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Roller Disco the Musical! boogies down at Oberon

Roll out
Perhaps the success of the 2007 musical adaptation of the 1980 film Xanadu inspired Jen Wineman to transform the 1979 film Roller Boogie into a stage musical, but Roller Disco the Musical! (at Oberon through August 30) proves there is room in the world for more than one musical comedy about roller-skating disco dancers.

By: MADDY MYERS | July 02, 2012

Car Talk is no musical

Flat Tire
The notion of a musical inspired by Car Talk is bizarre.

By: STEVE VINEBERG | June 26, 2012

Coward's 'Private Lives' roars again

Charmed
It wouldn't be a stretch to call Noël Coward's 1930 Private Lives the funniest play of the 20th century.

By: STEVE VINEBERG | June 05, 2012

Boston theater happenings of summer 2012

Summer stages
Summer stages

By: PHOENIX STAFF | June 06, 2012

Tir Na’s Lonesome West, A.R.T.’s Woody Sez

Dust up
Suffice it to say that Leenane is no city of brotherly love.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | May 22, 2012

Xanadu from SpeakEasy; Avenue Q at Lyric Stage

Gods and monsters
Those who know their Coleridge will recall that: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately roller-dome decree."

By: CAROLYN CLAY | May 15, 2012

Felder’s Maestro; Orphans’ Mary Poppers

High flying
Hershey Felder's Maestro: Leonard Bernstein (presented by ArtsEmerson on the Paramount Mainstage through May 20) begins with black-and-white footage of its subject lecturing vigorously on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | May 07, 2012

ASP tackles Troilus and Cressida

Farewell romance
"All's false in love and war" might be a maxim for Troilus and Cressida.

By: CAROLYN CLAY | May 01, 2012

Tigers at Zeitgeist; Yesterday at Central Square

Eat my brain
Forget the elephant in the room. Depression is a big cat in Tigers Be Still, a relentlessly quirky yet endearing screwball tragicomedy by Kim Rosenstock that debuted at New York's Roundabout Underground in 2010 and is getting a sweet Boston premiere by Zeitgeist Stage Company (at the BCA Black Box through May 5).

By: CAROLYN CLAY | April 25, 2012

Luck of the Irish is good for the Huntington

Raisin brand
There is more than one way to view A Raisin in the Sun .

By: CAROLYN CLAY | April 20, 2012

New Rep takes O’Neill’s Journey

Tripping
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Papa! Can't you lay off me!" asks the younger James of the elder as "the four haunted Tyrones" are just beginning to scratch the surface of the emotional spelunking that will become Long Day's Journey into Night .

By: CAROLYN CLAY | April 13, 2012

'The Tempermentals' start the revolution

Secret histories
Jon Marans's The Temperamentals (at Lyric Stage through April 28) begins innocently enough: a first date during which a coy couple engages in some flirtatious back-and-forth and plays footsie under a restaurant table.

By: MADDY MYERS | April 03, 2012

The Lisps try to deliver a message in 'Futurity'

All we are saying
It isn't easy to put together a 90-minute musical that includes the Civil War, the birth of computer programming, indie rock, the internal dynamics of Lord Byron's family, mathematical formulas, and writing letters back and forth about an invention that will either save the world or be a precursor to the atom bomb.

By: ED SIEGEL | March 28, 2012

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is unrealized Wilson

Almost blues
For years you could measure the difference between the Huntington Theatre Company and the American Repertory Theater as the difference between August Wilson, the gritty and lyrical chronicler of African-American life, and Robert Wilson, the avant-garde auteur.

By: ED SIEGEL | March 21, 2012