Front Page
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Grand Horizons by Bess Wohl
Superb Cast Burdened with Pedestrian Family Drama
By: - Feb 25th, 2020What sets this apart are the fine performances. Any chance you get to see Jane Alexander on stage is one to take advantage of and treasure. Her Nancy exudes both steeliness and calmness.
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Ivan Fischer and Budapest Festival Orchestra
Great Performers' Mahler at Lincoln Center
By: - Feb 25th, 2020There is no doubt that Gustav Mahler paired the Kindertotenlieder, symphonic poems of Friedrich Rückert and his Symphony No. 5. Seldom are they programmed together. We were given an extraordinary performance of both works in David Geffen Hall. Iván Fischer conducted the Budapest Festival Orchestra.
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Skylight in South Florida
Popular David Hare Play at Palm Beach Dramaworks
By: - Feb 25th, 2020Palm Beach Dramaworks' production of David Hare's Skylight features terrific performances. Tension emanates from the stage as the character spar on stage. The production continues through March 1.
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Magic and Stillness
Preparing for a Pandemic
By: - Feb 27th, 2020Between the news and my daily contact with friends in China, the coronavirus is a daily presence in my awareness. I returned from China just shortly before the first cases in Wuhan. My temple is in Hubei Province, and Wuhan is the province's capital city, only about 500 km from the temple. CDC officials tell us it is not a question of if, it is a question of when the virus will spread across the country, notwithstanding the President's assurances last night. My friends all over China have been inside their homes since the first of the month, and will remain there for several weeks to come, it would seem. That may be us someday, too.
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The Pajama Game a Perennial Favorite
At California's Palm Canyon Theatre
By: - Feb 28th, 2020“The Pajama Game” opened last weekend in Palm Springs. The musical debuted in 1954 on Broadway, as the Korean War was declared over, and pajamas back then was still considered the choice of men’s sleep-ware. Enduring standards of the vintage musical include “Hey There,” “Steam Heat,” and “Hernando’s Hideaway.”
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Drew Hyde Was Seminal ICA Director
Led Institute Back from the Brink
By: - Feb 29th, 2020In 1968 the Institute of Contemporary Art was evicted from Newbury Street. Bag and baggage it was mothballed in its failed former home on Soldier's Field Road. Connected to new Mayor Kevin White and Deputy Mayor, Katky Kane, they gave Andrew C. Hyde a long shot at turning things around. The relaunch largely entailed embracing an emerging generation of artists which formed the Studio Coalition in 1969 and Boston Visual Artists Union in 1970.
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Verdi's Il Trovatore
At Opera San José
By: - Mar 01st, 2020The great Enrico Caruso once noted that all you need to make Il Trovatore a success is to cast the four greatest singers in the world. Although the production reveals a couple of minor glitches, the overall effect is so scintillating that the flaws are not worth discussing.
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Hedda Gabler: A Play with Live Music
World Premiere at Chicago's Raven Theatre
By: - Mar 01st, 2020The Tuta Theatre world premiere production of Hedda Gabler: A Play With Live Music is adapted and directed by Jacqueline Stone. The play is set in the early 1890s in Kristiania, now Oslo. The original modern and sometimes punklike music is composed by Wain Parham and played by a three-piece band, led by Parham on keys.
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Film: The 70th Berlinale 2020
From February 20 - March 1
By: - Mar 04th, 2020The 70th Berlinale, the huge international film festival in Berlin took place between February 20th and March 1st, 2020. Great expectations were put upon the new festival leaders, Carlo Chatrian (artistic director) and Mariette Rissenbeek (executive director).
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The Confession of Lily Dare Off Broadway
By Renowned Gender Bender Charles Busch
By: - Mar 07th, 2020In or out of drag, whether on stage or page, the 65-year-old actor playwright Charles Busch, with some forty years of show business under his belt, is a force to be reckoned with.
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Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage
Written and Directed by Elizabeth Williamson
By: - Mar 07th, 2020Jane Eyre, just like Elizabeth Bennett in Jane Austin’s Pride & Prejudice, understands society’s preconceived notions about a woman’s role and a woman’s manner, and rejects them wholeheartedly.
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Don’t Eat the Mangos is a Wonderful Play
At Magic Theatre in San Francisco
By: - Mar 07th, 2020In Don’t Eat the Mangos, by Ricardo Pérez González, three adult Puerto Rican sisters remain close despite fractious relationships and the different directions their lives have taken. The action centers on clashes that siblings commonly confront in dealing with dying parents and their property. So it is that the sisters argue about how the dirty work of responsibilities are shared.
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Dai Fujikura Featured at Miller Theatre
International Contemporary Ensemble Delves into Fujikura's Music
By: - Mar 06th, 2020Dai Fujikura lives in the quotidian and draws from it for the music he creates. We hear a portrait of his daughter in the first month of her life, a secret forest where all the sounds are beautiful, and memories of high school friends who were all wannabe guitarists.
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The Chelsea Symphony Celebrates Women
Sojourner Truth, two Horn Players, Mazzoli, Frank and Tower
By: - Mar 10th, 2020This evening, part of the Rise Up Year devoted to music that inspires and uplifts, two gentleman, a bass player and a violist, composed pieces celebrating women. Women composers, Missy Mazzoli, Gabriela Lena Frank and Joan Tower were performed with gusto.
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Mean Girls
Tina Fey Comedy's National Equity Tour
By: - Mar 11th, 2020An energetic national equity touring production of Mean Girls is playing in Ft. Lauderdale through March 15. Fires rage across the stage as Regina George bulldozes over the meek. The production features strong work from the cast to the technical folks. Mean Girls the Musical is based on the 2004 film of the same name, both written by Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live.
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Network for New Music in Philadelphia
Musical Ecologies at a Hidden Lake
By: - Mar 12th, 2020On a recent Sunday afternoon, Network for New Music (NNM), an adventuresome Philadelphia group, gathered at The Discovery Center at the Hidden Reservoir in Fairmont Park.. The long pathway to the building’s main entrance leads visitors to a striking view of the center’s reservoir, a pristine, 37-acre body of water that was closed to the public for nearly 50 years. The Center provided a concert hall for music related to ecology.
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Love by Kate Cortesi
World Premiere at Marin Theatre Company
By: - Mar 13th, 2020Against a backdrop of black and white, perpetrator and victim, playwright Kate Cortesi offers a provocative and stimulating world premiere play, Love, which humanizes the parties involved and explores the complexities of relationships that many depictions often simplify to the point of distortion.
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Seventh Seal
Playing Chess with Death
By: - Mar 14th, 2020Recently, on Turner Classic Movies, I saw Ingmar Bergman’s iconic 1957 film Seventh Seal. That was before the death of the actor Max Von Sydow or the widening global pandemic. Yet again there is the contrast of art and artifice. Art is a means of navigating the collape of the American Empire in real time and vivid color. When this passes what will be left of our arts, culture and way of life? How will we pick up the pieces of a new order? Will the elections of 2020 be yet another cancellation? Is this Apocalypse Now?
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A Chorus Line
At Boca Raton's Wick Theatre
By: - Mar 16th, 2020A Chorus Line's focus on the unheralded is particularly timely when many must make sacrifices. The Wick Theatre's wonderful production is postponed but hopes company officials hope to resume the production soon. Triple threat performers shine in this production.
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Country Singer Kenny Rogers
Performed at the Colonial in 2012
By: - Mar 21st, 2020The Gambler, country music star Kenny Rogers, has passed at 81. In September, 2012 he made a rare Berkshire appearance at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. This is how we covered him at the time.
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More Zombie Formalism
Do the Right Thing
By: - Mar 21st, 2020Artists without faces. Or what do you hang your hat on? Jean Gabin, Cecily Brown, Dana Schutz and John Currin.
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Anywhere by Theatre L'Introverte at HERE
An Ice Puppet Oedipus Melts Before Us
By: - Mar 16th, 2020The theater is pitch black. A mysterious figure wrapped in a robe writes on a screen in black ink which drips on the illuminated board. “I which have bled for so long are beginning to heal. Black tears no longer course down his cheeks, inspiring the horrific feeling in others that these are their own bloodied tears." These are Oedipus' words as interpreted by Henry Bauchau, author of "Oedipus on the Road," which inspired "Anywhere." This is an unusual portrait of Oedipus' harrowing final journey.
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Music and the Virus
Pitching In
By: - Mar 25th, 2020Many organizations are offering wonderful streaming. Reports suggest that music with videos is doing better than sound only. Atlanta Opera, led by Tomer Zvulun, may be providing the most useful help.
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Corona Chronicles
Senior Shopping at Big Y
By: - Mar 27th, 2020In a time of pandemic the early bird scores the toilet paper. When the quality of life is measured in sheets.
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Tony Awards Postponed
Annual Celebration Honors Broadway's Best
By: - Mar 26th, 2020The Tony Awards show will go on, albeit at a later date, due to the coronavirus pandemic. The CBS broadcast was slated for June 7 this year. Officials have not announced a replacement date.
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