City of Angels The Lyric Stage Company, through May 2
One of the immediate highlights of the Lyric’s "City of Angels" is Larry Gelbart’s (M*A*S*H) book, which is rife with riotous one-liners. He brings a welcome sardonic take to film noir in this Tony-winning musical that finds a beleaguered Hollywood scriptwriter under the gun to craft a screenplay for a bombastic Hollywood producer. Very quickly his work on the page hits the stage as his characters come to life in black and white "reel life." Leigh Barrett and Jennifer Ellis are exceptional stand-outs.
Big Apple Circus Boston City Hall Plaza, from March 24 through May 10
From virtually the first act, "Contortion in a Cube," Big Apple Circus captivates. Days later, my mind is still stretching every which way trying to comprehend how two women could reconfigure their bodies to fit into what’s roughly the size of a small moving box. For me, the measure of a circus’s success is whether it can still find the new when it would seem that every conceivable construct of human performance has been tapped. Big Apple Circus does.
Woman in Gold Playing in select theaters
Helen Mirren stars as Maria Altmann, an elderly Jewish woman launching what became an epic legal battle to recover a prized family heirloom looted by the Nazis and hanging in Austria’s preeminent museum. Based on real-life events, that heirloom, considered "Austria’s Mona Lisa," happened to be painting by Gustav Klimt of Altmann’s aunt. The film alternates between Altmann’s court battle, which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and her life in 1930s Vienna.
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