Cindy Pierre

AN OPERATIC DEATH IN VENICE A storm blackens the skies, casting a shadow on the land.   The citizens and soldiers of Venice sway with anticipation, waiting for their mighty general to triumphantly return. In the center of an impressive, multi-tiered wartime display embellished with cannons, hangs Jesus Christ on a crucifix, his light shrouded by…

NO RESURRECTION HERE While the snow is thawing and the flowers are getting ready to shoot out of the soil, the August Strindberg Repertory Theatre, a newly-formed company that’s dedicated to bringing Strindberg to American audiences, presents an ambitious production of Easter which is sure to get you reflecting on, and perhaps preparing for, the…

A GAMBLE WHICH DOESN’T ALWAYS  PAY OFF Flashing, fluorescent lights, glitzy blazers, showgirls galore, and an immodest display of drama and decadence are the background for… wait… is that Dean Martin?   No, the handsome and rakish would-be villain of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, played rapturously by tenor Piotr Beczala, is the Duke of a casino.   Set in…

ASSAULTED If you’re looking to experience the shell shock and the trauma that soldiers undergo during wartime and its aftermath, then head on down to the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University to see David T. Little’s operatic Soldier Songs.   But please heed the warning.   This multimedia event is not your garden-variety…

A POWERFUL WATER BY THE SPOONFUL CONTAINS CONFUSION BY THE CUPFUL Quiara Alegria Hudes’ 2012 Pulitzer-Prize winning Water by the Spoonful is a bold and provocative drama that uses cyber technology to illustrate the woes of addiction.   Hudes – book writer for In the Heights – draws from true events and real-life family members to…

THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION MAY LACK RHYTHM, BUT THIS IS ONE HILARIOUS AND UPLIFTING BARBER If you’re looking to usher in the Holiday season with some good entertainment, then look no further than the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville.   Following a traditional commedia dell’arte structure, this delightful French comedy is amusing…

A PENNY’S WORTH In the mood for some light-hearted, endearing entertainment that will make your face and heart smile?   Then get yourself a ticket to Barry Kleinbort’s (direction, book, music and lyrics) 13 Things about Ed Carpolotti, a new one-act cabaret based on a monologue from Jeffrey Hatcher’s Three Viewings.   Although the plot introduction takes…

UNFULFILLED WANTS David Mamet’s latest dramatic work, The Anarchist, begins as abruptly as it ends, but despite the jarring effects, there is a good reason for the sharpness of these moments.   Jeff Croiter’s lighting cues punctuate the first and final scenes like black and white markers for what is otherwise grey, nebulous and “opaque” material,…

REIGNING SUPREME! Monay, Monay, Monay, Monay, MONAY! If the seemingly heartless Irish tycoon Michael R. Regan (a fantastic Dave Hanson) had a theme song in the beginning of Edward Sheldon’s 1911 melodrama The Boss, it would be the 70’s O’Jays’ classic, “For the Love of Money.” Despite a 60-year gap in storylines and period, the…

A BIG YARN AND A BIGGER YAWN In theory and concept, Francine Volpe’s The Good Mother has all the fixins’ for a juicy, if not compelling drama: diverse, colorful characters, goofy one-night stands, 12-step amends, off-stage crying, and pasts that can’t seem to be outrun.   Despite all of this and more, the lazy, anti-climactic, and…

A BLOODY GOOD TIME Bloody Sunday is a 1972 incident in Derry, Northern Ireland, during which 13 civil rights protestors and bystanders were shot and killed by the British Army. Although the tragic events have been artistically immortalized in song, poetry, fine art, and even before in the theater, the Irish Repertory Theatre’s production of…

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT Unless the overview of a story is grossly inadequate, people seldom ask for both the summary and details.   Presented as two monologues on a sparsely furnished stage, Mathew MacKenzie’s The Particulars provides both in sequence, beginning with the broad strokes of a harrowing situation, followed by a more deliberate…

SPIDER-MAN 2.NO By now, you’ve probably read at least a portion if not all of the hoopla that surrounds Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark, originally helmed by book writer and director Julie Taymor.   Its reputation for being rife with technical and structural problems and being one of the most ambitious productions ever to take place…

THEY MAKE OTHER DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES SEEM DOWNRIGHT SEMI-FUNCTIONAL The New Group’s Blood From a Stone is an unsatisfying portrait of an already fractured family in Connecticut that continues to crumble over a few days, much like the dilapidated house that they grew up in. Â  A writin g debut from playwright Tommy Nohilly, this production is…

ANCIENT TALES OF WORLD WAR II Pants on Fire’s Metamorphoses is a deliciously entertaining, award-winning import from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that the U.S. is lucky to have. Â  Set in Britain during World War II, Ovid’s already colorful tales about gods, love, and creation come alive in a vivid, vaudevillian presentation that exploit’s the cast’s…

THE ETHICS OF MURDER Steven Michael Walters’ (Glenn Reed on NBC’s Friday Night Lights) The Girl from Nashville, marketed as a Southern Gothic tragedy, is adequately southern and adequately tragic, but takes the gloomy part of Gothic to the extreme.   A deconstructed story about what appears at first to be a senseless murder, this production’s…