This week, Jared reviews the touring production of “Hello, Dolly!” and “To Kill A Mockingbird” on Broadway. Plus, a review of Nick Cave’s “Augment” at the Cyclorama.
“Hello, Dolly!” Presented by Broadway in Boston at Citizens Bank Opera House through Aug. 25
The Tony Award-winning revival of “Hello, Dolly!” has sashayed into Boston with Betty Buckley playing famed fixer Dolly Gallagher Levi. Paying homage to the original work of director and choreographer Gower Champion, this lighthearted musical tells the story of Dolly, a widow and matchmaker on a quest to find love with the well-to-do Horace Vandergelder (Lewis J. Stadlen). Four-time Tony Award-winning director Jerry Zaks guides this stellar production carried by an uplifting score and timeless musical numbers like “It Takes A Woman” and “Put on Your Sunday Clothes.”
“’Hello, Dolly!,’ with all its bright color and comedy, basks in old-school Broadway and is a tonic,” says Jared.
“To Kill A Mockingbird,” playing on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre
Jeff Daniels makes a star turn as Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel turned Tony-winning play “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Aaron Sorkin ("A Few Good Men," "The West Wing") delivers a timely and poignant interpretation of Lee’s beloved novel by placing the focus on the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man wrongly accused of rape. It is all stirringly recounted by Scout, played to mesmerizing degree by Celia Keenan-Bolger who won a Tony for the role.
“This is an adaptation that only enriches our collective connection to ‘Mockingbird,’” says Jared. “It serves to magnify our capacity for abuse and, more triumphantly, for sincere good.”
“Nick Cave: Augment,” presented by Now + There at the Cyclorama at Boston Center for the Arts
Artist Nick Cave has created an exhibition that’s bound to lift your spirits at the Cyclorama. Titled “Augment,” this free exhibition brings a chaotic panoply of inflatable holiday lawn ornaments to the Boston Center for the Arts. Inspired by the question “What brings you joy?” Cave created this colorful installation to confront the divisiveness and fear of our times.
“I was very interested in this whole moment of deflation, being depleted, being just totally exhausted,” says Cave. “But somehow, at the same time, we have to sort of pick the pieces all up and keep going.”
On Sept. 14, these inflatables will be paraded to Uphams Corner in Dorchester as part of what is being billed as “Boston’s first ever joy parade.”
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