Theatre
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9 to 5
Broadway at Lauderhill Performing Arts Center
By: - Jan 21st, 2025The 2025 Broadway at LPAC season kicks off with a stirring production of "9 to 5." The professional production runs through Feb. 2. The stage musical "9 to 5" is an adaptation of the 1980 film.
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Audra McDonald on Broadway in Gypsy
Not Her Best Role
By: - Jan 21st, 2025I never thought I would have qualms about McDonald’s singing, but her classically trained voice doesn’t really work in this production. It appears she hasn’t decided whether her Mama Rose is a belter or a more classical soprano. Technically, many of the songs find her trying to combine operatic voice with belting, or as a voice teacher would say, the transition from her chest voice to her head voice isn’t as smooth or as appropriate as it should be.
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10X10 New Play Festival
Returns to Barrington Stage Company
By: - Jan 09th, 2025The 10X10 New Play Festival has become a cornerstone of Pittsfield’s Winter cultural scene, attracting both seasoned theatre lovers and first-time attendees. Tickets are expected to sell quickly, so early booking is encouraged.
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Prototype Festival to Begin New Year
New York's Most Adventuresome Program Music
By: - Dec 28th, 2024The Prototype Festival produced by Beth Morrison starts the avant-garde music world off from January 9 to 19. One work has been around the city in various forms for a while. Black Lodge dives into William Burroughs’ life. Queer, the film starring Daniel Craig, has brought Burroughs mainstream attention. The film with music by David T. Little, wrestles with movies as canned opera.
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Vatermal at Maxim Gorki Theater
Berlin Premiere Production
By: - Dec 26th, 2024It turned out to be an interesting opening on December 21, 2024 at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, Germany. The new play Vatermal, (permanent skin discoloration attributed to his father) transformed from the first novel by Necati Öziris into a play by Hakan Savas Mican, is a sad saga of a young man not getting a chance to live a life of his own.
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She Loves Me at Long Wharf
Gets a Lot Right and Wrong
By: - Dec 22nd, 2024Long Wharf’s production of She Loves Me (running through Monday, December 30) gets a lot right; unfortunately, its missteps are a significant detraction from the overall success of the show.
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A Thousand Ships
Oakland Theater Project World Premiere
By: - Dec 20th, 2024Distinguished playwright Marcus Gardley creates an homage to the Black community in Oakland that he grew up in, and particularly to strong women and their contributions. Adeline and Laney are transplants from the South, and their beauty salon is an institution for decades before the women face economic and personal challenges.
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Luna Stage Presents Mrs. Stern
Exploring a Critical Moment for Hannah Arendt
By: - Dec 18th, 2024Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library, a new play by Jenny Lyn Bader, takes place in a prison cell in Alexanderplatz, Berlin. Mrs. Stern is better known today as Hannah Arendt, her birth name.
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Some Like it Hot
Equity Touring Production in Florida
By: - Dec 06th, 2024An equity national touring production of the stage musical adaptation of the movie "Some Like it Hot" is touring the country. The tour includes several stops in Florida. It's hard to make out the words that the performers are saying and singing.
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Dominique Morisseau Goes to Haiti
MacArthur Playwright Tackles New Territory
By: - Nov 29th, 2024Playwright Dominique Morisseau grew up in Detroit. Her trilogy based on life in the auto town is magnificent. She braves the tough subjects of our times. Her father was born in Haiti and she now eplores her Haitian roots in "Bad Kreyol" produced by the Signature Theater and Manhattan Theatre Club.
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David Lang's Little Match Girl Returns
Annual Holiday Event at the Crypt
By: - Nov 16th, 2024David Lang's Pulitzer Prize-winning Passion opera The Little Match Girl will be performed in its original form with four artists both singing and playing instruments at the Crypt in New York.
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Honoring Political Theater
Elysium- between two continents’ Erwin Piscator Awards
By: - Nov 12th, 2024Founded in 1983 by Gregorij von Leitis, Elysium—between two continents is an organization dedicated to combating hate, racism, and anti-Semitism through the transformative power of art.
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Theatre in the Berkshires
Annual Berkies Winners
By: - Nov 12th, 2024Once again, Pittsfield-based Barrington Stage Company (BSC) was the big winner of the evening with their productions of Next to Normal, La Cage Aux Folles, Primary Trust, and Boeing, Boeing taking home many top prizes. The Mac-Haydn Theatre, in Chatham, NY, tied with BSC artists in the categories of Outstanding Choreography and Outstanding Direction of a Musical, and with artists from the Berkshire Theatre Festival for Outstanding Sound Design.
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Thornton Wilder's Our Town
Revival on Broadway
By: - Nov 10th, 2024Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town, which many consider it one of the great American plays – is getting a very good revival at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway.
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Ghost Quartet
A Spooky Look into the Afterlife Through Song
By: - Nov 05th, 2024Oakland Theater Project presents Dave Malloy's 23 dramatic vignettes about love, loss, whiskey, and the afterlife built into a song cycle. Calling on all manner of musical idioms, but with the constant of a mournful cello, it engages both musically and dramatically.
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The Matchbook Magic Flute
Mary Zimmerman's Adaptation of Mozart's Masterpiece
By: - Nov 03rd, 2024Aided by bird catcher Papageno, Prince Tamino sets out to rescue abducted Pamina, whom he has fallen in love with based only on a portrait. His quest faces the challenge of three trials and the threat of the Queen of the Night, mother of Pamina.
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Falcon Girls
Premiere at Yale Rep
By: - Oct 30th, 2024The play opens with the five-member team (one is an alternate), already a tight-knit bunch who have known each other forever. A new girl, Hilary, arrives and wants to be part of the team. The coach, Mr. K, decides she can be the second alternate; it is unlikely that she would ever be asked to substitute.
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Jersey Boys
ACT-CT in Ridgefield,
By: - Oct 29th, 2024The book – the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons – by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice is one of the things that sets it above many jukebox shows. Each of the original members of the group narrates a part of the story. This allows for different perspectives on the group’s history and personalities.
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The Thanksgiving Play
Altarena Playhouse Explores Marginalization of Native Americans
By: - Oct 27th, 2024Logan receives a grant to create a "First Thanksgiving" play for schools. She finds that the woman she hired as "the Native American" in the small cast is anything but. How should she proceed with political correctness when she lacks a Native American voice in a project for Native American Heritage Month? Farcical situations ensue.
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Fallen Angels
Aurora Theatre Makes the Most of Thin Noel Coward Play
By: - Oct 26th, 2024As their husbands depart for an overnight golf outing, Julia and Jane find that a French lover from before their marriages is coming to London. Both women have settled into marital boredom and are tantalized by the prospect of reviving their earlier passions. The playwright exposes class and gender issues amidst continuing laughter.
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Frederick Douglass Comes to Hudson Hall
Anthony Knight Jr. Combines Negro Spirituals with Douglass' Text
By: - Oct 25th, 2024Hudson Hall in the Hudson Hall Opera House will present No Cowards in Our Band, an intertwined stage piece that combines nine spirituals with the reciting of original text by Frederick Douglass. In this drama, an aging and contemplative Frederick Douglass (1818-1895). considers the social, economic, and political ramifications of slavery and the Civil War and their impact on the future of the United States.
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Tristan & Isolde
San Francisco Opera's Fine Production of Wagner
By: - Oct 25th, 2024When composing this opera, Richard Wagner was obsessed with love fanned by his infatuation for the married poet Mathilde Wesendonck and death driven by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. The two existential forces are melded in the opera's thematic thrust "liebestod" (love-death), which is also the dominant leitmotif in the music. While the orchestral score soars, the dramatic action is grounded, yet it remains a pioneer of modern music.
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Henze's Prince of Homburg in Frankfurt
Important Composer Gets a Perfect Production
By: - Oct 22nd, 2024Contemporary composers scramble for relevant subject matter. Opera companies overlook repertoire which is excellent and seldom staged. As the 100th anniversary of Hans Werner Hene's birth approaches in 2026, his work, produced in timeless fashion, offers fresh opportunities. Frankfurt Oper shows the way.
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No Love Songs
Goodspeed’s Terris Theatre in Chester
By: - Oct 19th, 2024During the 80 minutes or so, we hear 11 songs. Most are duets between the two characters – Jessie and Lana. Jessie and Lana are fictionalized versions of Falconer and Wilde and their story. From the first meeting, when Lana goes to a bar and meets the older Jessie through a courtship of sorts, the birth of their son, and Jessie’s departure on a US tour with a band, where they are the backup/opening act.
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Yaga
Marin Theatre's U.S. Premiere of Multi-genre Play
By: - Oct 17th, 2024The tradition of Baba Yaga, an old haggard witch, exists in many Slavic cultures. Playwright Kat Sandler integrates witchcraft themes into a comic detective mystery with three actors playing 14 parts.
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