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
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 […]
PLAYTIME
WHAT for Kids Serves Up Wisdom for These Times
A show that reminds grown-ups to look to young people for answers
Outside the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, eager children and resigned-looking adults find their seats. There are no lights to dim. Route 6 hums nearby. On a small patio stage flanked […]
PERFORMANCE
Improv Is About Everyone in the Room
Outer Cape troupe fills a gap in the local comedy scene
IMPROVincetown’s June 16 show began with an unusual advisory. “Normally at a show, you’re told to turn your phone off,” announced improv troupe member Katie Pentedemos. “But we want you […]
DRAG REVIEW
Qya Cristál Brings Art to Artifice
A performance that’s part autobiography, part political statement, and completely spellbinding
In the same way that the groom shouldn’t see the bride before the wedding, the audience probably shouldn’t see the drag queen before the show. It’s not about superstition — […]
THEATER REVIEW
Hooking Up With ‘Marry Me a Little’
WHAT offers a living ode to the late Stephen Sondheim
When Stephen Sondheim died last November, the loss to the world of musical theater was incalculable. Jerry Herman (Hello, Dolly!; Mame; La Cage aux Folles) may have been the master […]
THEATER REVIEW
Gender Is the Thing in ‘The Lady Hamlet’
Sarah Schulman’s witty new play premieres at the Provincetown Theater
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is not the manliest of tragic heroes. When the ghost of his father, the former King Hamlet of Denmark, accuses his brother Claudius, now king and Hamlet’s stepdad […]
THEATER REVIEW
The Harbor Stage Disinters Sam Shepard’s ‘Buried Child’
Catch a modern classic about a family’s painful decline
When Buried Child was first performed in 1978 in San Francisco and New York, its hipster playwright, Sam Shepard, was a fixture of the downtown arts scene, best known for […]
