Theater

DETECTING LOVE At first Christopher John Francis Boone seems a defective detective: A 15-year-old math whiz, this only child has Asperger’s Syndrome. The anomaly is enough to push adolescence way beyond awkward. Christopher’s autism manifests in manic multi-tasking, an inability to focus (or to lie), attention deficits, a maddening literal-mindedness, and a disarming directness that…

A HIGHLY ORGANIZED ENCHANTMENT Playwright Alan Knee called Sir J. M. Barrie “the man who was Peter Pan.” If so, it was an author’s compensation as much as creativity. James Barrie was a shy Scotsman, awkward and diffident in public with an extroverted artistry to compensate for self-effacing insecurity. In the 2004 motion picture Finding…

STILL BANGING FOR THE BUCKS The incredibly basic concept behind Stomp, a phenom now in its third decade, remains: “Make a rhythm out of anything we can get our hands on that makes a sound.” (Luke Cresswell, co-founder/director). The result: four global productions, including permanent venues in New York and London’”and the rousing tour now…

SO’”JUST EXACTLY WHEN WILL THE SUN COME UP? (HINT: 2020) The first Christmas special came early this year: another national tour of the  industrial-strength 1977 heart-warmer, Annie. Resistance is futile to this cunning confection. Again we warm to the tale of the plucky, Depression-era orphan redhead with an equally scrappy dog who never finds her parents…

LEARNING TO LOVE FROM WHAT DAD DIDN’T DO Dedicated memory-mongering, the 2013 chamber musical Fun Home–based on Alison Bechdel’s 2006 semiautobiographical graphic novel–is a worthy coming-out. We get the inside portrait of a lesbian daughter who learns more than she wanted from her gay dad. With serviceable songs by Jeanine Tesori and persuasive lyrics and…

EV’RY MOUNTAIN GETS CLIMBED AGAIN It’s fitting that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final collaboration is a tribute to the art and craft they served so well’”music and singing. Like Mary Poppins, convent girl Maria Rainer is a very nice nanny (minus umbrella) who teaches by example and uses play to build courage and confidence. Fraulein Rainer…

CORRUPTION: MORE FUN WHEN CHOREOGRAPHED Now in its twentieth year, this slimmed-down, near-concert version of Kander and Ebb’s cynical and enthralling musical features, as the smoothly lying lawyer Billy Flynn, John O’Hurley (J. Peterman in Seinfeld and a fixture on Dancing with the Stars. (He last appeared in the show in the 2011 tour which…

TWENTY YEARS OF HARD-HEELED HOOFING What Stomp delivered through percussive street-dancing, Forever Tango gave to Argentina’s national cooch dance, and A Chorus Line  and 42nd Street did for tap, Riverdance breathtakingly offers Irish dance and its cultural spin-offs. Wowing rapt crowds at Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre in its 20th anniversary world tour, this high-hoofing extravaganza can…