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Theater Review: SHINERS (Woolworth Theatre in Nashville)
CIRQUE DU WICKS SALOON REVUE Booze, mostly respectable eye candy, and the music turned up. That’s downtown Nashville in a nutshell. Until recently, Broadway (not The Great White Way, but the iconic southern thoroughfare) was replete with these three in the historical honky tonk bars that vibrated with live country and western tunes of Roger…
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Theater Review: DOUBT: A PARABLE (New Village Arts Center in Carlsbad Village)
DON’T DOUBT THIS PRODUCTION John Patrick Shanley‘s drama Doubt: A Parable opened in New York City in 2004 and won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2005. As evidenced by New Village Arts‘ production, which opened at the Conrad Prebys Theatre last weekend, twenty years after its premiere it still ranks among the most stirring…
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Theater Review: THE ADDAMS FAMILY (San Diego Musical Theatre)
ALTOGETHER OOKEY GOOD FUN When American cartoonist Charles Addams started drawing a family of moderately harmless ghoulish folks for The New Yorker in 1938, how could he have expected them to gain huge fame in the world of television (as there was no TV) and multiple films. And he certainly would have been amazed if…
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Theater Review: BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA (Odyssey Theatre Ensemble)
A FEATHER IN ARYE GROSS’S CAP Playwright Anna Ouyang Moench uses the setting of a wooded area — beautifully designed at Odyssey Theatre by Mark Guirguis — as the backdrop of this beautiful family drama. The father, John (Arye Gross), is just about equally bound to his liberal and earth-loving principles, his love of bird-watching, and…
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Theater Review: FOLLIES (Musical Theatre Guild)
A FULFILLING FOLLIES One night? I mean, ONE night? Then again, the reunion in Follies we witness takes place on one night as well. And for those at said reunion and those of us lucky enough to be at Musical Theatre Guild‘s staged concert performance of Follies last Sunday, it was a night to remember….
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Theater Review: THE TRAVELERS (Latino Theatre Co. & Magic Theatre at the Los Angeles Theater Center)
WHY ARE THE TRAVELERS NOT MOVING? The calendar listings for Luis Alfaro‘s The Travelers, currently playing at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, say “We are all travelers, Brother. Our journeys take place inside.” The trouble is that journeys presented on the stage should not only be inside, but also aesthetical and active and must be treated…
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Theater Review: THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME (Chance Theatre)
AN AMAZING INCIDENT Meet Christopher Francis Boone, a wannabe bloodhound who has significant social, behavioral and communication challenges; we assume the unnamed disorder is on the autism spectrum, but this magnificent play isn’t about his mental challenges, nor is Christopher’s neurodivergent condition even mentioned. The British teen ’” the unlikely hero of Mark Haddon’s best-selling novel…
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Theater Review: EVITA (Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington D.C.)
A MYTH, A MESS, AND A MISS For all the hoopla that is Evita, save for the beautifully haunting ballad “Don’t Cry for me Argentina,” Shakespeare Theatre’s version, directed by Sammi Cannold, was a painful two hours of screeching and unintelligible lyrics. You want to cry for Evita, but may end up crying for the…
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Theater Review: Fat Ham (The Huntington at Boston Center for the Arts)
BLACK JOY RIDE This collaboration between Boston’s Black theater company Front Porch Arts Collective and the Atlanta-based Alliance Theater Company, directed by Stevie Walker-Webb, takes its audience into a fun-house version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that is, well, FUN even as it offers the characters and the audience visions of their better selves. James Ijames’s Fat…
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Theater Review: MACBETH IN STRIDE (Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington D.C.)
Created and performed by Shakespeare Theatre Company Associate Director Whitney White, this rock ‘n’ roll play with music turns Macbeth on its head’”and is a great complement to STC’s spring production of Macbeth. The cast features Whitney White as Woman (Director of STC’s The Amen Corner and Broadway’s Jaja’s African Hair Braiding), Charlie Thurston as Man (STC’s Here There Are Blueberries), Stacey Sargeant as First Witch (Broadway’s for colored…
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Theater Review: MEASURE STILL FOR MEASURE (Boston Court Pasadena)
#METOO FOR MEASURE I can’t imagine the work that writer/director Jessica Kubzansky put into the world premiere of her immersive, hybrid-theater, play-within-a-play Measure STILL for Measure. The logistics alone! At Boston Court Pasadena, where Kubzansky is artistic director, utilized are the 99-seat Main Stage, the dressing rooms (seen via video), the lobby, the parking lot,…
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Theater Review: ASSASSINS (Lyric Stage Company)
LIVES OF NOT-SO-QUIET DESPERATION The premise is simple: Each of nine people who have tried to kill or who actually have killed an American president is given a chance to persuade us of his or her higher purpose. Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins is an entertainment’”in the bygone sense of revues and follies built around…
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Theater Review: BEFORE THE SWORD (World Premiere at New Conservatory Theater Center)
TURNING SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES British author Terence Hanbury “Tim” White (1906-1964), better known as T.H. White, is best-known for The Once and Future King (1958) a collection of four novels — three previously published — based on the Arthurian Legends, stories which had already been around for over a thousand years when, in 1938, White…
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Theater Review: ANGELS IN AMERICA: PART TWO (Bedlam and Central Square Theater in Cambridge, MA)
ONE PLAGUE OR ANOTHER What happens when you put eight actors on a stage with a script that includes the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, the Mormon Visitors Center, the Jewish mysticism of philosopher Walter Benjamin, and Roy Cohn’”one of the slimiest lawyers who ever lived? If that script happens to be Angels in America…
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Theater Review: WOLF PLAY (Shotgun Players)
LIBERTY FOR WOLVES IS DEATH TO THE LAMBS Gabby Momah makes a star turn as Ash, a conflicted non-binary adoptive parent and up-and-coming boxer in Hansol Jung’s Wolf Play, a fascinating, thrilling, sad and sometimes elusive new play now making its west coast premiere at Shotgun Players in Berkeley, easily one of my favorite spaces…
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Theater Review: LES MISÉRABLES (National Tour)
DON’T MIZ IT Unlike most of the characters in the blockbuster sung-through musical Les Misérables, the show itself will never die. Consistently presented either on Broadway, national tours, and globally since the English-language version opened on the West End in 1985, audiences can’t get enough of Victor Hugo’s story about ex-con and do-gooder Jean Valjean…
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Theater Review: BRIGADOON (Palm Canyon Theatre)
MUSICALS LIKE THIS OCCUR ONCE EVERY 100 YEARS Palm Canyon Theater (PCT) launched its 23/24 theater season here in Coachella Valley this past Friday evening with the opening of Lerner and Loewe’s first successful Broadway show, Brigadoon. The show is about a Scottish village that appears only one day every hundred years. When two Americans…
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Theater Review: POTUS (SpeakEasy Stage Company at Calderwood Pavilion in Boston)
WELCOME TO THE WEST WING, WHERE THE WOMEN ARE FUCKED AND THE MAN IS FECKLESS Seven women propping up one man’”that’s the premise behind Selena Fillinger’s POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. The widely produced play, which had its Broadway debut just a little over a year…
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Theater Review: THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (Actors’ Shakespeare Project in Boston)
HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE KATRINA? What to do about The Taming of the Shrew, a play that seems to glorify the subjugation of women? Actors’ Shakespeare Project offers an intriguing and very entertaining answer. Under the direction of ASP Artistic Director Christopher V. Edwards, this cast — with only one male performer,…
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Theater Review: NUNSENSE (Coronado Playhouse in Coronado/San Diego)
WHO LEFT FROWNING? NUN OF US! When you’re picking shows for your season, you’re off to a good start when you pick the second-longest-running show in Off-Broadway history. One that’s been produced in 26 languages. One that’s spun off five sequels. And perhaps most telling, one that came full circle to be produced in Brazil…
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