On Stage: Openings, closings, reviews, and more

We’re in the middle of recording the next two episodes of Scene in Boston, and the students at Boston Arts Academy are working their sound-engineering magic to get those out into the world. I can’t wait for you to hear them.

This week we spoke with Kevin Becerra of the Huntington Theatre about the Ufot Family Cycle, which returns next month in a really special way, with performances in Jamaica Plain, Boston, and at Wellesley College. We talked about what the series says about immigration, the push and pull of assimilation, and how those questions evolve across generations.

Next week we’ll be in the studio with Courtney O’Connor, director of Penelope, opening this weekend at Lyric Stage. That conversation will be a deep dive into Greek storytelling — why these ancient myths keep resurfacing on Boston stages, and how modern productions are reshaping them for today’s audiences.

You can get tickets for Penelope here.

Looking for a show on a specific date? Use our calendar — it’s in the nav bar at the top of the page.

If you haven’t seen Job, now is the time. It closes this weekend at SpeakEasy Stage. In our latest episode, the actors talk about what it’s like to perform such an intense, psychologically charged story night after night, and what they hope audiences carry with them when they leave the theater.

Over at Central Square Theater, The Moderate opened this week. The play, by MIT playwright Ken Urban, follows a social media content moderator whose job is to filter the internet’s most disturbing material — and the toll that work takes on his mental health, relationships, and sense of purpose. It's a great counterpoint to Job.

On our reading list is this article in The Guardian about how artists across the U.S. are responding to federal arts funding cuts and immigration crackdowns with performances designed as acts of resistance. From poetry protests in Los Angeles to nationwide festivals and community-based theater projects, performers are using the stage to build solidarity, confront fear, and keep cultural spaces alive.

Even artists and activists whose work doesn’t directly criticize the Trump administration are feeling the heat. Writer, director and theater educator Anthony Meindl’s sold-out climate change play, The Year We Disappeared, weaves together time travel, teenage angst, Frankenstein and climate scientist James Hansen’s 1988 Senate testimony about global warming. As the play gears up for another run in Los Angeles this year, Meindl has been warned by fellow climate change writers to expect hate mail and death threats as his work reaches wider audiences.

Also this weekend...

At the Citizens Bank Opera House, Some Like It Hot is in its final days before closing this weekend.

Little Women opens at Actors’ Shakespeare Project, with connections to the Boston Arts Academy community among the creative team. It also landed on WBUR’s list of things to do this weekend.

Greater Boston Stage Company’s Winter Festival continues with student productions of The Addams Family (grades 7–12) and Alice By Heart (grades 10–12).

And on Saturday at 10 a.m., the BBC is airing an audio play of Transcendental Wild Oats, Louisa May Alcott’s "satirical take on her childhood at the Fruitlands utopian experiment."

Looking ahead, Broadway in Boston recently announced its 2026–27 season, with a mix of familiar favorites and newer productions. Lisa saw Maybe Happy Ending in New York and recommends it. I’ve been listening to Playbill’s podcast episode about Death Becomes Her, which sounds like a lot of fun.

As always, if you see a show, let us know. You can share what you thought, what you’re excited about, or what made you think using the Talk Back feature under the Your Reviews tab on our website.

Now to the reviews roundup: 

Boston Globe: In ‘We Had a World,’ Josh Harmon reexamines his own rosy memories of his grandmother

“We Had a World” tightens [playwright Joshua] Harmon’s theatrical lens to focus on three members of his own family: himself, his mother, and his grandmother. A memory play, “We Had a World” toggles back and forth in time, with the action unfolding in a series of vignettes over 25 years, with all three characters aging over the course of the show: Joshua from 5-30; his mother, Ellen, from her 30s to her 60s; and his grandmother Renee, from 60 to 94. Tied together, the vignettes reveal a complicated family dynamic that shifts over time.

The subjectivity of memory, says [Director Keira] Fromm, allows Harmon to showcase the very best and worst family dynamics, and while his examples are personal and specific, that recognition of how family members know us best is universally recognizable.

New England Theater Mirror interviewed We Had a World director Keira Fromm about the play saying “Fromm discussed early artistic influences, her past work, and what Harmon’s work has meant to her…” 

Boston Globe: An electrifying ‘Some Like It Hot’ at the Opera House

An old showbiz adage asserts that “If you want to send a message, try Western Union.”

Or maybe try this: Create a joyously entertaining musical in which your timely message — say, that transgender people have a right to be who they are and live as they wish — comes through loud and clear but is seamlessly wedded to story and character.

That’s the approach taken by the creative team behind “Some Like It Hot,” which has barreled into the Citizens Opera House just in time to supply some badly-needed heat (sorry) in a winter that’s been chilling in more ways than one.

WGBH Culture Show talked with playwright Joshua Harmon this week.

The work turns inward, following a playwright asked by his grandmother to write about their family — a request that opens up a fraught history of love, resentment, humor, and truth-telling across three generations.

They also spoke with the team at T: An MBTA Musical.

What do MBTA service alerts sound like as show tunes? “T: An MBTA Musical” turns the daily frustrations of riding Boston’s transit system — delays, shuttle buses, and all — into a two-act musical that’s equal parts satire and love letter to riders. Composer and lyricist Mel Carubia and Cassandra West , Executive Producer of Infinite Rotary Productions join us to talk about the show’s return.

And Max Wolf Friedlich, playwright of Job.

Max Wolf Friedlich’s high-pressure play, “JOB” is set entirely inside a mandatory therapy session between a content moderator and a company-appointed counselor. Now in Boston. Friedlich joins us to unpack how “JOB” explores power, surveillance, and mental health in the modern workplace.

Stage and Cinema: Theater Review: JOB (SpeakEasy Stage Company)

Josephine Moshiri Elwood (Jane) and Dennis Trainor Jr. (Loyd) pull out all the stops in Job, an 80-minute intermission-free exploration of the effects of social media on those who produce it and those who consume it.