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Bloomsday by Steven Dietz
At North Coast Repertory Theatre
By: - Jan 19th, 2020Steven Dietz was among the five most produced playwrights in America during 2019. And now his latest play “Bloomsday,” is on stage at North Coast Repertory Theatre (NCRT), making its Southern California debut.
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Gauthier Dance Company at 2020 Berliner Festspiele
Stuttgarter Company Performed January 15-19
By: - Jan 20th, 2020Berliner Festspiele invited this young company, Gauthier Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, to dance for five exciting days and to great success. For the rest of the year they will travel and perform internationally, including at Jacob's Pillow, in Becket, Massachusetts, the week of July 13. The Pillow invites yearly for their three months long summer festival dance companies from around the world.
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Cion at Prototype Festival
Gregory Maqoma Erupts in a Graveyard
By: - Jan 20th, 2020Graves are marked with sticks crossed. They seem to bend in the movement of the professional mourner and his followers. Light is spotted from the ceiling, sometimes two spots and at others six. The lights rhythmic entrances and exits fit perfectly with incessant beats of the feet. The brilliant South African choreographer Gregory Vuyani Maqoma has adapted Zakes Mda’s novel Cion.
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The Gulf by Audrey Cefaly
Chicago's About Face Theatre
By: - Jan 21st, 2020Kendra and Betty are southern women, together for six years, but their relationship is fraying, if not unraveling. As it turns dark, they’re stuck in a boat that won’t move. The Gulf by Audrey Cefaly is About Face Theatre’s latest production, directed by Megan Carney, now on stage at Theater Wit. The gulf, of course, is both literal and symbolic.
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How to Transcend a Happy Marriage by Sarah Ruhl
Custom Made Theatre in San Francisco
By: - Jan 23rd, 2020Although the playwright’s intent and narrative often lack clarity, the dialog is clever and the situations amusing. In the hands of a fine ensemble of actors, Custom Made Theatre offers a very funny and provocative production of How to Transcend a Happy Marriage.
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Kathryn Hunter As Timon of Athens
At Theatre for a New Audience
By: - Jan 25th, 2020Timon of Athens gets a brilliant characterization by Kathryn Hunter at Theatre for a New Audience. This huge character is played by a diminutive woman who holds us in her thrall every moment she is on stage. In the first part of the play, Timon enjoys her wealth, mindlessly giving her ‘friends’ whatever they want. Her Steward tries to tell her that if she keeps gifting at this pace, she will soon be penniless. Distinctive characters move across the stage, intriguing us.
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Year of the Rat Celebration
Berkshire International Club at Panda House
By: - Jan 27th, 2020For the past three years the Berkshire International Club has celebrated Chinese New Year. On a Sunday afternoon sixty members enjoyed a banquet at Panda House.
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Ripcord by David Lindsay-Abaire
Produced By Altarena Playhouse
By: - Jan 30th, 2020Credit Lindsay-Abaire for building a comedy not just around women, but older women whose motivations are not limited to the sole objective of doting on grandkids. He makes his female protagonists full-bore individuals with zesty personalities who are willing to fight tooth-and-nail for what they want.
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Verböten by House Theatre
At Chicago's Chopin Theatre
By: - Jan 31st, 2020The old rock trope says that punk music is “three chords and the truth.” That holds true for the fact-based story about a kid punk band from Evanston in the 1980s, which just opened in a world premiere by House Theatre. Verböten is the name of the play and the band.
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My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Stout
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway.
By: - Jan 31st, 2020My Name Is Lucy Barton written by Elizabeth Stout and published to a chorus of Hosannas in 2016, is now a one-woman, 2-character play, running through February 29 at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway. Adapted from the book by Rona Munro and directed by Richard Eyre, Lucy Barton stars Laura Linney.
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Robert Johnson King of the Delta Blues Players
A New Biography by Bruce Conforth & Gayle Dean Wardlow
By: - Feb 02nd, 2020The King of the Delta Blues, Robert Johnson, died in relative obscurity on August 16, 1938. Fifty years later he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when it was founded in 1986. In 1961 Columbia released King of the Delta Blues Players with Volume Two in 1970. The Complete Recordings a two-disc set, released on August 28, 1990, contains almost everything Johnson recorded, with all 29 recordings, and 12 alternate takes.
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Groundhog Day: The Musical
A Co-Production in South Florida
By: - Feb 05th, 2020Groundhog Day is a meaty, moving and humorous story on stage. A shining Slow Burn Theatre Company/Broward Center for the Performing Arts co-production runs through Feb. 16. An ingenious, symbolic set design are among the strong production values. A talented cast shines in this convincing, vivacious production. The stage musical is based on the 1993 film starring Bill Murray as Phil Connors.
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Williamstown Theatre Festival 2020
Audra McDonald in Streetcar Named Desire
By: - Feb 11th, 2020The Williamstown Theatre Festival launches with Streetcar Named Desire starring Audra McDonald on June 30. The season will feature five world premieres.
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Manahatta by Mary Kathryn Nagle
At Yale Rep
By: - Feb 11th, 2020Manahatta, now at the Yale Rep through Saturday, Feb. 15, offers a great deal to think about. It is getting its east coast premiere, having had its initial production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2018. Playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle, an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is a lawyer, writer and activist.
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Adoption Roulette by Elizabeth Fuller and Joel Vig
Palm Springs Woman’s Club
By: - Feb 16th, 2020“Adoption Roulette” is an Actors play. The action takes place on a bare-bones stage with no props or set furniture. The physical movements in the play are mimed, and the actors play multiple roles.
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Actress Lynn Cohen at 86
Remembered for Magda in Sex in the City
By: - Feb 16th, 2020New York critic Edward Rubin remembers Lynn Cohen an actress fondly remembered as the Ukranian maid Magda in the TV series Sex in the City. Ed has often been close with the performers he writes about.
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Samuel Beckett in South Florida
Happy Days at Ft. Lauderdale's Thinking Cap Theatre
By: - Feb 17th, 2020Superb acting, technical work combine to create a compelling production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days at Thinking Cap Theatre. Veteran south Florida performer Karen Stephens shines in the role of Winnie.
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National Sawdust Presents Against the Grain Opera
Intriguing Peek Into Artists-in-Residence Program
By: - Feb 16th, 2020National Sawdust, an artist led Brooklyn group, is a leading incubator of new music. One aspect of their work is an artists-in-residence program. Committed to assisting the creation of music that has impact, artists are encouraged to draw from personal experience and their interpretation of the world. Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup explores the opioid crisis.
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Medea by Simon Stone at BAM
Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale Deliver Riveting Performances
By: - Feb 17th, 2020BAM is mounting an elegant, moving, hip update of the Medea story, written after Euripides by Simon Stone. Starring Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale, the set is a made up of a rectangular screen onto which video images are projected. Often we see the actors in extreme close up. Their miced voices bring them even closer. The backdrop of the stage and two wings which bend in at about 40 degree angles are white. So too the stage floor. It calls attention to the stage action and to the emotional temper of Anna and Lucas, Claire, the new girlfriend, Elspeth the therapist, and Anna's and Lucas’ two children, Edgar, and Gus.
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Roland Colton Brings Us a Piano Music eBook
Mentioned Music Available at a Click as You Read
By: - Feb 18th, 2020Forever Gentleman, by Roland Colton, has several novel twists. It tells the tale of Nathan Sinclair, an architect and sometimes concert pianist of first-rate talents in both disciplines. When we meet him, he has been introduced into a good woman who deeply attracts him. He vows to settle a debt to a loan broker. He has incurred the debt because a client has been unable to pay up. One thread in the story is a Dickensian tour of Victorian debtor courts and jails in 1869. Colton is able to lead us through this tortuous path with vigorous, clear writing.
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Lifespan of a Fact
TheaterWorks in Hartford
By: - Feb 20th, 2020This is one short play (85 minutes) that kept me so interested, that I never checked my watch. Overall this production is just as good as the one I saw on Broadway a year ago.
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Boston Arts Leader Ted Landsmark
Discussed Transitions in 2000
By: - Feb 20th, 2020When we spoke in 2000 the arts leader Ted Landsmark was director of the Boston Architectural College. He was on leave as chair of the board of the Institute of Contemporary Art but still serving on the board of the MFA. It was a time of transition and change. The ICA was constructing a new building on the waterfront. Its director, Jill Medvedow, was competing for funding with MFA director, Malcolm Rogers. Landsmark argued that they should be working together
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When by Ledelle Moe
Massive Sculptures by South African Artist at MASS MoCA
By: - Feb 21st, 2020Building Five of MASS MoCA is one of the largest spaces for contemporary art in North America. Since the museum opened in 1999 there has been an annual rotation. The results have been mixed with hits and misses. Curated by Susan Cross, the current installation When by the South African artist Ledelle Moe is on the short list of most astonishing projects. It remains on view in North Adams through September 5.
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Hamilton On Tour
At Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center
By: - Feb 20th, 2020A vibrant equity production of Hamilton invades Miami The show isn't available for school licensing just yet, but it should give student thespians something to look forward to. This production, running through March 15, was sold out on opening night.
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Princeton Atelier at National Sawdust
Humanizing Electronic Sound
By: - Feb 24th, 2020Introductory visual and audio moments originated in climate data released as sound in a work by Kyle Barnes. This prelude was “a sonificaton of data for voice, electronics and video.” Images played on the huge back wall, which often serves as a screen in this special venue. Gentle scales crested and fell, warming us up for an introduction by Elena Park, a curator of National Sawdust +.
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