Theatre
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Days of Wine and Roses
Studio 54 through April 28
By: - Feb 16th, 2024The musical is based on the teleplay by JP Miller and the Warner Brothers film, all with the same name. The 1958 Playhouse 90 production starred Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie. The 1962 film starred Jack Lemon and Lee Remick.
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Rigoletto
Opera San Jose's Powerful Production of Verdi Masterpiece
By: - Feb 15th, 2024The jester Rigoletto's life is dedicated to the care and safety of his daughter, Gilda. When she is kidnapped and compromised by his employer, the Duke of Mantua, he plans revenge but is also cursed by the father of another victim of the Duke's lechery. His plans backfire catastrophically. The glorious opera receives a powerful treatment.
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Love, Loss and Waffles
Mona Pirnot’s I Love You So Much I Could Die
By: - Feb 14th, 2024Running approximately 65 minutes without intermission, I Love You So Much I Could Die isn’t just theater, it’s an experience. The fact that I found it disturbing is a compliment to the playwright because she made me feel something, even though that something was emotionally unsettling. As Edward Albee said: “if the theater must bring us only what we can comfortably relate to, let us stop going entirely and sit in our rooms and contemplate our paunchy middles.”
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Barrington Stage Celebrates Black History Month
Free Event February 26
By: - Feb 13th, 2024Barrington Stage Company’s Black Voices Matter Program is proud to present “Black History: Honoring the Past, Inspiring the Future” on Monday, February 26 at 6:00pm at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center (36 Linden St.)
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Prayer for the French Republic
Manhattan Theatre Club
By: - Feb 08th, 2024Prayer for the French Republic is thought-provoking, but last season’s Leopoldstadt, which addresses many of the same themes, is a better work.
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Simona’s Search at Hartford Stage
World Preimere Needs Work
By: - Feb 07th, 2024Simona’s Search is worth seeing, even if you finally conclude that it needs improvement. Less monologue would help, as would having someone point out that Simona’s conclusions may be wrong. The only person who does that, her thesis director, is so blatantly sexist and demeaning that the audience immediately discounts that position.
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My Home on the Moon
SF Playhouse Dramedy About Soup and Artificial Intelligence
By: - Feb 06th, 2024A Vietnamese soup shop verges on closure when it "wins a grant" from a mysterious company that offers to pay to implement a new marketing strategy to revive the business. A consultant's program includes an unlikely and unseemly advertising campaign, but it works. Or does it?
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Cult of Love at Berkeley Rep
Awesome Treatment of Leslye Headland's Seventh Deadly Sin - Pride
By: - Feb 02nd, 2024The Dahls raised their children in the "Christian way," and Christmas homecoming celebrated by food and song is a great family tradition. But as adults the four offspring have deviated from the parents' hopes - among them a lesbian, a pathological believer, a recovering addict, and a lost sheep. When singing together, they seem the idyllic family, but when the music stops, the fractures appear. Despite the holiday setting, this is not a Christmas play.
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Sartre's "Dirty Hands," at Berliner Ensemble
Opened Jan. 26 in Berlin, Germany
By: - Jan 29th, 2024Opening night of Jean-Paul Sartre's "Die Schmutzigen Hände" (Dirty Hands) on January 26th, 2024 at the famed Berliner Ensemble in Berlin, Germany was sold out.
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Kimberly Akimbo
A Teenage Girl With a Terminal Disease is Adult in the Room
By: - Jan 28th, 2024Doomed by progeria, a condition that ages the carrier at 4 1/2 times the normal rate, Kimberly turns 16. Her chronological age corresponds to age 72 given this condition, meaning that she probably has little time left in her life. Nonetheless, she attends to daily activities like any other school kid. But her working class parents are loose cannons, and a grifter aunt who insinuates herself into the household develops a get-rich-quick scheme that is anything but normal.
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Barefoot in the Park
Pembroke Pines Theatre of the Performing Arts in South Florida
By: - Jan 28th, 2024Pembroke Pines Theatre of the Performing Arts mounted a comical and believable production of Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park." The production ran through Jan. 28. "Barefoot in the Park" takes place in New York City during the 1960s.
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Miriam and Esther Go To The Diamond District
A Mother's Death Brings Two Sisters Together
By: - Jan 21st, 2024Foraging through the belongings of their recently deceased mother, two middle-aged, somewhat estranged sisters learn more about their birth father and stepfather from a trove of letters and other documents. They also learn more about each other as they clash and bond over historical events that they either did not share or had seen from different perspectives.
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Legally Blonde - The Musical
Authenticity Overcomes Pampered Privilege
By: - Jan 15th, 2024Elle, a shallow but genuine and smart fashionista obsessed with the color pink, is dumped by her status seeking boyfriend who is off to Harvard Law School. Surprisingly (and true, except the law school was Stanford in real life), Elle insinuates an acceptance as well. Her presence provides humorous contrast to the staid environment.
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Beth Morrison Champions Contemporary Composers
Prototype Festival Launched for 11th Season
By: - Jan 15th, 2024Beth Morrison is an important leader in the development of new opera with new alliances and venues. She is a force that the future of classical music depends on. The Prototype Festival she created is now in its 11th season in New York.
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2023 Theatre Favorites
New York and Connecticut
By: - Jan 09th, 2024I don’t do a ten-best list; instead, I like to recall some of my favorite shows of the past year.
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The Prisoners
Plays of Wilton in South Florida
By: - Jan 03rd, 2024The Prisoners, a riveting play, entertains and shines a necessary light on unhealthy obsessions. While four performances remain, one of them is sold out. The theater is located in the Ft. Lauderdale suburb of Wilton Manors.
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A Sherlock Carol by Mark Shanahan
Westport Country Playhouse
By: - Dec 21st, 2023Recipe for a delightful evening: Take one part A Christmas Carol and one part Sherlock Holmes. Blend well, then let a talented team of actors serve to it you. A Sherlock Carol by Mark Shanahan does just that and it is a delight. It’s getting a brief run at Westport Country Playhouse through Saturday, Dec. 23. I wish it were longer.
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10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival
Returns to Barrington Stage
By: - Dec 18th, 2023The 10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival is a winter arts festival located in Pittsfield’s Upstreet Cultural District in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, organized by the City of Pittsfield and Barrington Stage Company. Presenting short new plays during the dead of winter.
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The English Concert at Carnegie Hall
Watching a Female Leader Triumph
By: - Dec 17th, 2023The English Concert led by Harry Bickett performs an annual Baroque opera, semi-staged at Carnegie Hall. These performances are highly anticipated, for good reason. This year's was no exception.
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The Messenger
National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere in Florida
By: - Dec 16th, 2023Palm Beach Dramaworks (PBD) in South Florida is the first stop for "The Messenger" in the National New Play Netwwork Rolling World Premiere Program. A cast of four excels in PBD's production, which runs through Dec. 24. Ultimately, "The Messenger" is about the need to speak out or take action in the face of hatred and violence.
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Two for the Holidays
Favorites Are Back
By: - Dec 15th, 2023Not only is A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas back at Hartford Stage, but it is better than ever. It’s been missing due to the pandemic and its aftermath.
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Shakespeare & Company News
Four for Next Summer
By: - Dec 14th, 2023Shakespeare & Company announces the first four titles of the 2024 season, including a World Premiere and a musical exploration of Shakespeare’s language and music. In addition to titles yet to be announced, Shakespeare & Company's 47th Season includes:
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Dreamgirls at Goodspeed
Musical Inspired by The Supremes
By: - Dec 14th, 2023Dreamgirls features a predictable show biz story about the career of a successful entertainer, in this case, a girl singing group, first called the Dreamettes. It is also the story of a ruthless young man (Curtis) who will control, lie, manipulate, and cheat to achieve his aims. When he hurts or destroys someone, his response “It’s business.”
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Victoria Bond's Illuminations
Byzantine Chants at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church
By: - Dec 11th, 2023Victoria Bond is a composer who has experimented with many styles. Over the years she has worked with Dr. Paul Barnes, a pianist and Greek Orthodox chanter, developing Illuminations on Byzantine Chant. Barnes had hoped to capture the wide emotional range and spiritual message of Orthodox Christianity, Bond is captivated by this mystical world.
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Einstein at Princeton
Opera Seen Through Domestic Prism
By: - Dec 08th, 2023In a compact manner, the libretto demonstrates the idealism of Einstein contrasted with the pragmatism of the women around him, while the story line covers political and social commentary; God and existence; the enormity of the creation of the atomic bomb; and more. Light touches and excerpts from other composers brighten the proceedings.
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