IF ONLY SINCERITY MEANT SUCCESS You really want this play to work. It means so well and maybe so much. But it’s hard to find a worthy resolution in a play about repeated, nation-wide violations of human rights. Maybe that’s the point. But it’s no dramatic advantage. The optimistic title of truth and reconciliation, now…

IN SEARCH OF A STORY Loved ones seen in stasis are probably truer to most families. No clans are ever collectively happy or purposeful, only the members and not, of course, all the time. But, however accurate its depiction   of mutual dysfunction, a play about paralyzed characters is not intrinsically dramatic. Take Sycamore. There are…

ABBONDANZA! What a gem of a jewel is this rarely done masterwork! It’s what Candide was to Leonard Bernstein or Porgy and Bess to George Gershwin, a folk opera to rise above mere musicals. As wonderful as Guys and Dolls and How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying remain (enough to put any composer/lyricist/bookwriter…

CANNED SPAM-ILTON For little more than an hour, Spamilton, an attention-deficit musical travesty, never lets up until we’re let out. Exploding with relentless volleys of unfriendly fire, it bombards us with “in” jokes and manufactured outrage over New York City’s less than Great White Way. With the crowd packed to bursting in the studio in…

KWIECIEŠƒ’S ONEGIN IS EUGENE THERAPY Having brought seven new productions to Chicago this year, perhaps it was inevitable that Lyric Opera would bring an old one out of the woodwork. But what an excellent one to choose. Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin was last heard nearly ten years ago, so this would seem not a season too…

COPELAND’S MOREL LACKS INVENTION Four years ago, Long Beach Opera (Artistic and General Director Andreas Mitisek’s other company) staged Stewart Copeland’s The Tell-Tale Heart, giving the one-act opera it’s U.S. debut. Based on the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, it was an undeniably madcap production with little to recommend itself beyond sheer novelty. As…