Theatre
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Emmeline by Tobias Picker
Classic Contemporary Opera at Manhattan School of Music
By: - Apr 27th, 2019Manhattan School of Music mounts a superb production of Tobias Picker's Emmeline this spring. Directed by the gifted Thaddeus Strassberger, the work has been moved into the present and resonates as a universal tale. George Manahan. who conducted the world premiere of the work at Santa Fe Opera over twenty years ago, led the orchestra, revealing all the richness of the score. Young talent created unforgettable characters in this re-telling of a Greek myth.
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The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess
Directed by Kimberly Senior at LA's Geffen Playhouse
By: - Apr 27th, 2019“The Niceties”, a sharp, intelligently written drama by playwright Eleanor Burgess that is smartly and seamlessly directed by seasoned director Kimberly Senior, is currently on stage at the Geffen Playhouse, in Los Angeles. What begins as a polite clash in perspectives in age and place explodes into an urgent debate about race.
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An Important New Sondheim Overture
Lisa Yuen Narrates Tale of International Intrigue at Lyric Theater
By: - Apr 26th, 2019Lisa Yuen returns to Boston's Lyric Stage performing multiple, male roles in Stephen Sondheim's Pacific Overtures. If you are familiar with the musical expect to see a fresh and accessible revival by director Spiro Veloudos. The production runs from May 10 through June 18.
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Anastasia On Tour
Broadway Musical Adaptation in Ft. Lauderdale
By: - Apr 25th, 2019Anastasia offers eye-popping visuals, soaring music and heartfelt emotion. The projections seem stunningly authentic, yet never get in the way of the emotion or story. This equity production is in South Florida before heading north and then west. Cast and behind-the-scenes artists shine.
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Boston Lyric Opera’s The Handmaid’s Tale
Based on the Novel by Margaret Atwood
By: - Apr 24th, 2019The award winning Hulu production of Margaret Atwood's "The Hanmaid's Tale" will make this Boston Lyric Opera production readily familar to audiences. Composer Poul Ruders’ stunning contemporary score brings this dark social tale to the stage in large-scale, presenting his work with a massive, multi-faceted approach to orchestration. BLO has commissioned Ruders to create a new edition of the opera, bringing an expected orchestra size to approximately 65 players, with a chorus of about 34 singers.
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Hilma af Klint, The Opera
Guggenheim Presents Benjamin Staern's Chamber Opera
By: - Apr 23rd, 2019The Works & Process series at the Guggenheim Museum is full of surprise and delight. The notion that one’s experience of art can be enhanced by music is not new. Yet in the case of Hilma af Klint, the exhibit of whose works has been the sensation of the New York art season, using a chamber opera to take us inside her experience, was enormously helpful for a better understanding of the woman and her work.
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First Love Is the Revolution by Rita Kalnejais
At Steep Theatre in Chicago
By: - Apr 21st, 2019Rita Kalnejais’ play, which premiered in London in 2015, is a gorgeous display of animal choreography, directed by Devon de Mayo. As I watched this zoo-rama of animals scuffle among themselves and fight their antagonists, both animal and humans, I was smitten with the energy and genius of their movements.
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Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate
On Broadway at Roundabout Theatre’s Studio 54.
By: - Apr 20th, 2019It is great to have Kelli O’Hara back on Broadway. As Lilli/Kate she once again proves herself a fine actress who can develop chemistry with every leading man she plays opposite.
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Hershey Felder: A Paris Love Story
At TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
By: - Apr 19th, 2019Hershey Felder now takes on the life and works of Claude Debussy in a world premiere at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley. The great turn of the century composer is credited as the originator of the classical music genre of impressionism, though he didn’t care for the term
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Murder Ballad
South Florida's Measure for Measure Theatre
By: - Apr 18th, 2019While sound issues require fixing, Measure for Measure Theatre's mounting of Murder Ballad offers an engrossing theatrical experience. Strong singing, emoting characterize this non-traditional theatrical experience. Murder Ballad, which featured Off-Broadway, centers on a love triangle gone wrong.
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Cambodian Rock Band by Lauren Yee
Winner of Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award
By: - Apr 18th, 2019Lauren Yee manages to create a small miracle with her brave, heartwarming and funny play Cambodian Rock Band. Victory Gardens’ new production, directed by Marti Lyons, skims across two time periods—from present-day Phnom Penh to a 1975 Cambodian prison.
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Bound by Huang Ruo at Baruch Performing Arts Center
Freshly Squeezed Opera Presents New York Premiere
By: - Apr 16th, 2019Bound, Huang Ruo's chamber opera, is produced at the Rose Nagelberg Theatre in the Baruch Performing Arts Center. Originally commissioned by Houston Grand Opera, this production is the New York premiere. It is a fresh take by Freshly Squeezed Opera. Ashley Tate who specializes in multi-media production, directs.
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Steinberg/ ATCA Award for New PLay
Lauren Yee's Cambodian Rock Band Takes The Honors
By: - Apr 16th, 2019Playwright Lauren Yee wins the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award for her play, Cambodian Rock Band. ATCA adjudicators hail Yee's multi-faceted approach to her play as "absolutely inspired." Cambodian Rock Band explores the Cambodian holocaust. Yee is a previous ATCA award winner.
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All Our Children at the Sheen Center
Stephen Unwin's Play Explores Eugenics
By: - Apr 15th, 2019The Sheen Center's Black Box Theater is stacked with files containing the case records of 'defective' young people who are institutionalized and awaiting their death. All Our Children takes up a theme developed in Florian Henkel von Donnersmarck's latest film. The doctor in the film and the doctor running a clinic for children in the play, both are charged with duties best left to God. Who is to live, and who must die, is in play because upkeep is expensive and the State needs money for munitions.
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Madama Butterfly
At Opera San José
By: - Apr 15th, 2019Opera San José has mounted a stunning production of Madama Butterfly. Maria Natale leads the cast as Cio-Cio San, or Butterfly, with a remarkable performance.
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Mfoniso Udofia's In Old Age.
At Magic Theatre in San Francisco
By: - Apr 13th, 2019As part of a nine-play cycle, In Old Age and the multi-play aggregation from which it comes, beg particular analysis. The broader question is the standing of this Ufot family saga against other cycles. The obvious comparison is August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, which shares the commonality of exploring the African-American experience.
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Oldcastle Theatre Company Announces Its Season
Season Begins on June 23
By: - Apr 12th, 2019The Oldcastle Theatre season in Bennington, Vermont starts on June 7 with Red by John Logan. The 48th season features four plays through October 20.
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Lottery Day by Ike Holter
At Chicago's Goodman Theatre
By: - Apr 11th, 2019Lottery Day is a party with a guest list of nine. Mallory (a sizzling J. Nicole Brooks) has invited them to her back yard to celebrate, but no one knows what the occasion is. With a rich and complex web of characters, Ike Holter’s play at Goodman Theatre brings together the threads from the other plays in his seven-part Rightlynd Saga.
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Fences in South Florida
August Wilson Masterpiece at Palm Beach Dramaworks
By: - Apr 11th, 2019Talented, veteran actor delivers a towering, multifaceted performance as Troy Maxson in Fences. Palm Beach Dramaworks' production of this Pulitzer Prize-winning play is riveting. Fences, which takes place in 1957, is part of August Wilson's "Pittsburgh Cycle" or "American Century Cycle."
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Norma Jeane Baker of Troy at The Shed
Ben Whishaw and Renee Fleming Star
By: - Apr 10th, 2019Poet Anne Carson has a special touch, embedding a conversational tone in lilting lines. While Norma Jeane Baker of Troy is billed as a melologue in which some words are sung and some spoken. It asks the question opera composers always ask: what words should be spoken, and what words sung? As a struggling writer's secretary, Fleming becomes muse, moving from speech to song. She is glorious. So too is Ben Whishaw, who moves from writer to the embodiment of Marilyn Monroe.
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Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptation
At Broadway's Imperial Theatre
By: - Apr 10th, 2019I wish that I could say that Ain’t Too Proud turned me inside out and sent me directly to heaven. But if the truth be told the first act is a painful 30 minutes too long, and Dominique Morisseau’s mechanically written fact-filled book based on the group’s original founder Otis William’s 1988 memoir – lots of "I did that and he did that and then we all did that" – is as engaging as bad coffee and a failed omelet on a gray day.
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Kill the Debbie Downers!
Based on Chekov at Ashby Stage
By: - Apr 09th, 2019Although the central plot line in Kill the Debbie Downers! is linear, the play changes tone, direction, time, and place frequently, resulting in a sense of mental chaos. But for those who can appreciate leaving a performance with more questions than answers, this is a fulfilling experience.
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Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish
Language Roots the Musical in its Native Soil
By: - Apr 08th, 2019Directer Joel Grey delivers a rare and rich revival. Fiddler on the Roof has come back, a comment and conversation in Yiddish about a time and place that indeed did shake the world. In the language of the people who lived it, this production is more rooted in their world, earthy, funny, deeply-moving.
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Twelfth Night By William Shakespeare
Co Production of Lyric Stage and Actor’s Shakespeare Project
By: - Apr 08th, 2019Start with a shipwreck and twins tossed up far apart on a beach. Each assumes the other to have drowned. Add a bit of gender bending and a gaggle of outlandish characters and fools. Stage a bit of slapstic and add a welter of romantic subplots. Set it in New Orleans and serve Twelth Night as a spicy hot gumbo. From now to April 28 at Boston's Lyric Stage.
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The Cradle Will Rock at Classic Stage Company
Marc Blitzstein Delivered for Our Times
By: - Mar 30th, 2019Marc Blitzstein was a critic of the music and politics of his time. Often expressing his dissatisfaction with the “privileged society” he felt dominated the creative impulses of his colleagues. As he wrote in 1936, “the unconscious (sometimes not so unconscious) prostitution of composers in today’s world is one of the sorry sights,” warning that “music in society, with us these many years, is dying of acute anachronism; and that a fresh idea, overwhelming in its implications and promise, is taking hold.” Prostitution, the exchange of one’s body for payment, became an important symbol for Blitzstein during the interwar period. It was a brash allegory for capitalism’s influence over (and failure of) the working class throughout the Great Depression.
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