Theatre
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Debussy at the Metropolitan Opera
Nezet-Seguin Makes His Mark
By: - Jan 16th, 2019Claude Debussy only wrote one opera. Pélleas et Mélisande (based on a symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck) succeeds by destroying many of the conventions of the genre to which it belongs. On Tuesday night, the Met unveiled its revival of Pélleas, another acid test for its new music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and a younger generation of singers wandering through the hazy, maze-y woods of the mythical kingdom of Allemonde.
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Goodbye, Dolly!
Remembering Carol Channing at 97
By: - Jan 15th, 2019Broadway and cabaret star Carol Elaine Channing passed away today at the remarkable age of 97. She originated the iconic lead on the 1964 production of Jerry Herman's Hello,Dolly! It earned her a Tony award for which she was nominated three other times. She was still glamorous and forever young, but pushing 60, when I saw her in the late 1970s at Boston's jazz and cabaret club Lulu White's. That spectacular night evokes many fond memories.
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Free Shakespeare In The Park
Romeo and Juliet by Florida Shakespeare Theater
By: - Jan 14th, 2019An uneven South Florida mounting of Romeo and Juliet needs more energy. The Bard's poetry mostly fails to land in Florida Shakespeare Theatre's production. Miami-area based troupe finds the humanity of the characters in Shakespeare's tragedy of star-crossed lovers.
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The Infinite Hotel at Irondale
New Music/Theater Captures Audiences
By: - Jan 12th, 2019Death hangs over the exuberant music/drama The Infinite Hotel. Jib sings of the pain of loss from beginning to end. Her music is lifeful, as is the music of Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley who gave new work to this production.
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Prism in Rolling World Premiere at Prototype
Ellen Reid's Powerful Opera
By: - Jan 11th, 2019Ellen Reid has an unusual knack for drawing the colors of emotion from an orchestral ensemble and the human voice. Aware of this talent, the composer chooses to present a story with an emotional rather than a narrative arc. The rolling premiere of her new opera, Prism, is presented at LaMama in New York.
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Charlie Johnson Reads All of Proust
À la recherche du temps perdu
By: - Jan 10th, 2019An older man decides he will read Marcel Proust’s iconic novel. As he reads all six volumes over the course of a year, he responds to Proust and reflects on his own life. And his audience may gain insights into their own too.That’s the sum total of an engaging solo production titled Charlie Johnson Reads All of Proust, now on stage at Chicago's Den Theatre
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The Infinite Hotel at Prototype Festival
Michal McQuilken's Rollicking Celebration of Community
By: - Jan 10th, 2019The Prototype Festival rolls on with a big production at Irondale, a Brooklyn venue which offers a large space and unusual opportunities for audience viewing. The Infinite Hotel by Michael Joseph McQuilken is having its world premiere. This is a rollicking, joyful and often touching production. It is full of surprises.
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New Play Festival in South Florida
Palm Beach Dramaworks Inaugurates Weekend-Long Event
By: - Jan 09th, 2019Festival stresses regional theater's importance in developing plays. Audiences learn they become "artists" during the process. Palm Beach Dramaworks' New Year/New Plays Festival launches with panel, staged readings.
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THISTREE with Leah Coloff at Prototype
World premiere at HERE
By: - Jan 08th, 2019A mysterious figure hidden in a huge poke bonnet parades onto the rear of the Mainstage Theater at HERE. She is trailed by figures bearing jeans, an icon of the American West. These are dropped to form a trail, like Hansel and Gretel's candies, leading to the pioneer, Leah Coloff's, seat on stage. Coloff with Ellie Heyman has created a lament modeled on a traditional cowboy ballad.
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Ismael Reed's The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda
Rome Neal Directs Sold-Out Readings at the Nyorican Cafe
By: - Jan 08th, 2019Audience response to The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, a new entertaining, witty and historically incisive play was unusually enthusiastic. Ismael Reed's work was still in street clothes with scripts in hand. The actors, despite the trappings, delivered their lines with pathos and conviction, and Reed's vision shown through the bare-bones milieu.
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Tao and Teicher at the Guggenheim Museum
World Premiere of More Forever
By: - Jan 07th, 2019Caleb Teicher is no stranger to Jacob's Pillow. This summer he will perform More Forever, which had its world premiere at the Guggenheim Museum in New York this weekend. It is a glorious piece developed in collaboration with pianist, composer and actor Conrad Tao.
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Talking About Brecht in Chicago
Meeting of Modern Language Association
By: - Jan 06th, 2019I discovered Brecht many decades ago, when I was just becoming a theater lover. I’m not sure I had ever heard of Bertolt Brecht when I saw what has become one of my favorite plays—The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui—at the renowned Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. It was 1968 (I had to look that up), one of the first years of the Guthrie’s existence.
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Superior Donuts In South Florida
Tracy Letts Dramedy by Miami Lakes' Main Street Players
By: - Jan 05th, 2019Despite some apparent opening night issues, Main Street Players delivers a well-done production of Superior Donuts. Tracy Letts' play is sweet, but also has some meat to it. Superior Donuts was a finalist for the 2009 2009 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA (American Theatre Critics Association) New Play Award.
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Amy Heckerling's Clueless, The Musical
From Screen to Stage Off Broadway
By: - Jan 04th, 2019For those that loved Clueless, the 1995 cult movie starring Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd, watched the TV series (1996-99) based on the film, and perhaps read all twenty-one of the Cher young adult books, well, Clueless is back on stage, Off Broadway.
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Adriana Lecouvreur at Metropolitan Opera
Gala Features Beczala, Maestri, Netrebko, and Rachvilishvili
By: - Jan 03rd, 2019Adriana Lecouvreur was brought to New York most recently in a Carnegie Hall concert by Eve Queller’s Opera Orchestra of New York. Angela Gheorghiu came to sing the diva role and was delicious, both touching and full of haughty allure. When Anna Netrebko expressed interest in the Adriana role, The Metropolitan Opera joined with five partners and hired the stalwart Sir David McVicar to produce.
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Best Theatre for 2018
Covering Broadway and Connecticut
By: - Jan 01st, 2019This is list is based on shows I saw in 2018 – they may have opened officially in December 2017 and some current shows I’m not seeing until January. (Specifically Ferryman and To Kill a Mockingbird).
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Bruce Coughran's A Time for Hawking
At Indra’s Net Theater
By: - Dec 28th, 2018A Time for Hawking is a brisk-moving, well-explicated educational primer in the form of an involving comedy/drama. The playwright, Bruce Coughran, who also directs, has selected three contrasting characters whose real lives would intersect in significant ways. He has deftly integrated a panoply of scientific and philosophical milestones into their conversation.
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La Ruta an Important Play by Isaac Gomez
World Premiere in Chicago at Steppenwolf
By: - Dec 24th, 2018Steppenwolf Theatre is staging La Ruta, an important world premiere play by Isaac Gomez, based on his own research on the women of Cuidad Juarez, played by an eight-member all-female Latinx cast. Sandra Marquez’ careful direction recreates the work and home lives of these women—and the dangers they live with—in a powerful, emotional way.
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All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914
Stranger Than Fiction at Loreto Theatre on Bleecker Street
By: - Dec 23rd, 2018What is remarkable about this production directed by Peter Rothstein with music direction by Erick Lichte is both the simplicity and the complexity of the production. There is no set; the stage is a black box. No orchestra or piano accompanies the actors as they sing; it is a capella. The harmonies arranged by Lichte and Timothy C Takach are wonderful.
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The Lifespan of a Fact at Studio 54
By Playwrights Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell
By: - Dec 21st, 2018Playwrights Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell have balanced the piece carefully. This is based on the essay and book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal. They are the John and Jim of the story. But I suspect details have been changed, in fact it is billed as “a new play based on a true-ish story.” It is a tight 85 minutes enhanced by fine performances.
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The Year to Come by Lindsey Ferrentino
At the La Jolla Playhouse
By: - Dec 20th, 2018Playwright Lindsey Ferrentino apparently felt the urge to inform audiences just how disparate are families and their need to share their ubiquitous stories with the world at large. Television has been the delivery system that best gets the comedy job done. Sitcoms have mastered the medium for more than 70 years. . But I’m not quite sure that Ferrentino’s comedy play “The Year to Come” is the vehicle to bridge so many gaps facing our ever changing society.
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Riffing on Ibsen
A Doll’s House, Part 2 in San Diego
By: - Dec 20th, 2018“A Doll’s House, Part 2”, premiered in 2017- garnering 8 Tony Nominations – is a perfect example of how an iconic classic play coupled with talent, and a sense of curiosity from an original thinking playwright can become a fresh, smart, new work, that’s been dazzling audiences wherever it performs. (Lucas Hnath’s 2016 play “The Christians”, received a Tony nomination for his insightful story of a Pastor who questions his belief in God and The Bible).
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Actor/Director Charles Weldon at 78
Was Artistic Director of The Negro Ensemble Company
By: - Dec 18th, 2018During the recent NY conference of American Theatre Critics Association Charles Weldon was a lively participant on a panel focused on diversity. He was Artistic Director of The Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) since 2005. He joined the Negro Ensemble Company in 1970 and acted in many of its classic plays including "A Soldier's Play," "The Great McDaddy," "The Offering," "The Brownsville Raid" and the Company's Broadway production of "The River Niger."
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Strange Window at Next Wave, BAM
Marianne Weems Re-invents Henry James
By: - Dec 16th, 2018The Builder’s Association re-invented Henry James’ Turn of the Screw for today. Strange Window takes its title from a story James heard from the Archbishop of Canterbury. A woman was so fearful of strange figures who appeared in the windows of her home that she moved to protect her children.
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The Wiz In South Florida
Classic Musical At Stage Door Theatre
By: - Dec 14th, 2018Stage Door Theatre's mounting of The Wiz is uneven. The production largely lacks magic and sound is a problem. However, the production improves in the second act, with strong singing and acting. Actress Nayomi Braaf makes a refreshingly bright-eyed, optimistic Dorothy.
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