Theatre
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Anna in the Tropics By Nilo Cruz
2003 Pulitzer Winner at Barrington Stage Company
By: - Jul 21st, 2022Other than an explosive ending the Pulitzer Prize winning Anna In the Tropics proves to be quite tepid as produced by Barrington Stage Company. Set in a Prohibition era cigar factory the lictor is reading Tolstoy to the workers. Themes of infidelity, jealousy and revenge in Anna Karenina weave their way into the plot by playwright Nilo Cruz.
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The Nose at the Munich Opera
Russian Dissident Kirill Serebrennikov
By: - Jul 21st, 2022Kirill Serebrennikov, the brilliant Russian director, brought The Nose to Munich via Zoom. He is detained by the Russian government in Moscow. The production is superb.
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Ian Bostridge Sings Schubert in Munich
Anthony Papano Accompnies at the Prinzregent Theater
By: - Jul 20th, 2022Ian Bostridge is the go-to performer for Franz Schubert's Winterreise. He notes that 'Even as a child I was unnaturally obsessed with love and death, so in that sense I really was born to sing lieder'. This concert is another testament to his natural affinity for the form and for the composer.
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Nan and the Lower Body by Jessica Dickey
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
By: - Jul 18th, 2022The play opens with Dr. Pap addressing a classroom – the audience. The content of the lecture is unimportant, yet those brief moments absolutely hook the viewer. There is no waiting to get involved with the story line.
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Athena by Gracie Gardner
At Thrown Stone Theater in Ridgefield
By: - Jul 18th, 2022Teenage angst is not necessarily the material for meaningful drama. Athena by Gracie Gardner one of two plays at Thrown Stone Theater in Ridgefield reveals the hazards. It, and the other play Hysterical! run in repertory through Sunday, Aug. 6.
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The Drowsy Chaperone
Produced by Sonoma Arts Live
By: - Jul 17th, 2022The opening premise of the fiction is that Janet van de Graaf and Robert Martin, played by the charming and talented pair of Maeve Smith and Stephen Kanaski, are to be married on the day that the musical takes place. The reality of the show’s evolution is that “The Drowsy Chaperone” began as a spoof of old musicals that was performed at a stag party for a real engaged couple with the same names as the characters in the show. Got that?
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Most Happy in Concert at Williamstown
Directed by Tony Winner Daniel Fish
By: - Jul 17th, 2022Most Happy in Concert, now at Williamstown Theatre Festival is not a revival of the 1956 musical Most Happy Fella with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser. It's a tear down and deconstruction by director Daniel Fish. He similarly ripped apart Oklahoma which won a Tony award. Let's see if he again cruises Broadway with an even more radical production of a vintage musical.
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ABCD By May Treuhaft-Ali
World Premiere at Barrington Stage Company
By: - Jul 14th, 2022Barrington Stage Company in its tradition of encouraging new voices is providing playwright May Treuhaft-Ali with her first professional production. She has created a topical work based on ripped from the headlines reporting on the crisis in American public education.
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Kim’s Convenience at Westport Country Playhouse
Adapted from Hit Canadian Sitcom
By: - Jul 13th, 2022Kim’s Convenience now at Westport Country Playhouse is adapted from the long running hit Canadian sitcom. It was aired on Netflix. It centers on the patriarch of a Korean family that loves over the shop. His broken English and inventive syntax are part of the humor if you can understand it.
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Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia
World Premiere by by Central Works
By: - Jul 12th, 2022Cristina Garcia, who has adapted her 1992 National Book Award finalist novel into a world-premiere play, delves into a number of stock motifs and stock character types, but in a vivid, imaginative, and entertaining way. The story, which takes place in Havana and Brooklyn in 1979-1980, reveals a family with four determined women of Cuban ancestry; representing three generations; living in two countries; and sharing one common condition – zero male partners impede their personal pursuits at this point in their lives.
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Man of God by Anna Ouyang Moench
Opens Williamstown Theatre Festival Season
By: - Jul 08th, 2022After a six week run at Geffen Playhouse MAN OF GOD written by Anna Ouyang Moench and directed by Maggie Burrows has launched the three play season for the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Four Korean American teen girls are confined to a Bangkok hotel room during a field trip with their Pastor. It appears that he is a voyeur and predator. Once outed the comedy entails fantasy acts of revenge.
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Hurricane Diane by Madeline George
At Chicago's Theatre Wit
By: - Jul 06th, 2022Dionysus/Diane has messages for us. The messages we continue to ignore about the serious dangers that climate change portends for our future—and more importantly, for the futures of our children and grandchildren. Yes, while we seethe with anger about SCOTUS decisions and the January 6 insurrection, playwright Madeline George wants us to get mad about climate change too. She’s right, of course.
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Mega Award Winning Once
Impeccable Berkshire Theatre Group Production
By: - Jul 04th, 2022Directed by Gregg Edelman, Berkshire Theatre Group has created a stunning production of Once the multiple award winning musical. The twelve actors in this work are also the musicians and singers. Set in a Dublin pub it tells the tale of unrequited love between a Guy and Girl. For this critic it proved to be an emotionally shattering theatrical experience.
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Eva Luna Dramatized at Repertorio Espanol
Storytelling Honored on Stage
By: - Jun 30th, 2022Repertorio Espanol presents big theater in a compact space. Productions are often not only intense but sprawling in their content. The trick of compacting large stories in a small space is one of the company’s specialties. Eva Luna, Caridad Svich’s apt dramatization of Isabel Allende's big third novel, gives ample opportunity to display these skills.
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Paris by Eboni Booth
In Chicago Steep Theatre New Home
By: - Jun 29th, 2022Jonathan Berry (no relation) directs this script, the midwest premiere of a debut work by playwright/actor Eboni Booth, a Vermont native. It’s the first production in Steep Theatre’s new home, a short walk from its earlier home on Berwyn Avenue. She was one of 10 playwrights awarded a 2021 Steinberg Playwright Award, given annually to up-and-coming American playwrights.
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A Strange Loop, the Musical
Edwin Bates Steps into the Lead Role
By: - Jun 26th, 2022A Strange Loop, the musical, is an exuberant yet sad story about a young, queer Black man who is struggling to write a musical. In fact, Michael R. Jackson, winner of Tonys for Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical, spent twenty years putting this show together.
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B.R.O.K.E.N. Code B.I.R.D. Switching
World Premiere by Tara L. Wilson Noth at Berkshire Theatre Group
By: - Jun 26th, 2022The playwright, Tara L. Wilson Noth, has taken on a lot as the program notes state: Racism, incarceration, justice, and relationships. There can be turmoil trying to follow and resolve this mélange of subplots.
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The Mystery of Irma Vep
At Island City Stage near Ft. Lauderdale
By: - Jun 26th, 2022The Mystery of Irma Vep by Charles Ludlam is a spoof of genres such as Gothic melodrama and horror. Island City Stage in Wilton Manors, near Ft. Lauderdale, has mounted a consistently entertaining production. The play is purely escapist entertainment.
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The Year of Magical Thinking
A Production by GableStage Near Miami
By: - Jun 21st, 2022A powerful production of "The Year of Magical Thinking" is running through June 26 at GableStage in Coral Gables (suburban Miami). In "The Year of Magical Thinking," author and journalist Joan Didion recounts the year following her husband's sudden death. The basis for the play adaptation of "The Year of Magical Thinking" is the award-winning memoir by Joan Didion.
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Ain’t Misbehavin: The Fats Waller Musical Show
Jukebox Musical at Barrington Stage
By: - Jun 20th, 2022Artistic director, Julianne Boyd, in her storied career will be remembered for her many stunning musicals. That run ends this season with a revival of the 1978, Tony winner, Ain’t Misbehavin: The Fats Waller Musical Show. The jukebox musical runs some two hours with an intermission.
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X in Dorchester: Malcolm Comes Home
Anthony Davis Opera Conducted by Gil Rose
By: - Jun 19th, 2022Today, decades after it was written and first premiered at New York City Opera, X, the Life and Times of Malcolm X, feels both deeply rooted in classic opera traditions of Wagner, Strauss and Berg and deeply connected to our jazz heritage. The work is as much Charlie Mingus as it is say Parsifal, which composer Anthony Davis often references. A semi-staged concert version was performed at the Strand Theatre in Dorchester, Massachusetts, near Malcom's childhood home.
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Deathtrap a Thriller
At The Legacy Theatre
By: - Jun 16th, 2022Ira Levin (author of novels Rosemary’s Baby and A Kiss Before Dying) wrote this play that he billed as a comedy/thriller in 1978. It had a long Broadway run and was made into the 1982 film starring Michael Caine, Christopher Reeves and Dyan Cannon.
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Harvey Milk, the Opera, in St. Louis
Composer Stewart Wallace Creates a Smashing Success
By: - Jun 13th, 2022Harvey Milk, the re-tooled opera, premieres at Opera Theatre of St. Lotus. It is a smashing hit. Composer Stewart Wallace talks about again looking at the work, first draft created in 1994-5. He now lives in Rome and is in St. Louis for event. He presents the title character and his friends as human. Michael Korie is librettist and contributes a journalist's eye for detail in moving scenes.
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Cabaret at Goodspeed
Production Lacks Sting
By: - Jun 12th, 2022Cabaret is one of the great musicals of the 1960s. Kander and Ebb (and book writer Joe Masterhoff) created a show that used a seedy, third-class nightclub as a metaphor for Germany slipping into the Nazi era.
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Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward
Witty Summer Fun in Chicago
By: - Jun 11th, 2022Blithe Spirit is personal for me; it was my first involvement in live theater, when I joined the Cortez, Colorado, community theater many decades ago. I worked on the set, sold tickets and made new friends who were interested in the arts in that oil-boom town. Later I directed (William Inge’s Picnic) and acted (in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and a western melodrama, Deadwood Dick, or the Game of Gold). As a child and teen in Chicago, I had often gone to the theater with my Aunt Belle and also attended theater as a student at UIC. But Blithe Spirit was the first time I experienced the stage. And I still can repeat many of the lines.
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