Theatre
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Ian Bostridge Reimagines Winterreise
Mostly Mozart Offers Hans Zender's Interpretation
By: - Aug 12th, 2017Netia Jones has combined tenor Ian Bostridge's thirty year passion and a brilliant "compositional interpretation" of the piano music for orchestra into a hydra-headed tour de force with video, sets and the suggestion of cabaret. Bostridge has the perfect voice for the wanderer, a stranger at the start and at the end. The staging works well.
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The Curious Dog in Los Angeles
All the Bells and Whistles for Ahmanson Theastre Production
By: - Aug 11th, 2017To help the audience experience what takes place inside the head of Christopher, director Elliott employs the full technical arsenal of the Ahmanson that is available to her. The set design by Bunny Christie, is a huge three sided space staging area with colored LED lights both on the walls and the floor that are cued by Christopher’s dialogue and stage movement. It’s all very technical and very eye-popping. In a transfer from Lodon “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” won a Tony Award in 2015.
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Hamlet Opera in Oakland
West Edge Opera at the Pacific Pipe Warehouse
By: - Aug 11th, 2017Much of the criticism of this work is noteworthy but inappropriate. Complainers argue that the opera misses much of the play, which must be expected unless you want a five-hour opera. This is the same argument people use when they’ve read a long book and then see the movie.
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The Chastity Tree by West Edge Opera
Pacific Pipe Warehouse In Oakland
By: - Aug 09th, 2017The music of The Chastity Tree is very much of its time and place. From the classic era, it still embraces baroque traces in tinkling harpsichord and clipped recitatives. The Bay Area is blessed with and attracts an abundance of great young opera singers, and West Edge always casts well from this enviable pool.
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Shakespeare in Love
Oregon Shakespeare Festival Premieres Play from Movie
By: - Aug 09th, 2017Shakespeare-centric theater companies like Oregon Shakes must provide a balance of Elizabethan era works with other offerings to attract sufficient audiences. Sometimes, a hybrid, and especially a sophisticated comedy that is about Shakespeare or one of his plays can be well received. So it is with Shakespeare in Love, the U.S. premiere of the stage version of the highly successful film.
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Blues Is a Woman
Custom Made in San Freancico
By: - Aug 09th, 2017After development at music venues, the musical revue "Blues is a Woman" has begun a theatrical run at Custom Made Theater in San Francisco. In a memorable production, six women wail and moan and plead in a rewarding evening of blues standards and original music by lead singer Pamela Rose in a format that is as informative as it is entertaining.
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Hair in Chicago
Revisiting the Age of Aquarius
By: - Aug 08th, 2017A half century later in the spirit of the Summer of Love there is a revival of Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical. Two and a half generations of later it still casts magical spells. Nancy Bishop takes on a trip down memory lane.
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Hannah and the Dread Gazebo by Jiehae Park
Oregon Shakespeare Festival
By: - Aug 08th, 2017Jiehae Park’s innovative and fast moving world premiere play, Hannah and the Dread Gazebo, touches on a dizzying number of themes including familial relationships, aspirations, wishes, creation mythology, international relations, cross-culturalism, and even a humorous twist on racism.
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Informed Consent in South Florida
Play Pitting Science vs. Religion in Coral Gables
By: - Aug 08th, 2017Issue-packed, yet taut play receives strong production at suburban Miami's GableStage. Informed Consent is unsettling, but is leavened with humor and optimism. Playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer directs a talented quintent of performers in a riveting production of her play.
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This by Melissa James Gibson
Theatrical Thirty-Something Sitcom at Barrington Stage
By: - Aug 07th, 2017Moving on from an endemic fixations with plays about milennials Barrington Stage has progressed by a generation with This by Melissa James Gibson. The focus is on the trials and tribulations of friends who met in college. Add to this a dark and sexy stranger in a French doctor without borders,
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A Legendary Romance in Williamstown
Music and Lyrics, Geoff Morrow, Book, Timothy Prager
By: - Aug 06th, 2017This is the second producton of the musical A Legendary Romance with music and lyrics, Geoff Morrow, book by Timothy Prager. While it needs more work, the norm for musicals, starring Jeff McCarthy and Lora Lee Gayer it is the best work we have seen this season from Wiliamstown Theatre Festival. It is a tragic love story set to music about lives and careers ruined during the 1950s when Holywood was on trial for its alleged communism.
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Henry IV, Part One
Oregon Shakespeare Festival
By: - Aug 06th, 2017Director Lilean Blais-Cruz does well with limited resources. Actors extract whatever drama and humor that the words allow. Lighting and sound achieve expected OSF standards. This production plays in the round and with a minimum of staging – the fixed portion being a number of vertical white pipes with light wands attached to a maze of pipes above.
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Off the Rails by Randy Reinholz
Oregon Shakespeare Festival Reconfigures Measure for Measure
By: - Aug 06th, 2017This play is both entertaining and rich with messages. It deserves to be seen. At the same time, the playwright tries to accomplish a great deal, perhaps at the expense of cohesion. The tone changes often as dialogue alternates between Shakespearean tracts taken directly from the source and the naturalistic speech of the Old West.
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Berkshire Theatre Group's Fall Programming
Pulitzer and Tony Winner David Auburn's Lost Lake at the Unicorn
By: - Aug 04th, 2017Berkshire Theatre Group announces additions to the fall and winter seasons, as well as casting for the Fall production of David Auburn’s Lost Lake at The Unicorn Theatre. Therde wlll also be a number of unique musical events at its Colonial Theatre in downtiown Pittsfield.
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Footloose the Musical in Fremont. California
Starstruck Youth Performing Arts
By: - Aug 01st, 2017"Footloose the Musical" is based on a film that was part of a strong cluster of movies that in some ways was a gentle echo of the youthful rebellion of the '60s. Hollywood struck a rich vein of teen and young adult musical films in the decade starting 1978. Some were based on earlier stage musicals, and others would later become live theater pieces. Starstruck Youth Performing Arts has selected a perfect vehicle for a large teen cast.
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Bad Jews in Miami Lakes
Main Street Players Stages Joshua Harmon Dramedy
By: - Jul 31st, 2017Bad Jews is a biting comedy/drama at South Florida theater. Joshua Harmon play marks Main Street Players' third professional production. Company excels in an intense, funny production.
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Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring
Making Family Insanity Hilarious in Stockbridge
By: - Jul 31st, 2017This is a classic comedy that still entertains with a spectacular cast and great timing! Arsenic and Old Lace ran for three years on Broadway starting in 1941 and still holds up. There is a lively production on Stage at Bekshire Theatre Group in Stockbridge.
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Dimitrij by Dvorak at Bard's SummerScape
Leon Botstein Conduts an Underdog Opera
By: - Jul 31st, 2017Leon Botstein, a great American educator and music polymath, makes the case for underexposed compositions by known and unknown composers. This year, he presents Anton Dvo?ák's Dimitrij as a feature of the Bard SummerScape Festival.
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Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow
Feiffer Deconstructs Chekhov in Williamstown
By: - Jul 30th, 2017Over 62 years of Williamstown Theatre Festival there have been 18 productions of the four best known plays by Anton Chekov; The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, the Seagull and Three Sisters. There have been five prior versions of Three Sisters and this season we have yet another. Well, not exactly.
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Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage
American Dreams in 1905
By: - Jul 29th, 2017Inspired by her great grandmother's life, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage, presents Esther, a fine seamstress in 1905's New York City. Through this lens, we meet others of various races and sexes, from places around the world, all struggling to achieve their dreams. How they fare becomes our concern.
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The Nance at Pride Arts Center
Evoking an Era of Burlesque
By: - Jul 28th, 2017The burlesque acts at the Irving Place Theatre make up almost half of The Nance, which is riproaringly directed by John Nasca. You’ll see a feathery fan dance by Joan (Britt-Marie Sivertsen) and other songs, dances and modest strip routines by Sylvie and Carmen (Steph Vondell). The women’s costumes are colorful and sparkly—and designed by Nasca, doing double duty as costume designer.
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Katrin Hilbe Directs Dear Jane
Joan Beber Play Mounted at the Clurman
By: - Jul 28th, 2017Joan Beber has tackled an intimate part of her own life, the death of a twin sister, in her new play, Dear Jane. Formed as a letter to her deceased sibling, Beber creates many memorable characters. Katrin Hilbe directs flawlessly.
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Timon of Athens at Stratford Festival
Yet Another Superb Production
By: - Jul 27th, 2017Stratford has a special history with this Shakespeare play, dating from Michael Langham’s extraordinary 1963 production with incidental music commissioned from Duke Ellington. Updating the setting, Langham offered an opulent melodrama with some textual additions, guest musicians and dancers.
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The Clean House by Pulitzer Nominated Sarah Ruhl
All Star Production at Williamstown Theatre Festival
By: - Jul 26th, 2017Mandy Greenfield, artistic director of Williamstown Theatre Festival, has produced The Clean House, a 2005 Pulitzer nominee, by Sarah Ruhl. Ii is a play written by, about, and for women. It is directed by Tony winner, Rebecca Taichman, and pairs Tony nominees Jayne Atkinson and Jessice Hecht. There are two other women and a guy who Ruhl sends packiing in Alaska leaving his terminally ill mistress.
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Sweeney Todd in South Florida
Sondheim Thriller at Palm Beach Dramaworks
By: - Jul 24th, 2017A fine cast and crew captures the darkness and the comic in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street The lead actor creates a sympathetic Sweeney, even if we abhor the character's actions. The unease of Sweeney Todd's world eerily mirrors our own.
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