Director Rachel Bertone’s Passion for Incredible Stories
Kiss of the Spider Woman director Rachel Bertone has a history of taking incredible musicals and turning them into unmissable experiences. Here are just a few of our favorites!
Kimberly Fife, Katrina Pavao, Phil Tayler, Joy Clark and Caroline Workman in Cabaret. Photo by Sharman Altshuler.
From DigBoston’s Review of Moonbox’s production of Cabaret:
Taking on iconic material is always a risky thing, particularly something as well known and oft revived as Cabaret. But if there’s anything the 1966 masterwork has demonstrated over the years, it’s that it is not a musical resistant to reinvention. (Bob Fosse proved this with his 1972 film adaptation, as did Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall with their landmark 1998 revival). And while Moonbox Productions’ brand-new revival of Cabaret, running through April 28 at the Calderwood Pavilion, isn’t conceptually much different (they are using the 1998 version of the script, after all), it is full of such startlingly original moments that the whole experience feels brand new.
It is without an ounce of hyperbole that I say that this searing revival of Cabaret, directed and choreographed by the extraordinary Rachel Bertone, is the best theatrical production so far this year. What’s more, it’s the best Boston-born revival of a musical in recent memory.
There is hardly a scrap of this production that feels routine, which is part of the reason that it feels so fresh. Despite polite nods to the choreography of Fosse and Marshall (Those elbows! Those ankles!), the staging is new and inventive without being derivative.
The cast of In the Heights. Photo by Glenn Cook
The Boston Globe’s Review of Wheelock Family Theater’s In the Heights
With its teeming canvas, incisive character portraits, and a gem-studded score that blends hip-hop and salsa with Broadway balladry, “In the Heights’’ showcased elements of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s signature style years before he built the blockbuster “Hamilton’’ on the foundation of similar creative components.
But even though “In the Heights’’ is probably destined to be remembered as Miranda’s other musical, a full-throttle production at Wheelock Family Theatre, superbly directed and choreographed by Rachel Bertone, offers a dazzling reminder that this was no mere warm-up exercise for Miranda.
Director Rachel Bertone sponsored by 