Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres, 2024-25

As an avid Boston theatregoer for over fifty years, I’ve witnessed Beantown’s ascent from a Broadway try-out town to a city with a diverse array of theatre opportunities. We still enjoy a parade of Broadway tours, as well as polished seasons from two Tony-award winning regional companies, ART and The Huntington. Our many colleges and music schools produce dozens of excellent shows. But I savor Boston’s smaller companies, who create insightful theatre, often on a shoestring, always with outsized energy. 

There are more than a dozen independent theatre companies in Greater Boston, and each celebrates a particular niche of our community. The grandaddy is the Footlight Club, one of the oldest community theaters in the country, which has presented plays every year since 1877. A good number of independents—Lyric Stage, Moonbox, Greater Boston Stage, Reagle Players—lean on cherished chestnuts and musicals to entertain their subscriber base. Others have a specific focus. Company One’s mission to promote social justice underscores every one of their shows. Speakeasy produces plays that articulate the evolving voices of gay men. Central Square Theater’s commitment to both create and present plays about women in science results in fresh works about overlooked accomplishment. Hub Theatre Company is committed to making theatre affordable: every seat at every show is pay what you want. Some of these companies are rooted to place: Apollinaire Theatre Company’s home, a landmark in downtown Chelsea, is the anchor for a variety of English and Spanish events that engage this largely Hispanic community. Others are homeless: the Front Porch Collaborative focuses on illuminating Black experience by co-producing shows with other independent companies. Then there are the independents whose names speak for themselves. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre only produces new plays. Actors’ Shakespeare Project is mostly The Bard. Wheelock Family Theater is always G-rated, while The Theater Offensive is…definitely not. 

The 2024-2025 season was particularly rich for Boston’s Independent Theatres. Post COVID, audiences have returned and appreciate experiencing live theater—together—more than ever. Here is a sampling of some of the delights, and challenges, the season offered. 

Speakeasy Stage Company 

A Man of No Importance 

By Terrence McNally 

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Aherns 

Directed by Paul Daigneault 

February 21-March 22, 2025 

Over the past thirty-three years, Paul Daigneault, founder and Artistic Director of Speakeasy Stage, has produced dozens of LGBTQ-themed plays and virtually everything by playwright Terrance McNally. A Man of No Importance was a fitting final show, as Paul hands Speakeasy’s reins to incoming AD Dawn Simmons. Over the years, Speakeasy has regularly featured beloved Boston actors; this nostalgic production showcased over one hundred years of collective Speakeasy experience. 

A Man of No Importance takes place in Dublin circa 1963. A bus collector by day, a thespian by evening, Alfie is blessed with a wicked love of art and Oscar Wilde; a closeted gay man before that was a meaningful term. 

Speakeasy’s set is a pub, with a traditionally Irish back wall of books and booze. Or maybe it’s a church, with its prominent stained glass of Christ. Or perhaps it’s an homage to Oscar Wilde, whose own stained glass sits just lower left of the Lord. The band—a few full-time players with the cast of 15 actors filling in on miscellaneous instruments—sits in front of the bar. The stage proper is a busy place, yet the movement flows smooth and continuous as a good pint among mates. 

Each member of the ensemble cast shines. The Dubliners’ humanity triumphs over the Catholic Church’s repression. Every moment of this fine production proclaims that everyone is welcome.  

Actors’ Shakespeare Project 

EMMA  

Written by Kate Hamill 

Directed by Regine Vital 

November 14-December 15, 2024 

Actors’ Shakespeare Project sprinkles other works into their season, though the Bard’s influence always shines through. EMMA serves up playwright Kate Hamill’s 21^st century take on this Regency-era satire. Marry ASP’s craft with Ms. Hamill’s versatility with Jane Austen’s sensibility, and the result is simply: wonderful! 

Director Regine Vital betrays her Shakespearean training through broad acting, enthusiastic movement, and delightful effervescence. The former nineteenth century courtroom in the Cambridge Multi-Cultural Arts Center is the perfect space for this production. The tall, ornate space with neither stage nor raked seating, suits the extra effort required to make an Elizabethan (or Regency) audience understand what’s going on without benefit of amplification. We are in the action—and it is fun! 

Moonbox Productions 

Crowns 

Written by Regina Taylor 

Directed by Regine Vital 

April 11, 2025 – May 4, 2025 

For a completely different experience, director Regine Vital turned the black box at Arrow Street Arts into a Southern church. An arc of seats addressed a raised altar, each with hymnal and handheld fan featuring a photo of Martin Luther King or Michelle Obama on one side, and the obligatory advertisement for a funeral home on the other. These mood-setting accessories induced chatter among the audience before the show. I learned my neighbor owns 185 hats! 

From all directions came women, big women, powerful women, in brilliant African attire and elaborate head wraps, chanting loud and clear and strong. Forebearers sporting their crowns. 

CROWNS is a pageant of pride. Of these women’s connection to their hats and their god. Their work in the fields and in the home. Their sacrifices for their families, their struggle for rights, their claim to a place in this world. It’s beautiful, inspiring, funny…and a visual delight. E. Rosser’s costumes and the fabulous hats are a Spring spectacular of purples and yellows, reds, and blues. 

CROWNS demands participation. We sang, we clapped, we stomped, we fanned. We praised these wonderful women and their spectacular crowns. We left refreshed, inspired, brimming in fellowship and good feeling. Isn’t that what church—and theatre—is supposed to do? 

Boston Playwrights’ Theatre 

How to NOT Save the World with Mr. Bezos 

Written by Maggie Kearnan 

Directed by Taylor Stark 

November 7-24, 2024 

I went to see the premiere of a play. I landed in a cult. 

BPT is a bastion of political correctness. Someone intones a land acknowledgement before every performance. Their website’s community expectations lists all the ways in which everyone—on and off the stage—must be respected. These expectations are repeated in the notice accompanying every ticket. There’s also “Content Transparency.” For Bezos: “graphic violence, vomit and blood effects, disrobement, and discussion of drug use.” They did not warn us of the sing-along. 

The premise of Bezos is that Jeff Bezos (and 800+ other US billionaires) have neglected their social responsibility. Bezos is deplorable and reduced to his skivvies when the audience is invited to sing one of two ditties. The first opens with “How to kill a billionaire…” The second begins, “How not to kill a billionaire…” Unsurprisingly, 100% of the people who chose to sing voiced the “kill” verse, while exactly no one sang the “not kill” verse. I was among the small minority who kept my mouth shut. 

Surely, any playwright who wrote a sing-along suggesting that we “Kill the poor…unemployed… homeless…” would be drummed out of BPT’s self-defined safe space. But apparently, billionaires are fair game because, somehow, all that money strips their humanity. 

Playwright Kearnan and director Stark deserve credit for creating a play that induced such a visceral reaction, albeit mine wasn’t as intended. We need bold, incisive plays that call out inequities. But killing 800 billionaires will not save the world. Changing the systems that allow accumulating such egregious wealth will. I am disappointed that Bezos does not make that critical distinction. 

Lyric Stage Boston 

Hello, Dolly!  

Book by Michael Stewart 

Music & Lyrics by Jerry Herman 

Directed by Maurice Emmanuel Parent 

May 16-June 22, 2025 

Lyric Stage traditionally ends its season with a popular musical. Their production of Hello, Dolly! was sublime elegance, elegantly carried off. 

The challenge with producing a play as familiar as Hello, Dolly! is how to include the familiar trappings the audience expects and yet make the production your own. Lyric’s Dolly! succeeds thanks to the talents of two amazing women: Aimee Dougherty, as Dolly, is the warmest Dolly I’ve ever seen, spreading charm among audience as well as cast in this intimate theatre; while Choreographer Ilyse Robbins creates her best work ever with jaw-dropping moves on Lyric’s tiny stage. 

Choosing Maurice Emmanuel Parent to direct this production was genius. Actor, playwright, director, teacher, and co-founder of the Front Porch Arts Collaborative, Mr. Parent is a Herculean talent. His direction of Hello, Dolly! encompasses a broad vision unburdened by identity labels of ‘Black,’ ‘underrepresented,’ or ‘gay.’ In a post-DEI world, it’s imperative that talents like Mr. Parent’s not be restricted. His gift is a Dolly! for everyone. Horace is played by a Black man; Barnaby is Asian; one of the dancing couples is gay. None of these casting decisions feel forced, each elevates the spirit of the show. Kudos for Mr. Parent’s light and facile hand.