoted to hitting the gym as Turturro. Maslany fights for her life and our suspension of disbelief through these moments. She is as believably charming then as she is throughout the play. But surely solitude is preferable to Daisy than the horrors awaiting her in a marriage to Berenger. 

Apropos of nothing: Kristine Nielsen steals her scene with Maslany, Turturro, and the male ensemble with spotless comedic timing and hyperbolic vocal range as Mrs. Boef. We watch her character choose fascism before our very eyes, and it is hilarious. 

We would be remiss if we failed to mention the sound design of Fitz Patton. Patton’s work gives presence to the production’s rhinoceri. We cannot see them, but we hear them. Their grunts and trumpet calls echo through the Loeb as the smoke effects of Markus Maurette cloud the stage. Patton and Maurette evoke the essence of a rhinoceros and effectively support the play’s story. 

If Ionesco’s predictions are to be believed, by watching Rhinoceros we’re watching history repeat itself onstage. Fortunately for us, all North Americans have currently retained the right to vote. Massachusetts holds its state primaries on September 1. The federal criminal convicted of rape and his balding, low-testosterone simps may currently be in the White House, but they won’t be there forever. VOTE. It’s time to take our rhinoceri out to pasture. 

Here’s the Massachusetts election website again: https://www.sec.state.ma.us/divisions/elections/recent-updates/upcoming-elections.htm

VOTE.    

UPDATE 8/24/26: A previous version of this article misspelled the character Berenger’s name. It has been updated.

(Rosalía’s “Berghain” briefly plays during a stunning Act One scene change. Both are stunning works of art. Rosalía for her depiction of Hildegard von Bingen in a German techno club. Paulus for maintaining the play’s charged dramatic energy through a routine scene change.)

Photo by Paul Lyden

Presented by North Shore Music Theatre 
Book by Chris D’Arienzo
Direction by Kevin P. Hill
Music direction by Peter Leigh-Nilsen
Choreography by Sara Andreas

August 12 – August 23, 2026
North Shore Music Theatre
54 Dunham Rd. 
Beverly, MA 01915 

Review by Craig Idlebrook

BEVERLY, Mass. — You have to hand it to Chris D’Arienzo, the creator of Rock of Ages: he doesn’t shy away from the wincing sexual politics of late-80’s hair metal. A successful production of this play must do more than wink about it; it must embrace it, much like strong productions of Grease did before it.

For better more than for worse, the North Shore Musical Theatre production bearhugs the raw sexuality of this boy-meets-girl story set within the raunchy confines of L.A.’s Sunset Strip in the late 80’s. The skin and the gyrations on stage were enough for the somewhat stoic North Shore Music Theatre to provide a content warning beforehand, before giving the audience permission to sit back and let one’s big hair down.

Let’s knock out the synopsis of the coherent-yet-perfunctory storyline in a sentence, if possible: two star-crossed lovers with big dreams meet at a storied L.A. rock bar, The Bourbon Room, as the bar is in danger of being torn down. Okay, two sentences: complications ensue.

That story is as much of an excuse as one needs to enjoy the howling guitars, crisp choreography, and unabashed goofiness of a pair of dreamers in the City of Angels.  

By and large, the cast provides the dual-threat skills needed to pull off this rock opera. Matt DaSilva stands out for his at-once chaotic and centered performance as Lonny, a bar mainstay and the play’s fourth-wall-breaking narrator. DaSilva bestows the Sunset Strip gadfly with a charming mischievousness reminiscent of the pixie Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

He is perfectly paired with Evan Harrington as Dennis, the bar’s world-weary owner who has seen it all, who provides quiet beats of dry humor amidst the flashiness on stage. 

Also notable is Chelsea Williams’ portrayal of the young dreamer Sherrie; Williams provides enough grounded inner life to the character to avoid her coming off as a bimbo, which is a delicate line that must be walked given the setting. If she is just one of a horde of big-haired girls, then we have nothing to hold onto as theatergoers. Williams delicately helps us see that Sherrie makes the same mistakes as the others, but is her own person, too.

And Toneisha Harris is given just enough stage time as Justice, the owner of a strip club, for theatergoers to regret she is just a bit player in this production. Her voice owns the stage with each note.

The production struggled to fully harness the potential of this cast when I saw it. Once a scene rolled on stage, the action was often dazzling, but there were microphone issues in the second act, and there clearly was some dead time moving from one scene to another. 

And such downtime allowed me too much time to overthink the show, not a good thing for a fluffy theatrical production. Unwanted thoughts arose like, “What kind of bulk licensing deal did the musicals backers make with Tommy Shaw to feature a song from both his Damn Yankees era and his Styx era, especially when neither song was foundational to the hair rock era?”, “Will this audience understand this is making fun of 80’s sexual politics, or will they want to embrace it in some weird trad-wife way?”, and most importantly, “Why did this play decide to include that weird Flashdance-like thing of making exotic dancing the horror to end all dreams, as if showing nipples on stage derailed dreams worse than smoking crack?”

But luckily, another guitar shredded, another bass drum thundered, and another set of hips shook, reminding me that I needed nothing but a good time, at least for the moment. 

Presented by

August 6-9, 2026
Chelsea Theatre Works

Critique by Kitty Drexel

The show runs approximately 95 minutes with a 15-minute intermission. Venue opens 30 minutes before the show.

TLDR: It’s complicated. There’s good; there’s not great. Keep going.

CHELSEA, Mass. — Pitbull’s Party at the End was an ambitious project debuted by Fork & Shoe Theatre Co-op at Chelsea Theatre Works on Aug. 6. Unfortunately, it closed early due to COVID. We offer our sincere condolences to the cast and crew. Y’all deserve to feel proud of the work you’ve done. Successfully producing an independent show is a minor miracle in these dark times.  

Pitbull’s Party at the End’s summary on the Fork & Shoe website: It’s 2042 and a hurricane threatens to wipe Miami off the map. Meanwhile, Mr. Worldwide (Carlos Fruzzetti, charismatic and funny) is performing his last ever New Year’s Eve concert, the Phallic brothers (David Feit Mann, Scott Schaeffer, Eli Bondar) are planning the business deal of a lifetime, and an intergenerational Cuban-Jewish family (Paola Ferrer, David Kleinman, Sophia Yael Koevary, Audrey Molina) must bridge their differences to survive the apocalypse.

Pitbull’s Party suffers from too many storylines and too many messages carrying equal importance. This one 95-minute play is about the ethnic cleansing of multiple societies, our global climate disaster, Jewish Cuban culture, billionaires’ atrocities, intergenerational queer identity, anticapitalist philosophy, and the Grammy-winning American rapper, singer, songwriter, and “actor” Armando Christian Pérez, aka Mr. 305, aka Mr. Worldwide, aka Miami’s bald zaddy, Pitbull. Carrying that many subplots in one play requires careful threading. 

While it’s apparent that Playwright Talia Rodriguez does her darndest to weave her subplots together, many of those threads fizzle out. No one can say she lacks creativity; her imagination lives a robust life on the stage. Her ideas need better integration into one core message, and the script lacks infrastructure. For example, the Mangroves (Juan Jose Boschetti Muniz, Eva Luna Cirilo, and Daina August), a Greek Chorus-cum-Shakespearean faerie ensemble, are introduced as the soul of Miami, but then they disappear like a fever dream until they reappear apropos of nothing later in the play. Using them is a bold choice – bold choices are good! But bold choices deflate if they’re incongruent to the play’s other devices.  

In addition, Rodriguez’s scenes are too short for such weighted themes. Audiences need longer scenes to understand the plot and remember characters. Shorter scenes are for brief comedic or dramatic bits. And, because the scenes are so short, the low-lit scene changes feel too long. 

That’s a lot of mean, old lady criticism for a new play. While the play needs further developing, I counter my own critique with this: Sections of Pitbull’s Party worked exceptionally well. 

This play began with a song by Noam Micarelli played as voiceover. Micarelli’s song repeated often enough that some audience members sang along. It was a strong, emotional start that bonded the audience with the cast. It was a touching offering of catharsis. 

Pitbull did host a concert in this play. We sang and danced with him. We shook our bald caps if we had them. It was fun. So when a catastrophic event occurs during the concert, as they always do, we were energized to watch the drama unfold. 

The show’s props by Sid Jepsen and Eli Bondar were delightful. The puppets (including a clay golem) drew the audience in… To be honest, I expected the play to incorporate more such delectable silliness… And for Pitbull, the musician and the character, a bigger deal throughout. He’s in the title, but he appears in only a few short scenes. Audience members were in bald caps! After the cast and crew, Pitbull is the draw. Use him*. 

Most importantly, regardless of whatever was going on onstage, the cast was 100% in the world of the play. Comedy, drama, lip syncing, road trip, interpretive dance: They did not deviate in their mission to bring us to Miami 2042. They were locked in, and so was I… Until the next scene change disrupted the play’s energy.   

This show had a promising name, high hopes, earnest ideals, and a plucky cast. These were not enough to buoy it through its many splintered plot diversions. We couldn’t tell if it was a comedy or a drama, because it tried to be both simultaneously. Pitbull’s Party at the End, the script, has potential to be a uniquely hilarious experience. But like many new plays in their adolescence, these first performances are proof that this play requires further development. (Perhaps, say, as one of Fresh Ink’s development residency plays when it’s ready for another go.)

*With consent, of course.