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Search Results for: enchanted april

Theater review: The Center for Arts in Natick puts on an enchanting “Enchanted April”

March 4, 2017 by Deborah Brown 1 Comment

“There are blind sorts of goodness and enlightened sorts of goodness. Women like us have been the blind sorts of goodness,” bored but brave housewife Lottie (played by Cindy Bell with part pragmatic good humor and part slightly off-kilter seer) tells bored but pious and timid housewife Rose (a so very sad Stacy Kernweis whose true beauty is only revealed when the cloud lifts). It’s a first step toward shaking them both out of the mid-winter London drear that has held up a mirror to their very souls.

In Elizabeth von Armin’s 1922 novel-turned-play “Enchanted April”, a 2003 Tony-nominated Broadway production, the time is post-World War I; war widows are common, grievously wounded soldiers shaking tin cups for tuppence in the streets even more so. So what right do Lottie and Rose, ladies kept and cared for by intact husbands, have to yearn for a month of Italian Riviera sunshine, sans spouses?

And so it goes as the ladies, step by step, check off their boxes as they work toward making an experience happen that Lottie — with the gift of prescience she insists on sharing with all the characters whether they want it or not — knows will be transformational. In fact, as is ultimately acknowledged by husbands originally dead set against the whole idea, the sunshine and Italian castle rental turned out to be absolute needs, not luxuries.

What theater-goers need as we slog through our own winter is a few laughs, and this vibrant production now running at The Center for Arts in Natick (TCAN) delivers just that with flawless comedic timing and a dash of British farce thrown in.

The all-amateur cast of  Wellesley residents Olivia Rizzo, Cathy Merlo, and Director Kevin Groppe, along with Cindy Bell, Steve Burgess, Stacy Kernweis, Julien Lafleur, Bill Novakowski, and Marianne Phinney put together a thoroughly enjoyable performance that keeps the laughs going, mostly intentionally but sometimes not, as when the vase of flowers got knocked over for the third time (ah, Opening Night mishaps). I admit it, I was praying for the flowers to go down a fourth time, just to keep the fun of the found gag running.

TCAN, Enchanted April
Wellesley residents lent their skills to The Center For Arts in Natick’s production of “Enchanted April.” Left, Olivia Rizzo; center, Kevin Groppe; right, Cathy Merlo

 

No time for such nonsense, though. There’s so much that Lottie and Rose have to do before they can make it to Italy. The budget needs winnowing, and so the ladies place an ad for two more ladies to join them and thus reduce expenses. Their newspaper query promising Italy and sunshine and a castle and wisteria has a sort of 1970s personal ad tone to it (“If you like pina coladas…”), and it works, as such [Read more…]

Filed Under: Entertainment, Theatre

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Theater review: Wellesley Repertory Theatre’s Sonia Flew

June 8, 2017 by Deborah Brown Leave a Comment

Wellesley Repertory Theatre presents Sonia Flew. Pictured: Christine de Jesus Ahsan (left), and Mariela Lopez-Ponce

First off, the last thing a mom should ask a nineteen-year-old young man hell-bent on joining the Marines in response to the 9/11 attacks is, “What do you know about how the world works?” And she certainly shouldn’t ask it with a world-weary air, making it clear that she is the one in the room who knows such things. Another suggestion: don’t follow it up by telling him, “You have such a limited understanding of these things.”

But that’s just real-world advice. For an opening scene in Melinda Lopez’s play, Sonia Flew, at Wellesley Repertory Theatre through June 25, an exhibition of such motherly disdain is the perfect way to set a tone of conflict and move the action forward. As the Elliot Norton Award-winning play opens, Sonia (Mariela Lopez-Ponce, on the edge of a nervous breakdown), Zak’s mom, has conveniently forgotten that in her early 1960s teenage past, becoming involved with Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution seemed like the perfect antidote to her controlling parents, a way to provide her life with purpose and and a sense of being part of something bigger than herself. The adult Sonia never sees — or refuses to see — the parallels between her former teenage self, ready to join the Revolution, and her current teenage son, on a fast-track to the Marines as his way of avenging the 9/11 attacks.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Entertainment, Theatre, Wellesley College

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Wellesley’s Mass Hort to Savor Spring at the Boston Flower Show

March 9, 2018 by Deborah Brown Leave a Comment

If all this snow has you feeling a little end-of-winter melancholy, then visit the promise of spring that takes over every year at the Boston Flower and Garden Show. This year’s theme is “Savor Spring”, and you can do just that March 14-18, at the Seaport World Trade Center.

Wellesley’s own Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s will celebrate the beauty of the Napa Valley vineyards and that region’s well-known laid-back flair for outdoor living and entertaining in their exhibit, “Nuptials in Napa”. Look for the exhibit to feature plenty of inkberry (Ilex glabra ‘Densa’), in use in their presentation as an elegant evergreen border plant. Also to be featured is Deutzia, a low growing dwarf shrub/woody perennial that will show off its snow-white blossoms bloom throughout the garden display.

Wellesley's Mass Hort, deutzia
Look for Deutzia, a low growing dwarf shrub/woody perennial, to be much in evidence at Mass Hort’s display at The Boston Flower Show.

Mass Hort’s exhibit design team includes Jana Milbocker of Enchanted Gardens in Holliston; Mass Hort’s Director of Operations, Dan Brooks; Senior Horticulturist Hannah Traggis; Gardens Curator David Fiske; and Director of Events, Kayleigh Tosches.

Mass Hort also manages all the amateur competitions at the show, which include floral design, amateur horticulture competitions including plant rooms, bay windows, individual house plants/horticulture exhibits, and junior horticulture, Ikebana display, miniature gardens, and photography. Information on how to enter here.

More flowers, please

After the Flower Show has come and gone, you may need to further fight against the icy disdain of winter. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston will have you covered at its yearly Art in Bloom show, April 28 – April 30, where over 50 New England garden clubs and professional designers will create floral arrangements that artistically interpret works of art in the museum. Wellesley always represents at this show, with the Hills Garden Club of Wellesley, the Wellesley Garden Study Group, and Wellesley Gardeners’ Guild often among those creating arrangements.

Not that I’m bragging about something I did years ago or anything, but yeah, I’ve flowered it up at the MFA with Wellesley Gardeners’ Guild member and my frequent partner in such crimes, Joan Minklei. Here’s a little thing we threw together in 2016:

Flowers beyond Wellesley

For more floral fun, check out Needham’s annual Art in Bloom exhibit at the Needham Library (1139 Highland Ave, Needham), Saturday, March 10, 9am – 5pm and Sunday, March 11, 1pm – 5pm.

I’ll leave you with this shot I took last week outside the Wellesley College Club. If snowdrops can push through last year’s fallen leaves and, presumably, keep blooming even underneath the recent deposit of heavy snow, then we too must all have faith.

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Filed Under: Art, Clubs, Entertainment, Environment, Gardens, Volunteering

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RDF now closed on Sundays, forcing many Wellesley-ites to seek another place to worship

December 9, 2016 by Deborah Brown 1 Comment

wellesley rdf dumpThe Wellesley Recycling and Disposal Facility is now closed on Sundays, so don’t show up there with a carload of trash and recyclables, because all you will be met with is a locked chain-link gate. Superintendent Jeff Azano-Brown assures us that Dump Sundays will be back in April, but for now he reminds residents to plan accordingly.

After years of maintaining no Sunday hours, Town Meeting members voted last spring to approve Sunday hours, April – November. The money to do so came from savings in the Department of Public Works budget.

So one more time: the dump is now closed on Sundays. Let’s show Supt. Azano-Brown that we will not show up there in total disregard of the extensive signage they’ve had up. At any rate, with the Give and Take area closed until next spring, the dump is currently just as unenchanted as anyplace else. I know it’s tough, but we’ll just all have to find a new Sunday stomping grounds.

Filed Under: Dump

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