Or: The Loneliest Number There’s a story in The Thousand and One Nights where a wise young woman is asked to name the second most important thing in life, after health. She answers friendship, and I can’t help wondering if Kenneth (Malcolm Barrett) would agree, or even flip the two. Living a solitary life in Cranberry New York, Kenneth is our guide through Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust, a meditation on life and loneliness and the power of friendship to save us. Though over-shad

Or: Sound and Sorrow The war is everywhere. It’s 1916 and no one is having a good time, even at the Ramsdon Choral. A collection of millworkers and mill bosses, the artistic elements of this small Yorkshire factory town has seen its young men leached away to the fields of France, and very few of them returned. Now in need of a Chorus Master, Alderman Bernard Duxbury (Roger Allam) hires the brilliant but “anti-social” (coughgayasanythinglcoughcough) and, worse, German sympathi

Or: To Tell My Story There is something wonderfully unsettling at the fringes Chloe Zhau’s Hamnet. You can feel it in the rising wind that shakes the trees, in the fall of shadow across a London courtyard, or the odd angle where the camera sits. Some presence is being conjured, not sinister but not entirely benevolent either. It snags and holds a viewer through this patient adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel and sets the tone for a slice of life, tinged by the inexplicabl

Or: Trajectory Taylor Hawker’s Iago goes about his villainy like a freight train. Energetic, cheerfully unstoppable he ploughs through all obstacles, his honest face fixed, his lines fast and voluble. No one can withstand his desires and earnest force, not his drinking buddy Rodrigo (Declan Kemp) nor his trusting superior Cassio (David Cowan) nor his commander and friend, the heroic Moor of Venice, Othello (John Wicks). We, the audience ourselves, are shunted smoothly down th

Or: The Lover Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) is a name to conjure with. Short of stature, stooped of shoulder, but a behemoth of presence, the songwriter defined a generation with his wit, romanticism, and his love of beauty and brightness. This one-night bio-pic by Richard Linklater finds the lyricist at the tale end of his storied career haunting the bar at Sardi’s one night in in 1943, awaiting the arrival of his former collaborator Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) who has just o

Or: “There’s No Running Out Of Joy” Dear Reader, I did not intend to cry so early in the morning. A 9:30am matinee is not the time one expects to be absolutely shattered by beauty and an all pervading sense of elation and well being. These shocks are not good for my heart. Nevertheless, Frederick, based on the picture book by Leo Lionni, was an offensively excellent production that had my feet dancing, cheeks aching, and heart full watching the adventures of a little mouse fa

Or: “No one here’s a villain.” How nice the world would be if we would all just get along. This is not just a wish at the Eureka Day...

Or: “We Now Ask that you Imagine a Grown Cat in Flight” The theater is one of last places where you can find magic. It’s a place where an...

Or: Horn Dogs and Ladies Fair Loves Labors Lost is an absolute bear. Nominally a comedy it’s humor relies principally on puns that...

Or: Little Home in the Big Woods Eva Victor has a gift for framing. Writer and director and star of Sorry, Baby, their sense of...

Or: Pink Goes With Everything The excitement is palpable. From dingy apartment at a rural college and in the Boise Contemporary Theater....

Or: Note by Note It doesn’t take a master’s degree to see what Stephen Sondheim was after when he delved deep into the life of George...

Or: The Holy Hand Grendae The thing I like most about Wes Anderson is his work as a dialogist. The rapid machine like patter that carries...

Or: Summer Night Pool Side Shakespeare It’s a peculiar experience, after becoming accustomed to “Bit” Shakespeare, to suddenly watch a...

Or: There Is No Music for Evil Times If you go to Honey Brown eyes (put up in collaboration with Alley Rep and Little Branch, theater)...

Or: The Ontarian As I checked in to the Boise Bard Players Servent of Two Masters, site specified amid the open plan office of the...

Or: Shadows on the Wall There’s always a mother, for good or for ill. In Novid Parsi’s new play, selected for the Boise Contemporary...

A 5x5 reading at BCT Or: Old Salts The trouble with making a movie is that it comes together where nobody sees it. So much of shooting is...

Or: Keep Your Floors Filthy Tap dancing roaches, a magic purse, and soaring flights of muzak attend Paula Vogal’s latest work: a memory...

Or: Making a Splash Bill (Craig Kreiser) and Nancy (Patti O’Hara) have been married for fifty years, a long slow decent through a...