Boston 2018 Archives - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Wet: A dacamented journey: living as an undocumented immigrant.

By Jane Baldwin | November 18, 2018

Alex Alpharaoh has brought WET: A DACAmented Journey, his moving, comic, and political one-man show, to ArtsEmerson in Boston at the end of his first cross-country tour. This autobiographical piece could not be more timely given the strong animosity against Latinos, particularly the poor, that exists in the Trump administration. The work, directed by Brisa Areli Muños, was first enacted in 2017 at the Ensemble Studio Theatre in Los Angeles where it was highly successful. The Los Angeles Drama Circle nominated WET for best play and awarded Alpharaoh the prize for best solo performance. …

We will not be silent, a story of Anti-fascist Youth

By Jane Baldwin | October 23, 2018

We Will Not Be Silent Photo Andy Brilliant-Brilliant Pictures

David Meyers’ We Will Not Be Silent, now playing at the New Repertory Theatre at the Mosesian Center for the Arts, Boston is a work whose content speaks to today’s audiences in the US. Many believe our democracy is in danger; our country is split, racism and other types of discrimination are widespread. Discussions and books on the rise of Fascism abound.

Most of the play takes place in an interrogation cell in Nazi Germany where Sophie Scholl (Sarah Oakes Muirhead) is being held. It is 1943 and the war is starting to go badly for Hitler. A year earlier Sophie, a religious Christian and student of philosophy at the University of Munich, and her brother Hans (Conor Proft), a medical student at the same university, had founded the White Rose, a small resistance group who believed that if the German people knew the extent of the evil being committed by the Nazis, they would oppose the regime. To enlighten the population, members of the White Rose wrote and secretly distributed anti-war pamphlets. …

The White Card: An Attempt to Communicate

By Jane Baldwin | March 5, 2018

The White Card, Claudia Rankine’s play on racism is having its world premiere at Boston’s Paramount Theatre as a coproduction with Cambridge’s American Repertory Theatre. Rankine, a celebrated modernist poet, created the drama to bring the ideas of her prize winning Citizen, An American Lyric to a medium where dialogue is most often the means of communication.

As is frequently the case in plays that involve disagreement between characters, a dinner party plays a prominent role in The White Card. At the opening of this two scene piece, Virginia (Patricia Kalember) and Charles (Daniel Gerroll), a wealthy white middle-aged married couple who live in a luxurious New York apartment, are talking with Eric (Jim Poulos), a white art agent as they await Charlotte, an African American artist. Charles and Virginia want to purchase one of Charlotte’s works. …