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Chicago Theater Review: POTTED POTTER (Broadway Playhouse)
HOGWARTS AND ALL The Harry Potter parody called Potted Potter is the joint creation of a couple of Englishmen named Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner (Dan and Jeff on the stage). The duo once worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s children’s network, which explains a lot. Potted Potter advertises that it will appeal to adults…
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Chicago Music Review: CHICAGO YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAS’ FALL CONCERT (Symphony Center, Orchestra Hall)
AN OCCASION WHERE YOUTH IS NOT WASTED ON THE YOUNG The Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras (CYSO) consists of more than 100 musicians. They’ve received an international reputation as a premier orchestral ensemble, and recently performed at the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah Country Club. At their Fall Concert in Orchestra Hall, the youth performers file to their chairs…
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Chicago Theater Review: JAMES JOYCE’S THE DEAD (Court Theatre)
ANYTHING BUT DEAD James Joyce is not usually considered a source of Christmas cheer, but the great Irish author did write one Christmas piece of sorts, a short story called The Dead that appeared in his story collection Dubliners. The tale was adapted into a musical that had a decent run off and on Broadway…
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San Diego Theater Review: A HAMMER, A BELL AND A SONG TO SING (San Diego Repertory Theatre)
A FEW PROTESTS… Todd Salovey’s revue of mostly American songs of protest is buoyed by a fiercely energetic, multi-talented quartet of singers and musicians: Dave Crossland, Jim Mooney, Vaughn Armstrong, and the redoubtable Lisa Payton. When Payton hits the money notes it’s enough to pop your sternum from its rib cage. But the narrative, the…
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Off-Broadway Theater Review: THE GOOD MOTHER (The New Group)
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…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: MRS. MANNERLY (Theatre 40)
WHAT THEATRE 40 NEEDS IS A GUIDE TO AN EXCRUCIATINGLY CORRECT PRODUCTION Miss Manners, the alter-ego of writer Judith Martin, is my heroine. Her “Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior” is witty, practical, and is about a lot more than table settings’”though she certainly instructs in dining service í la russe, which entails fourteen courses and…
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Chicago Theater Review: HELLCAB (Profiles)
WORTH THE FARE Hellcab opened in Chicago in 1992 for a 12-performance run and the immediate audience buzz had the show playing for the rest of the decade. Now it is is back at the Profiles Theatre to celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary. To the legion of playgoers who flocked to the original production for…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: ANNA LUCASTA (Los Angeles Theater Center)
BAD GIRL DONE GOOD Here’s a play with a fascinating history for you. Early-mid 20th century Chicago playwright Phillip Yordan originally intended this play to be set in the Polish American community, but when he couldn’t find a producer, he re-wrote it for the American Negro Theater, which, in its famous 1944 production, carried the…
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Chicago Theater Review: MY ONE AND ONLY (Marriott Theatre)
RETRO GERSHWIN STILL BESTS TODAY’S STANDARDS Like the unsurpassable Crazy for You, My One and Only is more than more than a dozen recycled Gershwin tunes. In the spirit of those daffy Jazz Age musicals and Gershwin’s own Princess Theatre offerings (here the model is Fred Astaire’s 1927 romp Funny Face), this Tony-winning song-and-dance spectacle,…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: HAMLET (The Broad Stage in Santa Monica)
LEAN HAMLET ON THE BROAD STAGE Shakespeare’s Globe’s touring production of Shakespeare’ Hamlet is currently on the boards at the elegant Broad Stage in Santa Monica, CA. Written in a time of great upheaval in Britain after Elizabeth’s reign, Hamlet falls neatly into the family of Jacobean revenge tragedies. Shakespeare most probably wrote Hamlet as…
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San Francisco Opera Review: TOSCA (SF Opera)
AN OPENING NIGHT SURPRISE It’s one of those instances that may just be talked about in the San Francisco opera circle for years to come. In Act One of Puccini’s Tosca (1900) at San Francisco Opera, we were treated to the glorious and beautiful strains of Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu, and although she grew in…
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Off-Broadway Theater Review: MIES JULIE (St. Ann’s Warehouse)
HOT AUGUST STRINDBERG NIGHT St. Ann’s Warehouse inaugurates its new space with an often gripping production of Mies Julie, adapted to post-apartheid South Africa. A dense fog sweeps over the earthen, stone-tiled kitchen of an old estate in the Eastern Cape Karoo. These weathered quarters (designed by Patrick Curtis) provide the heated setting for a…
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Film Review: LINCOLN (directed by Steven Spielberg)
DISHONET ABE Historical movies are often made as historical parallel. They comment on our time as much as their time. On some level this is the inevitable nature of history – taking from the past what is necessary to explain the present. Historical parallel clearly seems to be the intention of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, which…
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Bay Area Theater Review: THE WHITE SNAKE (Berkeley Repertory Theatre)
A DREAMY BEDTIME STORY Theater critics often speak of “universal themes” in the theater’”these are topics to which people in any place and at any time can relate. One of the main reasons that Greek literature, Aesop’s Fables, Shakespeare, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales, to name a few, retain their appeal is that people from varied backgrounds…
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San Francisco Theater Review: ANOTHER WAY HOME (Magic Theatre)
THERE HAS TO BE ANOTHER WAY When Anna Ziegler’s world premiere play Another Way Home began, it seemed that the thrust of the play would revolve around Joey (Daniel Petzold), a 17-year-old spending the summer as a Counselor-in-Training at Camp Kickapoo in Maine. When his Jewish, upper middle-class parents Philip (Mark Pinter) and Lillian (Kim…
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Theater Review: DEATH OF A SALESGIRL (Bootleg Theater)
BETTER THAN THIN MINTS FROM A GIRL SCOUT The World Premiere of Patricia Scanlon’s Death of a Salesgirl is a must-see surreal tragicomedy presented by The Bootleg Theater. Its fresh and innovative use of space coupled with its inspired use of integrated multimedia make the already powerful piece that much more immediate to today’s attention…
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San Francisco Nightclub Review: LADY RIZO (Rrazz Room)
LADY OF THE LICK She bills herself as an Entertainer, Dream Maker, Chanteuse, and Superstar, but Lady Rizo can be called so much more. With her new show, Autumn in San Francisco, the dynamic diva blew into the City by the Bay with all the subtlety of Hurricane Sandy during Autumn in New York. This…
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Los Angeles Concert Preview: RAíšL ESPARZA SINGS SONDHEIM (Valley Performing Arts Center)
BEING ALIVE IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT When the senseless Leap of Faith had its out of town tryout at the Ahmanson before its crash-and-burn on Broadway, there was only one thing which made sense: the pyrotechnic performer Raúl Esparza. This magnetic talent made evident that he could sing the listings from a phone book and make…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE BURNT PART BOYS (Theater Wit)
MINING MEMORIES Adam Guettel’s Floyd Collins remains the ultimate spelunking musical as it depicts a cave explorer entrapped by both hard rock and a media spectacle. The Burnt Part Boys, a 90-minute slice of coal by bookwriter Mariana Elder, composer Chris Miller and lyricist Nathan Tysen (originally premiered by Playwrights Horizon), is less ambitious and…
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San Francisco Theater Review: WILDER TIMES (Aurora Theatre)
FAR FROM WILD Thornton Wilder, especially as a playwright, looks to the commonality of all people to demonstrate the value in appreciating life, especially when the death of a loved one is involved. Although Wilder’s best-known work is Our Town, his many short plays contain the same theme. But staging Wilder can be tricky. In order…
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