Looking back, going forward

Published Jan. 4, 2010 at 8:39 p.m.
A diverse display for 2010
Economic recession and post-racial themes abound in Boston’s early 2010 theater repertoire.

NOT WEST SIDE STORY: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights comes to the Opera House.

Economic recession and post-racial themes abound in Boston’s early 2010 theater repertoire. Several companies’ line-ups include classics that will resonate for modern audiences — the ART highlights the relevance of Clifford Odets’s 1935 Depression play Paradise Lost. Meanwhile, Actors’ Shakespeare Project revisits Othello (March 10–April 11) in a post-racial America, and the Lyric Stage does Groundswell (January 1-30), a show about racial tensions in South Africa. Herewith, other meditations on multicultural and societal battles, both past and present, as well as celebrations of how far we have come.

LYDIA R. DIAMOND  Underground Railway Theater/Providence Black Repertory Company; Huntington Theatre Company January 7-31; February 19-March 27 Playwright Lydia R. Diamond showcases two recent plays in Boston. The first, Harriet Jacobs, adapts for the stage the story told in Jacobs’s diary, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The play premiered in 2008 at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre; Megan Sandberg-Zakian steps on to direct the first East Coast production as a collaboration between Underground Railway Theater and the Providence Black Repertory Company. Diamond’s 2009 play Stick Fly — which uses rough-edged comedy to tackle modern-day discomforts vis-à-vis class and race — rests in the capable hands of director Kenny Leon and the Huntington Theatre Company.
Central Square Theater [Harriet Jacobs], 450 Mass Ave, Cambridge $35, $25 seniors, $20 students 617.576.9278 or centralsquaretheater.org Virginia Wimberly Theatre [Stick Fly], Calderwood Pavilion, BCA, 527 Tremont St Cambridge + Boston + $25-$60 617.266.0800 orwww.huntingtontheatre.org

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