Archive for the ‘theater’ Category

READING — When brilliant, Radcliffe College-educated Henrietta Leavitt (played by Grace Sumner) receives a letter at her Wisconsin home inviting her to come and work for Edward Charles Pickering, director of the prestigious Harvard College Observatory, she is thrilled by the prospect of doing important astronomical research.


“How do you do it?” is a question I am frequently asked. “How do you sit through all those boring government meetings?” I should probably answer that I selflessly attend these meetings in order to be your eyes and ears. I should say that I go to these meetings so that you don’t have to. […]


By MARK SARDELLA GLOUCESTER — Imagine Mel Brooks pressed into service to direct an Alfred Hitchcock movie. You might get something like Patrick Barlow’s witty stage adaptation of Hitchcock’s classic mystery thriller, The 39 Steps. The play version, currently in production at Gloucester Stage, is much more comedy than mystery. And as comedy, it’s very […]


By MARK SARDELLA GLOUCESTER – “Bringing history to life” is about as cliched as it gets, but it happens to be an apt description for what Gloucester Stage’s current production, The Agitators, succeeds in doing. Mat Smart’s play takes us into the 19th century world of icons of equal rights Frederick Douglass and Susan B. […]


By MARK SARDELLA What does it take to create art? Is it education, discipline and skill? Or is it raw talent and real-life experience? It often takes some of both, as we witness in Sam Shepard’s True West, currently in production at Gloucester Stage. Set in their mother’s home 40 miles east of Los Angeles, […]


By MARK SARDELLA Easily, the strength of Gloucester Stage Company’s current production, Cyrano, is in the performances of the professional cast. The five-member cast plays a multitude of roles in this adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 classic Cyrano de Bergerac by Jason O’Connell and Brenda Withers.


By MARK SARDELLA CONCORD — If, like me, you enjoy stories in which everyone is despicable, David Mamet’s testosterone-fueled Glengarry Glen Ross is hard to beat. And under the direction of Wakefield native Nancy Curran Willis, these dishonorable characters are brought to vivid life by a strong cast at The Umbrella in Concord. Set mainly […]


By MARK SARDELLA The wave of sexual misconduct allegations that has been toppling prominent men in politics and the entertainment industry has reached Wakefield. The Board of Directors of the Gloucester Stage Company and its founder, world renowned playwright and Wakefield native Israel Horovitz, have permanently severed ties amid new allegations of sexual assault made […]


By MARK SARDELLA It should come as no surprise that as playwright Israel Horovitz has grown older, the 1956 Wakefield High School graduate’s plays have explored themes of aging. The title of last year’s “Man in Snow” referred in one sense to the whitening hair that comes with age. In “Out of the Mouths of […]


Let it rain

19Jul17

‘The Rainmaker’ at Gloucester Stage By MARK SARDELLA GLOUCESTER – I almost didn’t go to see The Rainmaker when it opened at Gloucester Stage last weekend. But I’m very glad I changed my mind and went to see this classic American play by N. Richard Nash. Written in the early 1950s, The Rainmaker is easily […]