American Repertory Theatre Archives - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Barber Shop Chronicles: Man Talk in a Man’s World

By Jane Baldwin | December 12, 2018

Barbershop Chronicles Photo Ryan Hartford

Inua Ellams’ Barber Shop Chronicles, his first full-length play, was a smash-hit when it opened in London in 2017. It was co-commissioned by the National Theatre and Fuel, an organization which works with new artists to present unusual plays that will both appeal to today’s audiences and introduce live theatre to those who have not experienced it.

Ellams who was born in Nigeria and moved to Great Britain as a young boy returned to Africa to research Barber Shop Chronicles. He visited barber shops in Lagos, Nigeria; Kampala, Uganda; Accra, Ghana; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Harare, Zimbabwe recording conversations to help develop his play which deals with black masculinity in today’s world. A barber shop in London, where Ellams resides, appears after each African scene. …

Arrabal: A Story of Love and Politics Told through the Tango

By Jane Baldwin | May 22, 2017

Arrabal, now playing at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge in its U.S. début, premiered in Toronto in 2014. In its present state, it is a fascinating theatre experience, a political drama told without words via the tango and music. It is also an immersive show where some audience members, supposedly at a tango club in Buenos Aires, sit at tables downstage as well as on the orchestra floor, which had several rows of seats removed. In the first scene which takes place in the present spectators are invited to join the performers onstage for a tango lesson.

The joyous mood changes abruptly as the story begins. A projection announces that it is 1976, the year in which Isabel Peron’s government was overthrown by a right-wing junta. We meet Rodolfo (Julio Zurita), an endangered resistant, bringing his infant daughter to his mother who lives in a slum (arrabal in Spanish) outside Buenos Aires. He dances a tender tango with baby Arrabal (a word also associated with the tango) before putting her into the bassinet and leaving her a red scarf. …

Julius Caesar , directed by Arthur Nauzyciel at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge.

By Jane Baldwin | November 5, 2008

In February of 2008 the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts presented Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar directed by Arthur Nauzyciel. For those unfamiliar with the American Repertory Theatre, a brief description is in order.

As its acronym ART indicates, it is a noncommercial theatre dedicated to art. The kind of art the theatre produces and its worth has been a question since the ART’s arrival in Cambridge in 1980. For most of that time, its artistic director was Robert Brustein who was at once conservative and experimental in his tastes. Under his helm, the ART presented classics old and modern, generally those familiar to his public, as well as the occasional new work. Debut plays were often relegated to a second stage where their performances were given lower production values. On the main stage, Ibsen, Shaw, Pirandello, Strindberg, Beckett and other stalwarts of the modern drama anthology reigned supreme. Shakespeare and Molière were the most frequent representatives of the older classical repertoire.

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