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‘Bull in a China Shop’ Brings A Powerhouse Feminist to Life

Cast of Treehouse Collective’s ‘Bull in a China Shop’. Photos: Brian Higgins

‘Bull in a China Shop.’ Written by Bryna Turner. Directed by Lisa Tierney. Stage Manager – Nicole O’Keefe; Lighting Designer – Dan Clawson; Set Designer – Britt Ambruson; Sound Designer/Sound and Light Op – Dannie Smith. Presented by The Tree House Collective at Abbott Memorial Theatre at Hovey Players, 9 Spring St., Waltham through June 29.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Mary Emma Woolley may be the least-known important historical figure you’ve never heard of. A radical feminist, education reformer and suffragette, she served as president of Mount Holyoke College from 1900 to 1937. She also lived a fairly openly lesbian life and shared a life-long partnership with Jeannette Marks, her former student and a firebrand academic revolutionary and writer.

Thanks to Bull in a China Shop, Mount Holyoke 2012 alumna Bryna Turner’s smart, ensemble-based one-act play, and The Tree House Collective’s skillful production, the story of Woolley’s fascinating life and important legacy are a little less unfamiliar.

Turner has a lot of material to work with and she covers a lot of ground in a mere 80 minutes, offering glimpses of American women’s history from 1900 to 1930s against the intimate details of Woolley and Marks’ 55-year-long relationship. Inspired by letters the two women wrote during absences from each other, her funny and tender script is also feisty and pedagogic. Her characters liberally sprinkle their conversations with spicy F-bombs one minute and rhapsodize about Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando” the next.

Karen Dervin as Dean Welsh and Linnea Lyerly as Woolley

The play begins as Woolley (Linnea Lyerly) considers leaving her professorial position at Wellesley College for the presidency at Mount Holyoke. She and Marks (Heidi White) discuss the move while embracing on a tiny bed (Britt Ambruson’s minimalist set design is maximally effective). Like any couple, the two struggle with the adjustment Woolley’s position of power and her career ambitions would have on their relationship. With a light yet insightful pen, Turner makes clear that this lesbian couple is no more immune to the stress of these challenges than any heterosexual married couple might be. In both, it is assumed that the non-breadwinning wife would play a secondary, supportive role.

Although Marks is anxious and reticent, they do, of course, move to Mount Holyoke, where Woolley exercises prodigious power and Marks is an English professor, living in a faculty dorm. “I never wanted to be a wife,” Marks complains. Intoxicated by the heady opportunity to smash every social, political, cultural, and academic norm that constricts women, Wooley snaps back, “I want a partner, not a child. Grow up.”

Turner weaves a lot of facts into her play. We learn, by way of pithy, clever dialogue, that in the past, the college had placed an emphasis on women’s education in service to society (all students were required to learn laundry skills, for example, and attend daily chapel). Woolley, by contrast, laid the foundation for a women’s education to be valued for its intellectual merit. Period. On her watch, education for education’s sake would no longer be a brass ring reserved for men.

Ever the proverbial bull in a China shop, Woolley minces no words. “You want a training ground for good pious wives?” she asks during a practice interview with the Mount Holyoke hiring committee. “I’ll give you fully evolved human beings. Are you afraid they won’t find husbands? So what. If a man is interested in headless women, send him to France.”

Alas, while Woolley’s moves to upend the concept of womanhood are met with applause and adulation from the student body, the stuffier, straighter board of trustees and heavy-hitter donors prove a tougher sell.

Hannah Young as Felicity, Lyerly and White

Dean Welch (Karen Dervin) tries to rein Wooley in when she treads too close to the board’s lines in the sand, but Woolley pays no heed until, at last, it’s too late. Before that eventuality, however, there are many delicious subplots to unfold.

There is, for example, the secret fan club that springs up on campus, dedicated to worshipping the romance between Woolley and Marks. Fan club president Pearl (Anneke Salvadori), a student of Marks’ who is so besotted with her teacher that she stalks her like a lovesick puppy, actually pens sonnets about her eyes in the student evaluation forms.

There is a suffrage protest that lands Marks and Woolley on opposite sides of the college administration’s official stand. There is Woolley’s three-month trip to China, which ignites Marks’ predictable affair with Pearl. Felicity (Hannah Young), Marks’ protective and invaluable roommate, is a grounding voice of reason amidst the ensuing domestic chaos.

Turner also raises plenty of philosophical questions clothed in adroitly crafted, though at times dense, conversation. Is Woolley a realist, opportunist or idealist when she doesn’t risk taking a public stand on women’s suffrage until after receiving the board’s approval? Is she sincere or a manipulator, and, at the end of the day, do her motives matter as much as her actions?

The Tree House Collection has mounted a production that feels greater than the sum of its parts. Director Lisa Tierney makes admirable use of the simplest of sets to evoke a bedroom, office, classroom, rooming house, train, and jail. The pacing is brisk, with pleasing, period musical interludes (Dannie Smith) that accompany quick set changes between scenes.

And then there is the crackerjack acting. As Woolley, Lyerly is a complicated, powerful presence, as beguiling and charming as she is frustrating and infuriating. White plays Marks as an intense, humorless professor who seems to be in need of either a chill pill or a new lover. (Young, as roommate Felicity, tries her best to steady Marks’ listing boat).

Heidi White as Marks

But the real surprises and pleasures are Dervin, as Dean Welsh, and Salvadori, as Pearl. Dean Welsh presents as all business and conformity on the outside, but Dervin’s nuanced performance imbues her with a hint of rebellion and a wink of humor. Salvadori simply steals every scene she is in. Her Pearl is dry-witted, wry and droll, and Salvadori deadpans even her most outrageous lines to great effect. Although the scene where Pearl fantasizes about wreaking havoc on Marks after being dumped by her for the returning Woolley could use some editorial tweaking, Salvadori’s delivery could not be more spot on.

Bull in a China Shop debuted off-Broadway in 2017 at Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theater, where it earned glowing reviews and played to sold-out audiences. Lincoln Center has offered Turner a commission for her next play. I, for one, can’t wait to see what bauble catches her eye.

For more information, visit https://www.treehousecollective.us/home

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Gloucester Stage Breathes Fresh Life into A Beloved Classic, ‘The Glass Menagerie’

Liza Giangrande, Patrick O’Konis in Gloucester Stage company’s ‘The Glass Menagerie’
Photos by: Shawn Henry

‘The Glass Menagerie.’ Written by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Doug Lockwood. Scenic Design by Jenna McFarland Lord; Costume Design by Nia Safarr Banks; Lighting Design by Amanda Fallon; Sound Design by Aubrey Dube. Presented by Gloucester Stage at 267 East Main Street, Gloucester, through June 28.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Tennessee Williams’ classic autobiographical story of a struggling family, The Glass Menagerie, is no stranger to Broadway and community theater stages. It premiered in Chicago in 1944, where it was championed by several Midwest critics, and moved to Broadway in 1945. Subsequent Broadway productions were mounted in 1965, 1975, 1983, 1994, and 2005, with the likes of Jessica Tandy, Julie Harris, and Jessica Lange playing matriarch Amanda Wingfield. The 2013 revival transferred to Broadway from the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA. Known as a staple in college and community theaters’ repertoire since its 1944 début, the play and its straightforward staging is a reliable crowd pleaser and audience draw.

It’s hard to imagine any theater company could add anything new. Yet, Gloucester Stage (2025 Elliot Norton Award Winner for Outstanding Play, Midsize for its production of Hombres) has effectively (and thankfully) taken the road less traveled in its presentation of the 80-year-old classic with an interesting and thought-provoking production that allows the audience to experience Williams’ script anew through an exciting, hyper-focused and refractive lens.

Williams advises in his preface, Author’s Production Notes, “Expressionism and all other unconventional techniques in drama have only one valid aim, and that is a closer approach to truth. When a play employs unconventional techniques, it is not, or certainly shouldn’t be, trying to escape its responsibility of dealing with reality, or interpreting experience, but is actually or should be attempting to find a closer approach, a more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are.”

Kudos to Director Doug Lockwood and Scenic Designer Jenna McFarland Lord for taking those words to heart.

De’Lon Grant

The Glass Menagerie is a seven-scene memory play with a storyline that follows Tom Wingfield (De’Lon Grant) as he looks back on his family life in St. Louis during the 1930s. In the opening scene, Tom appears slightly offstage to deliver his soliloquy. “The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic,” he says, warning that what he is about to share may not be THE truth, but it is certainly what he remembers (or thinks he does). “Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you an illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”

He describes exactly who we will see — his mother, Amanda, his sister, Laura, himself, a mystery man — and who we will NOT see: his father, who was a telephone man who “fell in love with long distances.”

The set reflects the otherworldly dreaminess Tom describes. Gauzy, torn gold floor-length drapes enclose the stage like curtains around a freestanding shower/tub. As Amanda’s voice becomes audible, Tom pulls back the curtains and enters the Wingfield residence.

On stage are Amanda (Adrianne Krstansky), Laura (Liza Giangrande) and four chairs. Amanda and Laura sit at an imaginary table, pantomiming eating. Their gestures are in perfect spatial sync, creating the impression that they (and, therefore, we) are suspended in this dreamlike world of memory and mirage, where props are invisible and reality is a hermetically sealed snow globe. Even the only wall art, a baroque gold frame that is supposed to hold a portrait of Tom’s father, is empty.

Grant, Giangrande, and Adrianne Krstansky

This minimalistic approach allows the audience to focus on Williams’ words and the true genius of the script. Without the distraction of glimmering glass animals and ornate period furniture, we too become submerged in Tom’s recollections, a key element of The Glass Menagerie’s success as a “memory play.”

A faded Southern belle of middle age, Amanda deals with her present by hanging onto her past. Abandoned by her husband, she lives with her children. Laura, in her 20s and afflicted with a limp, perhaps caused by polio, is debilitatingly shy. Tom, her younger brother, secretly writes poetry and supports the family by working a warehouse job that he hates. A fêted debutante in her Southern youth, Amanda longs for the creature comforts and male attention she enjoyed and spends most of her time reliving and recounting those happier times.

Amanda is also obsessed with finding a “gentleman caller” for Laura, whose crippling anxiety and introversion have sabotaged her every move, with the result of dropping out of high school and a secretarial course. Laura spends her days in her own homespun world, playing records on the Victrola and polishing and communing with her “glass menagerie,” a collection of tiny animals she engages with as a toddler would in fantasy play. Like Amanda, she treads the path of escapism.

The first five scenes of the play (“Preparation for a Gentleman Caller”) draw to an end as Amanda bribes Tom to bring home some nice young man from the warehouse by promising that, once Laura is married off, Tom is free to follow in his father’s footsteps. He tells her that Jim, a work acquaintance, will join them for dinner the next night. Amanda sets to work, reimagining the apartment, Laura, and the future.

After intermission, when the curtains are again drawn aside, the set revealed is firmly grounded in the “real” world of tangible accoutrements. After all, the very first outsider ever to enter the Wingfield inner sanctum might be scared away by anything short of at least the pretense of “normalcy.” Even Tom’s father is restored to his throne, majestically peering down at the chaos his legacy has sown.

O’Konis and Grant

Subtitled “The Gentleman Calls,” these last two scenes are Williams at his heartbreaking best. Jim O’Connor (Patrick O’Konis, 2025 Elliot Norton Award Winner for Outstanding Lead Performance in a Play, Small), the man Tom has brought home, turns out to have gone to high school with the Wingfield siblings. Tom was “the” big man on campus, starring in the school play and excelling at any sport thrown his way. Like Tom, he is disappointed at his current lot in life and his hope to shine again is conveyed by his study of public speaking, radio engineering, and ideas of self-improvement.

The ending is predictably dark (this is Williams, after all), although there are bursts of cheer and light as Jim and Laura reminisce over their very different high school experiences. The real tragedy is that these two do connect in an authentic way, only possible in the living room of a home where its residents live in a dream world.

The acting in this four-hander is uniformly stellar, the direction more than spot on, and the script a critic’s delight. Even if you think you’ve seen The Glass Menagerie enough times for one lifetime, be sure to catch this version at Gloucester Stage through June 28. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.For more information, visit: https://gloucesterstage.com/glassmenagerie/

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Quirky, Funny and Flaky — NSMT’s ‘Waitress’ Is Feel-Good Summer Fare

Christine Dwyer (Jenna) and Brandi Chavonne Massey (Becky) in WAITRESS at North Shore Music Photo©Paul Lyden

‘Waitress.’ Written by Jessie Nelson. Music and Lyrics by Sara Bareilles. Based on the motion picture written by Adrienne Shelly. Directed by Kevin P. Hill. Music Direction by Milton Granger; Choreography by Ashley Chasteen; Scenic and Lighting Design by Jack Mehler; Costume Design by Rebecca Glick; Sound Design by Alex Berg. Presented by North Shore Music Theatre, 54 Dunham Rd, Beverly, MA through June 15.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Who doesn’t love a thick slice of pie, especially in the summer when fresh fillings are ripe and especially sweet? “Sugar, butter, flour” is the mantra chanted like a lullaby throughout Waitress, the wonderfully staged musical now playing at North Shore Music Theatre. Although pie takes center stage throughout the almost two-and-a-half-hour performance (with one intermission), Waitress is no simple, indulgent, or sentimental high. Meaty themes like domestic abuse, infidelity, empowerment, motherhood, and self-fulfillment are the secret ingredients that keep the show rolling and the audience from lapsing into a sugar coma.

Sara Bareilles’ witty, pop-ish lyrics and score marry the narrative requirements of musical theater with a variety of styles ranging from ballads and a country hootenanny to stunning duets and wacky, hysterical solos. The actors are uniformly well cast, from their vocal talents to their abilities to both shine as individuals and meld as an ensemble. Jack Mehler’s scenic and lighting designs are well thought out and effective. Director Kevin P. Hill makes good use of NSMT’s signature theatre-in-the-round stage and center trap door lift and sets a spot-on pacing. Add a live band (Music Director Milton Granger) and excellent sound (Alex Berg), and, production-wise, Waitress is as enjoyable as any production I’ve seen at NSMT.

The plot, which some have described as “half-baked,” is nonetheless a fine table on which to set this entertaining musical.

Christine Dwyer

Jenna (a fabulous Christine Dwyer) is both an expert pie baker and waitress at Joe’s Pie Diner, somewhere in the American South. Baking is her way of continuing her mother’s legacy and flexing her own creative muscle. Stuck in a stereotypical abusive relationship with her high school beau, Earl (Matt DeAngelis, who does the best he can with his cardboard character), she works long hours and considers her co-workers to be her real family.

Jenna is also afraid she might be pregnant (no spoiler; she is) and it is only the coaxing of her fellow waitresses, sassy, brazen Becky (Brandi Chavonne Massey, terrific) and gangly, nerdy Dawn (Maggie Elizabeth May, ditto) that gets her to pee on that proverbial stick.

An unplanned and unwanted pregnancy by a man she doesn’t love only adds to her load. (That she remains with Earl, a one-note bully and narcissist who demands her tip money the second she gets home, is tough to accept plot-wise.) She hides the pregnancy from Earl while she tries to come up with a plan to escape his clutches and start a new life for her and her baby.

Dwyer (Jenna) and Brandon Kalm (Dr. Pomatter)

For the time being, though, what is poor Jenna to do? Why, have an affair with her charismatic (and very married) obstetrician, Dr. Pomatter (a charming Brandon Kalm), of course! (Another plot head-scratcher some might find unrelatable and off-putting).

Meanwhile, back at the diner, Becky and Jenna help Dawn overcome her inertia and self-doubt and create an online dating profile. Almost as quickly as Jenna’s pregnancy test registers positive, Dawn gets a bite from the irrepressible, equally geeky Ogie (played with verve and vivacity by Courter Simmons). Their scenes together are among the most hilarious and weirdly adorable.

Jenna discovers the possibility of a way out of her abysmal home life when Joe (Keith Lee Grant, in a role tailor-made for him), the elderly owner of the eponymous diner, suggests she enter a pie baking contest. The prize is $20,000, her pies are definitely good enough, and she has nothing to lose. After much cajoling, she’s in.

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Eventually, all ends well (enough) for all the characters and Jenna embraces motherhood with a single-mindedness previously reserved for baking and inventing pies. If this were a dramatic play, no amount of clever dialogue could overcome the light-weight plot line, unnuanced character development and too pat ending. Luckily, Waitress is a musical and the talented Bareilles has crafted a funny, heartfelt and musically exciting score of 19 numbers that keep the action moving, the audience laughing, and the NSMT tent rocking.

For it is through the songs that the subplots and characters unfold.

In “The Negative,” for example, the three waitresses focus on the negative as they pray for Jenna’s pregnancy stick to stop at one line. “Club Knocked Up” is the obstetrician’s waiting room where the very pregnant patients pay homage to the era of the Andrews and Lennon sisters. Simmons, as Ogie, brings down the house with his Pee Wee Herman antics in the belly-laughers, “Never Getting Rid of Me,” and “I Love You Like A Table.” Massey, as Becky, then sets that house on fire in “I Didn’t Plan It.”

Bareilles really lets loose in Jenna and Dr. Pomatter’s duets, both musically and lyrically. “Bad Idea,” on which act one ends, is a slinky, sexy, tribute to the power of attraction. “It’s a bad idea, me and you; Let’s just keep kissing ‘til we come to…” Dwyer and Kalm croon as they throw themselves at each other and onto the gynecology examination table, limbs and voices silkily entwined. The ballad, “You Matter to Me,” gives the audience another opportunity to savor their harmonization.

At the end of the day, though, it is Jenna’s story, and it’s only fitting that she has the show’s two most introspective numbers. In the climactic “She Used to Be Mine,” Jenna unflinchingly assesses who she has become and who she wants to be in a song that is a rollercoaster of emotion and range, giving Dwyer the chance to really strut her vocal stuff. “Everything Changes” is her tribute to the power of motherhood.

The show’s finale, “Opening Up,” circles back to the moral of Waitress — it really does take a village for an individual to survive and thrive. The diner community is that village, holding them up and helping them keep it together. “Take a breath when you need to be reminded that with days like these, we can only do the best we can,” the company sings. Amen to that.

For more information, go to nsmt.org

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Charming, Engaging, and Clever — A.R.T.’s Musical ‘Two Strangers’ Has It All!

Sam Tutty and Christiani Pitts in A.R.T.’s ‘Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)’.
Photos: Joel Zayac

‘Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York).’ Written by Jim Barne and Kit Buchan. Directed and Choreographed by Tim Jackson. Scenic and Costume Design by Soutra Gilmour; Lighting Design by Jack Knowles; Sound Design by Tony Gayle and Cody Spencer; Orchestrations by Lux Pyramid; Music Direction by Jeffrey Campos. Presented by A.R.T.’s Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St., Cambridge through June 29.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), in its American debut at the American Repertory Theatre,is the perfect antidote to our bleak, cold spring. This sunny, upbeat two-hander musical romantic comedy is as beguiling as it is impeccably acted, directed and produced. In short, it is a full-blown fabulous evening of musical theater at its finest.

Unlike too many musicals these days, Two Strangers has a complicated plot and fetching music with lyrics that are Sondheim-esque in their conversational fluency and relevance. Add to that a smart, slick set (Soutra Gilmour), superb band (Music Direction by Jeffrey Campos), impeccable direction (Tim Jackson) and perfectly matched and equally talented leads (Christiani Pitts and Sam Tutty), and…well…you get the picture.

The premise is worthy of a Meg Ryan-Billy Crystal/Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks blockbuster “meet cute” film. Dougal, an excited and excitable 30-something-year-old Brit, has arrived in New York to attend the Christmastime wedding of the father he has never met. Robin, the 30-something-year-old older sister of the bride, is charged with picking him up at the airport. The two couldn’t possibly be more different.

Dougal (a bouncy, adorable and charismatic Tutty) is a bundle of enthusiastic energy. He’s pumped up to be in New York for the first time (“Are They Ready for Me in New York?” he sings in the opening number, “New York”) and marvels, wide-eyed and bushy tailed, at his first subway ride.

Robin is the jaded and pessimistic foil to Dougal’s blind optimism. A disillusioned New Yorker, working as a barista in a coffee shop and barely making ends meet, she is waiting for something to jump-start her “real” life. Her opening number, “What’ll It Be?” (“Is there something ’round the corner in the distancе? If you’re changing, what’ll it be that makes thе difference? Will you notice, will you feel it? What’ll it be?”) is a lamentation to dreams deferred. 

Dougal is in the same boat over the pond (he lives in his mother’s basement and works as an usher at a cinema), but he has the confidence and faith that fate and time are on his side. Robin’s glass is more than half empty; Dougal toasts hers with one that’s more than half full.

Jim Barne and Kit Buchan have crafted lyrics and music that are varied and reflective of both the two characters and the various situations they encounter. Tutty and Pitts have sparkling chemistry, and they are both engagingly agile actors with spot-on timing, inflection, physicality, and dancing and singing gifts. In the magical first act closing number, “American Express,” with its tip of the hat to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, the two actors really get to strut their stuff. (Kudos to Pitts and Tutty for sharp enunciation and to Tony Gayle and Cody Spencer’s crystal clear sound.)

Gilmour’s set design of stacks of suitcases etched with neon is simple and elegant. It spins throughout the show, underscoring how Robin and Dougal seem to be walking in place while circling each other. Magically, the wardrobes and large suitcases open to a coffee shop, a fleabag hotel, a Chinese restaurant and more. Jack Knowles’ dreamy lighting creates starry skies, dance floors and even a Plaza Hotel suite out of thin air.

The second act is more serious and meatier, as Dougal and Robin begin to open up to each other and provide compassionate reality checks. Robin gets Dougal to acknowledge his daddy fantasies and Dougal eventually succeeds in gaining Robin’s trust. And yes, the two do actually carry a wedding cake across New York.

By the play’s end, it is clear they have had a profound and indelible effect on each other, and that their connection has morphed into more than friendship. To their credit, Barne and Buchan resist the temptation to wrap it all up in a neat, happy rom-com bow, leaving the audience heartful, hopeful and thoroughly charmed.

Highly recommended.

For more information, visit americanrepertorytheater.org

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‘Kimberly Akimbo’ Is Musical Theater at Its Absolute Best!

Cast of ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ at the Emerson Colonial Theatre. Photos by Joan Marcus

By Shelley A. Sackett

Kimberly Akimbo should not be as enjoyable as it is. The show tells the tragic story of a lonely teenage girl, Kimberly Levaco (Carolee Carmello), who suffers from a condition similar to progeria that causes her to age at a rate that is four and a half times as fast as normal. Only one in 50 million people is so afflicted, and Kimberly has the appearance and bodily breakdown of an elderly woman with a lifespan that rarely exceeds 16 years.

We meet her shortly after she moves with her family to a new town in suburban New Jersey, after they left their previous home under shady circumstances. She encounters the usual adolescent “new kid” syndrome on steroids. Her narcissistic mother, Pattie (Laura Woyasz), is pregnant with a baby she hopes won’t be like Kimberly. Her father, Buddy (Jim Hogan), is a drunk and an insensitive and negligent father. Kimberly is burdened by both her genetic disease and being a caretaker for her immature, dysfunctional and self-absorbed parents. She also has a crude and zealous aunt Debra (a showstopping Emily Koch), who shows up like a bad penny, ready to engage Kimberly and her teenage posse in her latest felonious scheme.

On top of this, Kimberly is about to turn 16. For her, the bell is truly tolling.

Carolee Carmello and Miguel Gil

Yet, despite these odds, the team of South Boston native David Lindsay-Abaire (book and lyrics) and Jeanine Tesori (music) has made lemonade out of lemons, creating a poignant, funny, upbeat, and clever musical that also packs a wallop of insightful and optimistic messages on the way you can — and should —live your life, no matter how much of it remains to live.

With an unobtrusive yet stunning set design by David Zinn, terrific choreography (Danny Mefford) and orchestrations (John Clancy), and a stellar cast of Tony nominees and experienced Broadway actors (most of whom were in the play’s Broadway run), Kimberly Akimbo is an impressive show that leaves a significant impact and a smile on its audience’s face.

The storyline is anything but straightforward. The plays opens in 1999 at Skater Planet, an ice skating rink in Bergen County, New Jersey, where six teenagers — Kimberly, Seth (Miguel Gil), Martin (Darron Hayes), Aaron (Pierce Wheeler), Teresa (Skye Alyssa Friedman), and Delia (Grace Capeless) — express their misgivings, hopes and frustrations. Each is weird and awkward in their own way. What they all have in common is a feeling that they are not “seen” and a desire to fit in.

There are also teen hormones galore. Seth and Kimberly flirt and decide to partner for their biology project about diseases. Among the other four, unrequited crushes rule. They make plans to mount a Dreamgirls medley for the school choir show, and their practice sessions are a delight.

Kimberly’s home life is a mix of the absurd, the pathetic and the (almost) endearing. When Buddy is three hours late picking her up at the skating rink and arrives drunk, he persuades her to lie for him to her mother. Pattie has casts on both her arms after undergoing double carpal tunnel surgery and spends her time lying on the couch and making a clandestine video for the baby-to-be. Aunt Debra ambushes Kim in the school library, where she has been squatting. She tells Kim that her parents fled Lido, the last town where they all lived together, to deliberately dodge her, and convinces her to open the window at home to sneak her in.

Although the plot is full of capers, slapstick and great reveals (such as the reason the family had to bolt from Lido), the real pathos and meat of the production is exposed through its dazzling musical numbers.

In “Make A Wish,” Kimberly writes a letter to the foundation listing the three things she hopes she has time to do before her time runs out (be a model, take a cruise and build a treehouse) before realizing the only thing she could possibly wish for is to live like normal people live — “however normal people live” — for just one day.

Carolee Carmello and Jim Hogan

In “This Time,” the entire company expresses their hopes for the future, while “Good Kid” offers the audience a glimpse into Seth’s heartbreaking backstory. Even more tragic, however, is “Our Disease,” which puts each student’s presentation on specific diseases (scurvy, fasciolosis and Kim’s disease, progeria) to music. Afterwards, as the students debrief and talk about their dreams for the future, they complain about high school as being “just the crap we have to get through before we get to the real stuff, the good stuff,” ignoring the fact that for Kim, high school is the only stuff.

Finally, fed up with their insensitivity and whining, she explodes. “Your disease is a bad case of adolescence,” she screams. “Getting older is my affliction; getting older is your cure.”

The cast is a theater goer’s dream. They are individually and collectively pitch-perfect, enunciating clearly and spot on in pacing and gestures. (Kudos to director Jessica Stone). As Kimberly, Carmello wears a sad, serious face that is believable and touching. As Seth, her eventual boyfriend, the talented Gil is her perfect partner. The four teens are a seamless ensemble and Koch, as the irrepressible Debra, brings down the house with her earthiness and fabulous vocals. Hogan has a Richard Dreyfus naturalness as Buddy and Woyasz is equal parts adorable and abominable as Kim’s mother, Pattie.

Lindsay-Abaire’s other plays include Fuddy Meers (1999), Good People (2011), and Rabbit Hole (2006), for which he won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Tesori has written the music for stage musicals such as Thoroughly Modern Millie (2000), Caroline or Change (2003), Shrek the Musical (2008), and Fun Home (2013); she has also been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. She and Lindsay-Abaire had previously worked together on Shrek the Musical.

Emily Koch (center) and company

Kimberly Akimbo won five Tony Awards in 2023, including best musical. Unsurprisingly, Lindsay-Abaire and Tesori manage to pull a rabbit out of their prodigiously talented hat to end this potentially gloomy play on a hopeful, upbeat note where everyone — especially Kim — lives their life to the fullest. As my social worker friend and fellow audience member observed, sometimes people who know their days are numbered have a heightened awareness and appreciation for figuring out what really matters and going for it. What a gift and legacy that Kimberly not only walked that walk before she died, but also talked the talk. After all, as she proves, no matter what shape it takes, life is just one big adventure.

Highly recommended.

‘Kimberly Akimbo.’ Book and Lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire. Music by Jeanine Tesori. Based on the play by David Lindsay-Abaire. Directed by Jessica Stone. Music Supervision by Chris Fenwick. Choreographed by Danny Mefford. Presented by Broadway in Boston at the Emerson Colonial Theatre, 106 Boylston St., Boston, through May 18.

For theater information and tickets, go to: https://www.emersoncolonialtheatre.com/

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Emerson Colonial’s ‘Mean Girls’ Is More Meh Than Mean

Cast of ‘Mean Girls’ at Emerson Colonial Theatre

By Shelley A. Sackett

Tina Fey’s Mean Girls has certainly milked its appeal. When it first appeared in 2004 as a film starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried, it was a runaway hit. Its 2018 transformation into a Broadway musical fared less well and the 2024 remake of the film fared even worse.

Which brings us to the 2025 theatrical musical version that played at Emerson Colonial Theatre recently. Suffice it say, the newest iteration did nothing to reverse Mean Girls’ downward trajectory. Unless, that is, you happen not to have been born in 2004. In that case, (as was evidenced by the hordes of pink-clad teens and twenty-somethings at a Wednesday evening performance), the latest musical version was just what the Minister of Culture ordered.

Plot-wise, not much has changed. Teenage Cady Heron (a tentative Katie Yeomans) was home-schooled in Africa by her scientist parents. When her family moves to the suburbs of Illinois, Cady is jettisoned into the public school jungle, where she gets a quick primer on the cruel, tacit laws of popularity that divide her fellow students into tightly knit cliques from Damian (a terrific Joshua Morrisey) and Janis (Alexys Morera, also very good). But when she unwittingly finds herself in the good graces of an elite group of cool students run by the Queen Mean Girl, Regina (Maya Petropoulos), and dubbed “the Plastics,” Cady is initially seduced by the allure of being a member of the “in” crowd.” Once she realizes how shallow, and, well, mean, this new group of “friends” is, she rebefriends Janis and Damien and exposes Regina and her acolytes for who and what they really are.

José Raúl, Katie Yeomans 

Between opening and closing curtains are 20 musical numbers that take us on a trip through the trials and tribulations of high school with all its unspoken rules and regs, hierarchies, and, of course, sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Playing multiple roles, Kristen Seggio is a standout as teacher Ms. Norbury, bringing welcome talent and presence to the stage. Scott Pask’s set design is clever and engaging (especially the use of desks on rollers), and John MacInnis’ choreography occasionally shines, especially in the tap number and the use of trays for the lunch scene. But unfortunately, for the most part, the young actors (almost all are debuting in their first national tour) swallow a large percentage of their lines and lyrics, making an at times tedious production all the more so.

There are, to be fair, some high moments, especially during any musical numbers with harmonies. The show opens strongly, with scene-stealer Morrisey and Morera in fine voice and form. Kristen Amanda Smith is effective and (almost) endearing as an on-again, off-again member of Regina’s posse (plus she has a wonderful voice with which she projects and enunciates). As Karen, the airhead blond Regina worshipper, Maryrose Brendel brings a surprising freshness and nuance to a character who is plastic in more than group membership.

Maryrose Brendel, Maya Petropoulosas,  Kristen Amanda Smith

At the end of the day, perhaps Al Franken, Fey’s fellow Saturday Night Live member, summed up Mean Girls’ message to teenagers struggling with the pain of social cliques best. As his beloved character Stuart Smiley would say, “I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And, doggone it, people like me.”

‘Mean Girls.’ Book by Tina Fey.  Music by Jeff Richmond. Lyrics by Nell Benjamin. Based on the Paramount Pictures film “Mean Girls.” Directed by Casey Cushion. Choreography by John MacInnis; Scenic Design by Scott Pask; Costume Design by Gregg Barnes; Lighting Design by Kenneth Posner; Sound Design by Brian Ronan; Music Direction by Julius LaFlamme; Orchestrations by John Clancy; Music Coordination by John Mezzio; Hair Design by Josh Marquette. Presented by Emerson Colonial Theatre, Bolyston St., Boston. Run has ended.

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Moonbox’s ‘Crowns’ Raises the Roof

Cast of Moonbox Productions’ “Crowns” at Arrow Street Arts. Photos: Chelcy Garrett

By Shelley A. Sackett

In Crowns, playwright Regina Taylor’s paean to the Black women who held their families, churches and communities together, gospel music, fanciful hats and swanky dresses take center stage. For 90 intermission-less minutes, this jukebox musical rocks the intimate Arrow St. Arts with two dozen songs and a narrative that traces the history of Blacks in America, from slavery to the Jim Crow south to the Civil Rights movement to present-day Black-on-Black violence in Brooklyn’s tougher neighborhoods.

These eras of Black history are not strung together by the play’s thin plot, but rather by the hats that Blacks have consistently worn, from African traditional headdresses to the most elaborate Church Lady hats to spangled, messaged baseball caps. Hats are connective tissue, and the collective spirit of the women who wear them has kept them all afloat. “Hats are a very African thing to do,” Mother Shaw (Mildred E. Walker), a congregant and our titular guide, announces. “All God’s children got a crown.”

They all also gotta have music, and the members of the cast (with keyboards by David Freeman Coleman and drums by Brandon Mayes) belt out song after song with such power and flair that it feels more like the gospel tent at New Orleans Jazz Fest than a midsize theater in Cambridge.

The performance begins with drumbeats and an African chant, “Eshe O Baba,” a Yoruba praise song that is considered worshipful. (Surtitles are helpful for identifying the speaker and providing a transcription of the lyrics, especially where so much of the dialogue occurs in song.) The cast sashays down the aisles as if they are models on a runway, dressed to kill in sequins, stiletto heels and, of course, hats. They pause and pose, reveling in the oohs and aahs. All the while, they sing a gospel song that has the audience smiling, clapping and dancing in their seats.

Cortlandt Barrett

Baron E. Pugh’s simple set literally sets the stage as a church pulpit. Four pillars and two spot-lighted sculptural stands of hats flank a draped pulpit. The audience sits in a semicircle, invoking pews. There is even a Hymnal on the audience seats, with the words to many of the songs.

The storyline’s focus is on Yolanda (Mirrorajah, sadly miscast), Mother Shaw’s granddaughter, who was sent by her mother from Brooklyn to the south to live with her after her brother was shot to death. She is a complete stranger in a strange land, her hat of choice a baseball cap, her braided hair studded with bright beads. She hardly presents as potential “church lady” material.

Mother Shaw brings Yolanda up to speed as the cast sits as if in church, with their backs to us. She explains that during slavery, laws prohibited slaves from gathering except to attend church. After slavery ended, church was still THE place where Blacks could see and be seen. If you owned anything you wanted to be noticed — especially ladies’ hats — church was where you wore it. Gospel music and hats both have special powers, but hats also come with a list of do’s and don’ts.

As the houselights rise and lower, each woman comes forward to tell her story. Mother Shaw describes how her hat collection was the catalyst that empowered her to confront her husband when he tried to prevent her from buying more. She informed him that not only were her hats her property, but so was the money she earned and half the house. Mabel (Cortlandt Barrett) explains that there is a certain way to hug a woman in a hat. There are also “Hat Queen Rules” which must never be broken. Hats are passed on as family heirlooms and legacies, and a daughter has her mother buried in her favorite hat (“Lord, when I’ve done the best I can, I want my crown,” sings Velma (Lovely Hoffman)). Jeanette (Janelle Grace) and Wanda (Cheryl D. Singleton) round out the women; the character named Man (Kaedon Gray) plays all the male parts, minor supporting foils to the women.

Kaedon Gray and Janelle Grace

The only time the women ever removed their hats, we learn, was during a protest march, but they were firmly reaffixed by that Sunday.

Eventually, Yolanda “gets” what the women are trying to teach her, and she embraces them and the church, but the snippets of her journey are really just a means to transition from song to song. In “That’s All Right,” the full ensemble raises the roof, dancing in a circle on the stage. The mixture of gospel, jazz, blues and traditional songs is a fabulous, curated playlist.

Barrett, as Velma, is a real knockout, and not just because of her flaming red dress and matching hat. She has a prodigious set of pipes and both poise and attitude. It’s hard to believe that she is only a sophomore at the Boston Conservatory. Hoffman, as Velma, soars in “His Eye Is On the Sparrow” and Walker, as Mother Shaw, is terrific, her strong voice both grounding and uplifting.

Although each actor has a chance to solo, the strength of the production is as an ensemble piece. Director Regine Vital has managed to delineate distinct individuals (E Rosser’s magnificent costumes help) while also creating a blended cast that seamlessly supports and complements each other.

Mildred E. Walker and Mirrorajah

Clearly, you don’t attend Crowns for its narrative arc. But if you enjoy extraordinary inspirational music, snapshots of everyday lives lived by everyday people and, of course amazing hats, then Crowns is right up your alley. It is also one helluva raucous good time!

Moonbox Productions presents ‘Crowns’ by Regina Taylor, adapted from the book by Michael Cunningham and Craig Mayberry. Regine Vital, Director. David Coleman, Musical Director. Davron Monroe, Associate Director. Kurt Douglas, Choreographer. Isaak Olson, Lighting Designer. Baron E. Pugh, Scenic Designer. James Cannon, Sound Designer. Danielle Ibrahim, Props Designer. E Rosser, Costume Designer. Schanaya Barrows, Wig Designer. At Arrow Street Arts, 2 Arrow Street, Cambridge, through May 4, 2025.

For more information, visit https://www.arrowstarts.org/

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A.R.T.’s ‘Night Side Songs’ Is Magical, Boundary-Breaking Theater

Jonathan Raviv and Brooke Ishibashi in A.R.T.’s ‘Night Side Songs’. Photo: Nile Scott Studios

By Shelley A. Sackett

Night Side Songs, the remarkable production by A.R.T. now at Hibernian Hall, bills itself as “communal music-theater experience performed for—and with—an intimate audience that gives voice to doctors, patients, researchers, and caregivers to celebrate the resilience of the human spirit.” This description barely scratches the surface of the uncharted grounds this play explores, and the transfixing heights it reaches.

A musical that explores the intimacy of illness and death through the universal power of song sounds neither uplifting nor entertaining, yet owing to the Lazours’ insightful script and the ensemble of five outstanding talents, that is exactly what Night Side Songs’ 100 minutes is. Knitting a cozy throw from the experiences and voices of doctors, patients and caregivers, the Lazours have somehow managed to address the awfulness of cancer through the kaleidoscope of a dramatic immersion.

Jordan Dobson

The show opens with the charismatic and talented Mary Testa quoting Susan Sontag, who died of complications of acute myelogenous leukemia at 71. “Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”

She and the rest of the ensemble proceed to escort us on several such journeys by means of 21 songs and the 11-part story of Yasmine’s (a sensitive yet sturdy Brooke Ishibashi) confrontation with breast cancer. With unflinching clarity, the Lazours spare no detail as Yasmine finds a lump, receives her diagnosis, goes through treatment, remission, relapse, and chemotherapy with lethal side effects while dealing with bills and her high-maintenance mother, Desiree (Testa). We are strapped in beside her on the roller coaster ride of good and bad days and share in her joy at reconnecting with, and marrying, Frank (Jonathan Raviv) and the eight years of remission they enjoy before the other shoe drops.

If this sounds heavy, that’s because it is. If it sounds depressing, it is not because the Lazour brothers have spun a story of compassion, caring and intimacy out of shards of misery, pain and grief. Their insightful lyrics, the first-rate cast and the warmth of Hibernian Hall’s small performance space create a powerful sense of community and healing.

The audience is invited to sing along at designated spots (lyrics provided), and the repeated lines are particularly poignant and resonant. “Sometimes you don’t know; sometimes you just know. Either way, you gotta keep it together,” Yasmine sings after discovering a lump but before receiving a diagnosis from her doctor (a superb Robi Hager), with whom she coincidentally shared an 8th-grade clandestine kiss.

Mary Testa

Despite her illness, Yasmine soldiers on through the dysfunctional relationship between Frank and her mother and her mother’s quick, surprising death. By the time her end is inevitable, we too are ready to let go. This transition, while sad, is a loving and very natural segue, the beginning of an uncharted crossing away from dark and into light. While the play has focused on the journey, it is the destination that now commands center stage.

Along the way, the Lazours tackle other meaty issues that accompany illness, caregiving and the often callous state of healthcare in the US. In a segment that takes place in a medieval pub, its feisty owner (Testa) deals with a tumor that is treated with leeches, excision and derision. She searches for an underlying cause and remedy, alternately looking for a miracle from God and a reason that justifies her illness. In her search, she encounters guilt-tripping clergy and a vacuum where compassion and pity should dwell. She also discovers the power of song, showcased in “The Reason,” an upbeat, funny number with fabulous harmonies and a show-stealing vamping by Hager.

Ishibashi

The brothers also shine a light on the caregiver and their pain and need for treatment, albeit of a nonmedical nature. When the side effects from Yasmine’s chemo treatment reverse her remission, catapulting her into a terminal relapse, Frank travels almost daily from Maine to Mass General to be by her side. “I won’t know what to say, but I will check in on you every day,” he sings to her. Yasmine, too, needs reassurance that Frank can handle the relief she comes to crave. ”Will you let me know I can let you go? Can you softly say you will be ok?” she asks.

The cast, rounded out by Jordan Dobson and his calm presence and musical chops, is uniformly terrific. If you get a chance to catch the last performances of this transfixing show, take it!

‘Night Side Songs.’ Words and Music by the Daniel and Patrick Lazour. Directed by Taibi Magar. Scenic Design by Matt Saunders; Costume Design by Jason A. Goodwin; Lighting Design by Amith Chandrashaker; Sound Design by Justin Stasiw. Music Direction and Piano Arrangements by Alex Bechtel. Presented by American Repertory Theater in association with Philadelphia Theatre Company at Hibernian Hall, 184 Dudley St., Boston through April 20.
For more information, visit https://americanrepertorytheater.org/shows-events/

ASP’s Rowdy ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Flips the Bard’s Gem on its Breakdancing Head

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Cast of Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”Photos: Nile Scott Studios

By Shelley A. Sackett

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of those plays that is firmly etched in most people’s long-term memory banks, whether as a first introduction to Shakespeare in high school or as one of scores of film and theatrical productions. There are countless riffs on the play, from the sci-fi A Midsummer Night’s Gene to recently produced The Donkey Dream. Even The Beatles got in on the act in their 1964 TV special, “Around the Beatles,” when they played the “Pyramus and Thisbe” section of the play to an audience of hecklers and moonstruck fans, especially appropriate for this comedy play within a play. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvREt_w_KOE )

So, director Maurice Emmanuel Parent set a lofty goal for himself when he decided to create a version that could stand out as uniquely his. Happily, he not only succeeds but raises the bar for the next director that proposes to make their mark on this well-represented classic. He brilliantly manages to leave his 21st-century fingerprints on an age-old classic while allowing room for the beauty of the original late 16th-century language to radiate.

Parent creates a mash-up universe where fairies inhabit “a space of freedom, fun, sex, danger, mystery, and transformation,” as he describes in his director’s notes. He envisions theirs as a world of clubs like the ones he frequented in New York in his late teens and early 20s. Think The Roxy, Palladium, and Tunnel, he suggests. “These were joyful, queer-positive spaces that offered refuge for many of us. But they were also dangerous.”

His fairy world is not full of sugar plums and pixie dust; it is a disco inferno on steroids, where glitter, leather, gyrating hips and lascivious tongues rule.

Humans inhabit a more “normal” place, but the simplest set and props (scenic design by Ben Lieberson, props by Christina Ostner), creative lighting (Brian Lilienthal), and 21st-century costumes (Seth Bodie) ensure it is not mundane. Kudos, too, to sound designer Mackenzie Adamick for crisp clarity and the actors for their enunciation; it’s always a pleasure not to have to strain to hear and/or understand what’s being said.

The beloved main plot revolves around three subplots: the romantic entanglement of four Athenian lovers, the conflict between the fairy king and queen, and a group of amateur actors preparing a play. These storylines intertwine, leading to humorous misunderstandings and ultimately a happy resolution of reconciliation and, for the humans, marriage.

The lovers’ romances are complicated but amusing. Hermia (the lively Thomika Marie Bridwell), in love with Lysander (Michael Broadhurst), is forced by her father, Egeus (the standout Bobbie Steinbach), to marry Demetrius (De’lon Grant, always a pleasure to watch). Helena (a show-stealing Deb Martin) is in love with Demetrius, who is in love with Hermia.

Hermia and Lysander decide to run away to the woods to elope, but are followed by Demetrius and Helena.

Meanwhile, all is not well in the parallel but very different world of the fairies. King Oberon (Dan Garcia, channeling Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Frank-N-Furter) and Titania (an elegantly lithe Eliza Fichter), his queen, are at odds over the fate of a changeling boy. Oberon, seeking a tit-for-tat revenge on Titania, gets the tricksy sprite, Puck (Alan Kuang, both carnal and ethereal), to use a love potion to make her fall in love with the first living thing she sees after waking. For sport, he also instructs Puck to use the same potion on the humans to manipulate their affections.

Adding spice to the mix is a group of Athenian artisans, or “mechanicals,” who are rehearsing the play “Pyramus and Thisbe,” which they hope will be picked as the entertainment for Duke Theseus (Kody Grasset) and Hippolyta’s (Fichter) wedding. Under the direction of Quince (Steinbach), the carpenter, the members of the troupe are: Snug, the joiner (Rémani Lizana); Bottom, the weaver (a superb Doug Lockwood); Flute, the bellows-mender (Evan Taylor); and Starveling, the tailor (Grassett). Their rehearsals and attempts to perform the play are filled with comical mishaps and confusion.

The three plot vectors collide when Puck disrupts them all with his peevish mischief. He transforms Bottom’s head to that of a donkey and makes sure he is the first thing Titania sees upon awakening. He finds the four lovers asleep in the woods and applies the potion to Lysander and Demetrius, who both fall madly in love with Hermia.

Eventually, the potion is undone, and the lovers, with the help of Oberon, realize their true affections, and he and Titania are reconciled. “Pyramus and Thisbe,” to the audience’s delight, wins the contest to be the entertainment at the Duke and Hippolyta’s wedding, and all ends in merriment and mirth, both in the human and fairy worlds.

De’Lon Grant and Deb Martin

While the production is a hands-down blast full of singular moments and overall skillful acting, there are some outstanding performances that have to be spotlighted and applauded. As Helena, Martin brings the force of a hurricane and the delicacy of a ballerina. Her hand gestures alone are worth the price of admission. As Bottom, the conceited and clownish actor who milks every second of Titania’s infatuation, Lockwood mugs without exaggerating and commands the stage without seeming to. Steinbach is always a treat and this show is no exception. Last, but hardly least, is Kuang, who doesn’t just play Puck, but is Puck, albeit as a reimagined break-dancer, all wisecracks and tattoos. His spirit — and energy! — are palpable.

Parent sprinkles in a bunch of fleeting backhanded references (The Lion King, the Beatles’ “Blackbird,” and Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman outfit) that are a hoot. His pacing, not rushing the Bard’s words, allows ample time for their meaning to percolate. This is, after all, one of Shakespeare’s funniest and cleverest plays, and even if you’ve seen it multiple times already — especially if you’ve seen it multiple times already — be sure not to miss this crackerjack version.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ Written by William Shakespeare. Directed by Maurice Emmanuel Parent. Presented by Actors’ Shakespeare Project at Mosesian Center for the Arts, 321 Arsenal St., Watertown through May 4.

For more information, visit https://www.actorsshakespeareproject.org/plays-events/midsummer-2025/

BLO’s ‘Carousel’ Is More Miss Than Hit

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Cast of Boston Lyric Opera’s ‘Carousel’. Photo by Nile Scott Studios.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Carousel is being touted on many levels. It is a return of Rogers and Hammerstein’s second musical (written just two years after the smash hit Oklahoma) on the same stage where it débuted in 1945 with John Raitt (Bonnie Raitt’s late father) as the lead, Billy Bigelow. Director Anne Bogart’s program notes stress the tension inherent in staging a show with such strong nostalgic ties to tradition for a contemporary audience. She checks the reverence box by not changing a syllable of the original script or lyrics. The notes refer to checking the innovation box by envisioning the players-within-the-play as “a group of refugees who arrive from a great distance to perform the play, seeking to gain access and acceptance,” but, at least for this viewer, that intention yielded only confusion.

The play tackles a lot of heady, heavy issues, many still timely enough to have relevance without the staging gimmickry of neon wigs, tattoos and clownish costumes. Domestic abuse, violence, darkness, shame —these are unfortunately as germane today as they were 80 years ago.

The production opens with house lights up on Sara Brown’s spare, almost sinister stage as the full orchestra (under Conductor David Angus) plays the songless “Prologue (The Carousel Waltz”). An enormous cast files across the winding bridge of an abandoned roller coaster, like animals descending off Noah’s ark. They traverse the stage, gathering in front of prison-like gates and stare up at the audience.

Edward Nelson as Billy and Brandie Sutton as Julie

As the gates open and the house lights dim, a circus act takes center stage with actors holding poles meant to represent the poles of a carousel. Costume designer Haydee Zelideth’s whimsical outfits of feather-head-dressed pink ponies and even a tiger hold promise of a transporting theatrical event. It is 1873, we learn, and the bustling carnival has arrived at a staid village on the New England coast.

Billy Bigelow (Edward Nelson), the barker, bursts onto the stage clad in leather vest and huge white cowboy hat. All muscle with an animal charisma, he is the ultimate bad boy babe magnet. He meets — and flirts with — Julie Jordan (Brandie Sutton) and her friend, Carrie Pipperidge (Anya Matanovič). Mrs. Mullin (Sarah Meltzel), the carnival’s widowed owner, shows up and witnesses Billy and Julie. She clearly loves Billy, and when he refuses to throw Julie and Carrie off the grounds, she fires him.

Billy, now unemployed and distraught, needs a beer. He also needs a woman’s attention, and Julie is game, even though staying out past curfew will result in her getting fired, too. Their snake-bit romance leads to marriage, a daughter and a tragic end. It also yields some of the show’s best-known songs (“If I Loved You” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone”).

Nelson as Billy (center)

Meanwhile, Carrie confides to Julie that she too has a beau, Enoch Snow (Omar Nahun), a straight-as-an-arrow fisherman.

Billy, increasingly frustrated by not being able to find work, resorts to his ways of carousing all night with his criminal buddy, Jigger. He even hits Julie, earning him the reputation as a wife beater. When Julie announces she’s pregnant, Billy becomes relatively introspective (for him), looking at fatherhood as a chance to wipe the slate clean and focus on the future and his legacy. He vows to take care of his child and provide everything he lacked, especially money. He falls prey to abetting Jigger’s sly plan that, of course, fails. It’s no spoiler to divulge that Billy dies, and a good deal of Act II is spent with Billy in the afterlife, struggling to make sense of, and amends for, his life on Earth.

There are many bright spots in the production, especially Matanovič, whose gorgeous soprano singing and sparkling performance imbue Carrie with light and life. As Enoch Snow, her betrothed, Nahun brings similar energy and the two are a delight to watch. The vocals of most of the actors are sublimely operatic, befitting Carousel’s presentation as “opera theater” (vs traditional musical theater). Finally, Abigail Marie Curran as Louise, Julie and Billy’s daughter, is a whirlwind of fresh air. Her dreamy dance in Act II and pitch perfect combination of innocence and insolence bring the character to life and make one wish she had had more time on stage.

While there is a lot of visual flash and flourish in the production (and the orchestra does a great job), for those without a nostalgic hook to the show (and maybe even for those who grew up singing the songs around the family table), this production misses the mark on many levels. First is the lack of chemistry between Billy and Julie, despite the actors’ vocal ranges and skills. Sutton brings a softness and accessibility to Julie, but Nelson’s Billy is remote and static. It’s hard to believe in their romance, making it even harder to care when things go awry. Then, there are distracting missed lines and glaring miscasting of Theophile Victoria as mill owner and uptight Victorian prig, David Bascombe, and Lee Pelton as Starkeeper. Finally, the pacing elongates several scenes which could be glossed over and glosses over others that shouldn’t.

Anya Matanovič and Sutton

Whether you enjoy Bogart’s Carousel may depend heavily on the connection you already have with the show. By the end, my companion, who grew up listening to the LP, was teary, verklempt with emotion and nostalgia. After three hours (one intermission), I was just relieved it was over. Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Consultant, Kira Troilo, sums it up best in her program notes. “Can Carousel work now? The answer won’t be the same for everyone, and that’s exactly the point,” she writes.

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘Carousel,’ 80th Anniversary Production. Music by Richard Rodgers. Book and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Conducted by David Angus. Directed by Anne Bogart. Presented by Boston Lyric Opera, Emerson Colonial Theatre, 106 Boylston Street, Boston. Run has ended