NEW YORK CITY — At a recent performance of Chicago at the Ambassador Theater on West 49th Street, a rumble of anticipation preceded Jinkx Monsoon’s entrance on stage. The two-time […]
Theater
THEATER
A Playwright Collective Brings People Together
In Truro, monthly readings foster a community of writers and audiences
TRURO — A group of tender-hearted queers, disparate in their predispositions, shelter in a dune shack to hide from a right-wing militia that prowls the grounds outside. Will they survive? […]
AN ACTOR’S LIFE
A Provincetown Actor Makes It Work
Joe MacDougall on the challenges and rewards of a theater life on the Outer Cape
“Doing the work” — actor-speak for whatever it takes to develop one’s talent into marketable skills — is a phrase that probably goes all the way back to the first […]
OPERA
Michael Cunningham’s ‘The Hours’ Unfolds on the Stage
The author discusses adaptation — and resurrection — in the Metropolitan Opera’s rendition of his novel
Michael Cunningham isn’t particularly interested in faithful adaptations of his work. His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, which was turned into an acclaimed film by Stephen Daldry, has now become […]
THEATER REVIEW
‘Tiny Beautiful Things’ Is a Potent Spoonful of Sugar
Cheryl Strayed’s advice column comes brilliantly to life in Provincetown
The notion of an advice columnist brings up strange memories. There’s Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, the dark novella about a Depression-era newspaper columnist who is driven mad by the horrific […]
THEATER REVIEW
Giving Thanks With a Woolly Weave of Family Ties
'The Humans' arrives at the Provincetown Theater
As adult children reunite with their parents for a holiday dinner, troublesome secrets and long-held tensions surface and ignite: it’s a spectacle we’ve most likely witnessed before, in art and […]
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS FESTIVAL
What Makes a Man?
Gina Carmela drags masculinity through the heteronormative mud
The male leads in Tennessee Williams plays often embody a specific set of characteristics: sweaty T-shirt, chiseled chin, toxic masculinity. Drag king Gina Carmela will be taking on this archetype […]
THEATER REVIEW
A Queer Quartet of Short Provincetown Plays
Quickies takes the stage with conflicted emotions
Omnibus collections of work — short stories, movies, or plays — can be a mixed bag. Quickies, however, presents four one-acts of contemporary queer drama with local talent at the […]
THEATER
Going All In on Tennessee Williams
The classics, with some twists, at this year’s festival
Tennessee Williams was drawn to the edges of America. Among his favorite places in the world were the port city of New Orleans, on the banks of the Mississippi; Key […]
THEATER REVIEW
WHAT Presents a Feminist Fantasia on the Reign of Terror
Lauren Gunderson’s The Revolutionists is a four-woman romp
The French Revolution that began in 1789, like the American one before it, is not known for its women fighters. The Enlightenment manifesto of the uprising is notably entitled the […]
THEATER REVIEW
With Frozen, the Harbor Stage Serves Up Killer Performances
Bryony Lavery’s play explores the aftermath of a senseless murder
Are there crimes so heinous that their perpetrators are beyond redemption? Fritz Lang’s 1930 movie M, starring Peter Lorre as a kindermörder — “child murderer” — ends with doubts about […]
THEATER REVIEW
Love in the Time of Plague
Robert Chesley’s Jerker arrives in Provincetown
If you didn’t live through it, it’s difficult to imagine the extreme sense of urgency and doom that the gay community experienced in the early ’80s, when AIDS hit. The […]
THEATER REVIEW
In Gary, a Shakespeare Sequel, WHAT Slays the Summertime Blues
Taylor Mac’s comic riff on Titus Andronicus is bloody good
Back in the early 1960s, when movie legend Stanley Kubrick began writing a screenplay based on the novel Red Alert, a tense thriller about the potential for nuclear apocalypse between […]
YES, HONEY!
Group Therapy With Varla Jean Merman
In ‘Ready to Blow,’ Varla Jean tracks the source of her anxiety and yours
Steve and Joey, a couple from Philadelphia who have been married for seven years, are sitting in the front row of drag queen Varla Jean Merman’s show. They’re a young […]
THEATER REVIEW
‘The Ballad of Bobby Botswain’ Takes Two to Cure All Ills
A world premiere at Wellfleet’s Harbor Stage
Pretty much anything can happen when two guys start chatting over flamingo-tinis at a bar in Fort Worth, Texas. Or so it might seem, in the marvelous two-hander The Ballad […]
