Boston Theater - A 2009-2010 Season Preview - Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals

[Dear Reader: What follows is an article that I wrote for artscope, a local arts magazine here in Boston. It's a preview of some Boston-area productions that I'm looking forward to seeing, and it runs in the current issue of artscope. I reprint it here, with the kind permission of the folks at artscope, and encourage you to read the rest of the issue online, or by picking up an issue at a newsstand and reading it the old-fashioned way. --CC]

Forgive me, reader, if I tend to focus on musicals: I willingly accede that there’s a vast array of interesting theater out there to behold, it’s just that I personally don’t happen to be much interested in a show if it doesn’t include lyrics and a musical score. I could blame it on my current gig as a teacher of musical theater at the Boston Conservatory of Music, but the truth is, I’ve suffered from musical myopia my entire life. That said, there are some genuinely interesting, if not downright compelling, musical offerings coming from local Boston theater companies this season.

My personal favorite is Adding Machine, which is receiving its Boston premier from the Speakeasy Stage in March 2010. Based on the seminal Elmer Rice play, Adding Machine is an uncompromising work that relates the story of one Mr. Zero, who after 25 years of service at his menial job, is replace by the titular adding machine. The ramifications of this act, as well as Mr. Zero’s desperate response to it, take the viewer on a stylized trip through the afterlife, confounding expectations at every turn. What starts out as a paean to the faceless underdog becomes nothing less than a call to action on the part of drones everywhere. Certainly not to everyone’s taste, Adding Machine is nonetheless one of the best musicals to emerge in decades.

Also very intriguing is the Huntington Theater’s upcoming holiday production A Civil War Christmas. Not content to offer yet another production of A Christmas Carol, the Huntington has instead chosen to stage an original work, albeit with a score consisting of holiday standards. What makes this work so intriguing is its author: Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive), whose presence single-handedly garners the production must-see status. As the play’s title implies, the production is set during the 1800s, and incorporates a variety of stories, including those of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, an escaped slave, and a rebel soldier. The show runs through December 13th at the Huntington’s main-stage theater.

In the quasi-revival department, we have Hot Mikado from the New Repertory Theatre in Watertown. The folks at the New Rep have long established themselves as a major local theatrical force, but it’s only been relatively recently that they’ve really made a name for themselves in musicals, through acclaimed local productions of such shows as Ragtime and Dessa Rose. The idea of updating the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera certainly isn’t new: in 1939 there were two jazzed-up versions of The Mikado (called Swing Mikado and Hot Mikado) playing across the street from each other on Broadway. The New Rep version is a more recent adaptation by playwright David H. Bell, one that has played London a number of times and seen a number of additional international productions as well. Hot Mikado runs at the New Rep in May 2010.

I must admit that there is one non-musical that is definitely on my local radar: the national tour of Tracy Letts’ Tony- and Pulitzer-Prize-winning play August: Osage County. To call the Weston family of Letts’s play merely dysfunctional would be a gross understatement. The laundry list of scandal that plagues the Westons would put any daytime drama to shame. And yet Letts’s play, while tragic, is also howlingly funny. The tour cast is led by the brilliant Estelle Parsons, who brings more than 50 years of stage experience to what may well be her finest performance yet. August: Osage County plays Boston’s Colonial Theater in May 2010.

– Christopher Caggiano

6 Comments

What about "The Dinosaur Musical" at the Stoneham Theatre (by the Frog and Toad folks) starring your former student, Yours Truly?! You better be there!

Posted by: Matt Kacergis | November 13, 2009 at 12:20 AM