Results tagged “scottfitzgerald”

Besides being in the running for Owner of the World's Most Glamorous Name, Katjana Vadeboncoeur plays the maternal hen Aunt Julia in blahblahblahBANG at On the Boards. To make a point of it, she sips then spits up her tea into a cup, complete with birdlike neck spasms, and hands it to her beloved, coddled nephew Yorgen Tesman -- who drinks it, onstage, to an audience of wrinkled noses. If you're an Ibsen fan (blahblahblahBANG is WET's precocious interpretation of Hedda Gabler) this subtextual underlining may just elicit a desire to see the original. The difference here is that it's not a matter of moral fiber or willfulness. WET's cast reacts to their socially caged life with the stereotyped behavior of unhappy parrots, literally climbing the walls. Again and again, WET reminds you that they are real people doing real things, disgusting, sexy, risky things. If it's not "perfect," it's compelling as a high-wire act.

Sat 2pm & 8pm, Sun 2pm // Ticketmaster $29-$49 (plus fees)

If it's not a great Gatsby, we can blame F. Scott Fitzgerald's preference for establishing mood at the expense of story arc. The good news is that this production revels in atmosphere: Tom Lynch's pitch-perfect set design and Jane Greenwood's gorgeous '20s costumes -- combined with Scott Zielinski's dreamily radiant lighting -- conjure up exactly the right nostalgia for a time that never was. We could have done without the itinerant saxophonist, whose bluesy wails belong in the adaptation of a novel by Saul Bellow, not Fitzgerald.