Theatre
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Zoey’s PERFECT Wedding
TheaterWorks in Hartford
By: - Jun 03rd, 2022Zoey’s PERFECT Wedding now playing at TheaterWorks in Hartford looks at what happens when the “perfect” part of the wedding doesn’t happen. Playwright Matthew López has combined humor (some farce, some slapstick) with an insightful understanding of our need for human connection and love.
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Funny Girl at the August Wilson Theater
Beanie Feldstein Disappoints
By: - Jun 03rd, 2022Fanny Brice – the real-like comedian who is the title character – had that quality. Unfortunately, while Beanie Feldstein is talented and tries hard – she doesn’t.
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Paradise Square, the Musical
Up for ten Tony Awards
By: - Jun 03rd, 2022Paradise Square directed by Moises Kaufman with choreography by Bill T. Jones, is an exuberant, refreshing and intelligent presentation of a significant moment in our history. It has been nominated for ten Tony awards, among them best musical, best choreography by Bill T. Jones and best actress in a musical, Joaqulna Kalukango.
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The Sound Inside by Adam Rapp
Produced by Marin Theatre Company
By: - Jun 03rd, 2022A relationship staple in the catalog of dramatic themes is that of professor and student. Traditionally, the professor is a man who takes sexual or emotional advantage of a female student, but that formula has diversified in recent decades.
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Beehive: the ‘60s Musical
Produced by Center REPertory
By: - Jun 04th, 2022In an implicit nod to the growing marijuana and hallucinogenic drug culture of the decade, David Crosby famously said that if you can remember the ‘60s, you weren’t there. Fortunately, for most of us who lived through it, that is a canard.
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Queen by Madhuri Shekar
At Long Wharf
By: - Jun 04th, 2022I wasn’t sure what to expect from this work by Madhuri Shekar and produced in partnership with the National Asian American Theater Company’s project. But I found it an engrossing, if not always totally motivated work.
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McConnia Chesser Narrates An Iliad at S&Co.
Was the War Fought in Troy or Pittsfield
By: - Jun 06th, 2022Following an all too familiar trend the playwrights, Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, have rewritten the iconic epic poem The Iliad, to the here and now. In the one act play McConnia Chesser compresses a ten year war into 110 minutes. It's a daunting task that exhausts the performer and her audience.
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Belfast Girls by Jaki McCarrick
Irish Repertory Theatre
By: - Jun 06th, 2022Belfast Girls, the Irish Rep’s current play by Jaki McCarrick is a sure-fire winner. Though all of the play’s action takes place on the transport ship Inchinnan in 1848 bound for Australia, the majority of the two act, 12-scene play with one intermission, takes place in a small, cramped, and windowless 5-bunk bed cabin in the ship’s steerage, and to a lesser degree on the ship’s deck where the girls can be seen contemplating their future.
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The Pajama Game
Produced by 42nd Street Moon at the Gateway Theatre
By: - Jun 06th, 2022Although “The Pajama Game” may not come across as an expressly political play, it was written when over 300 entertainers were still blacklisted as a result of House Un-American Activities Committee investigations. The central clash is certainly a classic between capital and labor. “Old Man” Hasler, the factory head, is played unsympathetically for his dishonesty and for his rigid rejection of a workers’ raise when the factory is doing extremely well.
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Andy Warhol in Iran by Brent Askari
Hit Premiere at Barrington Stage Company
By: - Jun 09th, 2022Overall we loved this new play. The actors were compelling in their roles and the direction of Skip Greer navigated them nicely. There were twists and turns that kept us engaged.Henry Stram was a very good if not great Warhol. He was actually too pretty with none of Andy’s awkward enigma. This was a play after all and not a documentary. To portray an authentic Andy would have added another half hour at least. This production kept it tight and sweet.
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Hadestown Produced by Broadway SF
Plays at the Orpheum Theatre
By: - Jun 10th, 2022From this play’s outset, it is clear that “Hadestown” will have a distinctive style. Although the musical’s auteur, Anaïs Mitchell, comes from the folk world, she developed a unique musical amalgam for the show with elements from blues, jazz, and pop in addition to folk. Her orchestration is as unexpected as it is brilliant in providing a magnificent background sound.
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Fefu & Her Friends
A Thinking Cap Theatre production
By: - Jun 10th, 2022Thinking Cap Theatre, based in South Florida, has mounted a strong production of the classic play, Fefu & Her Friends by Maria Irene Fornes. The mostly plotless play is an absurdist piece featuring eight female characters. Fefu & Her Friends touches on themes such as female relationships, insanity, and gender roles.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
