Theatre
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Holiday Theatre in Connecticut
A Christmas Carol – A Ghost Story of Christmas
By: - Nov 26th, 2023More versions of A Christmas Carol are throughout the area. The Downtown Cabaret Theater in Bridgeport has a child-oriented, musical version through Sunday, Dec. 30. Remember you sit at tables and can bring or purchase food. Stony Creek’s Legacy Theatre returns with a musical version through Sunday, Dec. 10. Another musical, Christmas Carol is at New Haven’s Shubert Theater on Friday, Dec. 22, and Saturday, Dec. 23.
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Guys and Dolls
World of Damon Runyon, Music and Lyrics of Frank Loesser
By: - Nov 25th, 2023The musical gives a peek into the marginalized world of gamblers and performers around Broadway during the Depression. While running floating craps games as a profession, Nathan Detroit has eluded marriage to nightclub singer, Adelaide, for 14 years. Out-of-towner Sky Masterson is an occasional participant in Nathan's games. Needing $1,000, Nathan bets the bet-on-anything Sky that he can't induce a certain woman to go to Havana (Cuba!) with him for dinner. That woman happens to be Sarah, a uniformed member of the Times Square Save-a-Soul Mission, so Nathan feels comfortable with his bet. Well.....
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The Elixir of Love
Donizetti's Frothy Comedy at San Francisco Opera
By: - Nov 21st, 2023Poor Nemorino is in love with his employer, Adina, but she has other things in mind. Along comes Dr. Dulcamara, an itinerant snake oil salesman, who has just the love potion that will make Nemorino irresistible to Adina. Of course, it's really red wine. Frivolity ensues and all live happily ever after.
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Babbitt at La Jolla
Matthew Broderick in a Star Turn
By: - Nov 18th, 2023The La Jolla Playhouse adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's classic novel Babbitt tells the story of George F. Babbitt, played by Matthew Broderick. Set in a sleek modern library, the ensemble cast, scattered around the library reading the novel, tells Babbitt’s story. It is. a smash hit.
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Omar
Giddens and Abels' Pulitzer Prize Winning Opera
By: - Nov 17th, 2023In this fact-based story, a Muslim scholar is captured and enslaved in South Carolina. After various travails, he is purchased by a relatively humane master who encourages his writing and religious thinking, even while arguing that he prays to a false God, believing the Muslim Allah to be different from the Christian God.
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Four Plays From Broadway And Beyond
Premieres and Revivals
By: - Nov 15th, 2023These were seen by the reviewer on a trip to NYC for the American Theatre Critics Association conference. Each of the four is worth seeing with history and music being common threads. Supported by excerpts of period music, "Spies" tells the true story of a 17th century friar who was charged with preventing what would become the 30 Years War. The dark "Watch" uses operatic form and modern dance to tell a story related to the real-life mass murders in a Charleston church with a black congregation and a Pittsburgh synagogue. "Wholesale" is a heavily adapted revival of the 1962 musical that launched Barbra Streisand's career. "Love" tells the story of former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos in sung-through immersive disco fashion!
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Waiting for Godot at Theatre for a New Audience
Arin Arbus Directs Brilliantly
By: - Nov 15th, 2023Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) and Park Avenue Armory are the two New York venues you can count on to deliver. Arin Arbus’ new take on Waiting for Godot is no exception.
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Berkies 2023
Theatre Awards in the Berkshires
By: - Nov 15th, 2023Several categories saw ties this year, including the top honors for Outstanding Musical Production and . Barrington Stage Company’s production of Cabaret and the Sharon Playhouse production of Something Rotten shared the musical award. Shakespeare & Company’s production of August Wilson’s Fences shared the top play production honors with Bridge Street Theatre’s East of Berlin.
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Private Jones Needs Work
At Goodspeed's in Ct
By: - Nov 14th, 2023Private Jones is based on the true story of a young man from a small Welsh town who manages to enlist in the British army during WWI despite a hearing loss. He may not be able to hear, but he can shoot, becoming a sniper taking out German soldiers from across the trenches.
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Bulrusher
Relationships and Mysticism in the California Redwoods
By: - Nov 03rd, 2023A black foundling with a gift for reading the future is raised in a seemingly color-blind community. The people relationships that surround her are sometimes complicated and opaque. And when the niece of the only black man in town arrives, the horizons of the now 18-year old, Bulrusher, expand.
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New Federal Theater Telling Tales
Woodie King Jr. Directs Wesley Brown's PLay
By: - Nov 02nd, 2023The New Federal Theater is producing a brilliant production of Wesley Brown’s play, Telling Tales Out of School. A quartet of famous and not-so-famous writers from the Harlem Renaissance, all women, three Black and one white, attend the funeral of Alain Locke.
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Sunset Boulevard Disappoints
At ACT-CT in Ridgefield
By: - Nov 01st, 2023It is disappointing to find the current production of Sunset Boulevard not living up to that standard.
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Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage
Disappointing Burlesque version
By: - Oct 31st, 2023If Jane Austen is a favorite author and you have watched and enjoyed every film and TV production of Pride and Prejudice, you might think the current production at Hartford Stage would be a delight. BUT for many of you, me included, it isn’t.
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I Love a Piano
Irving Berlin Musical Revue at South Florida's Wick Theatre
By: - Oct 31st, 2023A stirring production of "I Love a Piano" is playing at Boca Raton's Wick Theatre in South Florida. The production runs through Nov. 12. Triple threat performers and backstage artists shine.
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The Emissary
Opera Parallele's World Premiere of Hands-On-Opera With Environmental Focus
By: - Oct 28th, 2023In this family-oriented opera, Japan has endured an environmental catastrophe that isolates it from the rest of the world. Children are more feeble than the aged. Despite his prognosis, the young Mumei is optimistic and gives cheer to his great-grandfather Yoshiro.
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Theatre Struggles in Connecticut
Rebound from Pandemic
By: - Oct 27th, 2023In Connecticut, we have seen Long Wharf Theatre vacate its longtime home in New Haven; with no home, it is presenting what shows it does in a variety of mostly smaller venues.
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Wish You Were Here by Sanaz Toossi
At Yale Rep
By: - Oct 25th, 2023The play is set in Iran, covering about 15 years in the lives of five women. It is 1978, as the protests that led to the overthrow of the Shah and the institution of the Islamic Republic of Iran were beginning. It takes through to 1991. (Under the Shah, Iran had been moving toward a more western culture with traditional Islamic clothing for women discouraged and increasing educational and professional opportunities for women.)
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Handel at the Hudson Opera House
Rondelina Directed by R. B. Schlather Goes Local
By: - Oct 25th, 2023The future of classical musical performance in America may well be local. One marker of the trend is the Hudson Opera House in Hudson, New York. They are currently producing Handel's Rondelinda.
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Krymov Continues at La Mama
Russian Director Stirs up Theater
By: - Oct 23rd, 2023There is new a theater in town, have you noticed? Krymov Lab NYC was started in 2022 by the prominent Russian director in exile Dmitry Krymov, with a residency in LaMama Experimental Theatre Club in East Village.
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Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley
First Sequel to Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" at Altarena Playhouse
By: - Oct 22nd, 2023The homely but whip smart Mary is the middle sister of five. Unmarried; without a dowry; and at risk of being dispossessed from her family home when her father dies, a suitable marital match would be welcomed. Newly title young duke, Arthur de Bourgh, is visiting for the holidays. While he and Mary share interests, he does have baggage.
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Without You
A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical "Rent"
By: - Oct 20th, 2023Anthony Rapp revives his 2013 one-man show, supported by a five-piece rock band. He shares vignettes about the launch of the 1996 rock musical "Rent," singing songs from the musical as well as his own compositions. But his real emphasis is on the deaths of two people close to him. The creator of "Rent," Jonathan Larson died unexpectedly after the dress rehearsal to "Rent," while Rapp's loving mother suffered decline before her death from cancer.
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Lizzie – a rock concert in forty whacks
Hartford Theatre Works
By: - Oct 19th, 2023Historians and biographers do not agree that Lizzie, in fact, did commit the murders. They point to her uncle as having motive and opportunity, plus the fact that her father was not well-loved in the town.
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Sumo at the La Jolla Playhouse
Lisa Sanaya Dring's Play on Wrestling
By: - Oct 18th, 2023Lisa Sanaya Dring’s "Sumo," playing at La Jolla Playhouse, tells the story of six sumo wrestlers living and training at an elite facility in Tokyo.
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Lohengrin
A Compelling but Foreboding Realization by San Francisco Opera
By: - Oct 17th, 2023Within Wagner’s canon, "Lohengrin" represents the apotheosis of his Romantic period and the launch point for his magnum opus, the four-opera music drama, the Ring Cycle. As with much of the composer’s output, “Lohengrin” draws from Norse-Germanic mythology with strong fairy tale elements and moral-religious overtones. The libretto is considered by many to be to be his best plotted. Its breadth is breathtaking with themes of love, fidelity, trust, belief, misogyny, sacrifice, betrayal, revenge, tribalism, militarism, and more.
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The 12 at Goodspeed Opera House
A Zesty Musical
By: - Oct 13th, 2023The 12 looks at the immediate days following the crucifixion of Jesus through the eyes of his Apostles. Scared, uncertain, questioning. How do they stay safe? What should they do? What do they really believe?
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