Theatre
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In the Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda
Hip Hop Musical in Rochester
By: - Sep 26th, 2017On opening night, everyone in the theater – from old, expected attendees to first-time youngsters – seemed involved and excited throughout. We are looking at a neighborhood — a single block of New York’s Washington Heights – and we simultaneously observe separate families, shops, households.
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The Legend of Pink, by Kheven LaGrone
Theatre Rhinoceros San Francisco
By: - Sep 23rd, 2017The Legend of Pink also surfaces important social issues outside the transgender realm. One is communication style by blacks who are socialized in mostly black communities.
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Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge
At Chicago's Goodman Theatre
By: - Sep 20th, 2017Belgian director Ivo van Hove’s visionary production retains virtually all Arthur Miller’s language but places it in a simplified setting that resembles a cage or fighting ring. The bare stage is surrounded on three sides by benches, with a single door at the rear. Miller’s narrator, local lawyer Alfieri (Ezra Knight) is omnipresent and adds poetic transitions to the action. The play is set in Red Hook, Brooklyn, near the docks.
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The Violin by Dan McCormick
Premier at 59E59 Theaters
By: - Sep 19th, 2017Dan McCormick has taken a Stradivarius left in a cab and told the story of a changing neighborhood in the East Village and values that do not endure. A thank you concert won’t cut the mustard as thanks in this section of town. What will?
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The Violin at 59E59 Theaters
World Premier of Dan McCormick's Play
By: - Sep 15th, 2017Playwright Dan McCormick has taken a Stradivarius left in a cab and told the story of a changing neighborhood in the East Village and values that do not endure. A thank you concert won’t cut the mustard as thanks in this section of town. What will?
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Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte
Produced by Opera San Jose
By: - Sep 13th, 2017Opera San Jose opened its 34th season with a handsome production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s popular opera buffa, Cosi Fan Tutte. A winsome cast of strong singers with fine acting chops yields a highly entertaining outcome.
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Deirdre of the Sorrows at City Lit Theatre
Irish Drama by John Millington Synge
By: - Sep 13th, 2017John Millington Synge, who is best known for his plays Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea, left an unfinished draft of Deirdre of the Sorrows when he died in 1909. The play was finished by William Butler Yeats and Synge’s fiancée, Molly Allgood.
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Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Barstow Performing Arts Center
By: - Sep 12th, 2017There are several versions of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” that have been performed. Each production company gets to select the version that suits their audiences the best. Director Havely has chosen the “meta-mix” version for Theatre 29. Audiences will be seeing an all-singing and dancing production. No written dialogue. Director Havely is fortunate in that her cast – all twenty-three singer/dancer/performers – are committed, dedicated, and eager to strut their stuff in this format.
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Rashomon by Philip Kan Gotanda
Ubuntu Theater Project in Oakland
By: - Sep 04th, 2017Philip Kam Gotanda’s version of Rashomon serves the original well in its shape and dramatic intensity. Director Michael Socrates Moran has engineered a minimalist look and feel that serves the script well. Ubuntu’s clerestory-like, almost-in-the-round theater, with its wooden framing around the stage, gives the appearance of a primitive cage for blood sports.
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Georgie: My Adventures with George Rose
One Man Play by Ed Dixon at Barrington Stage
By: - Sep 04th, 2017There was a brief run, just six performances, of Georgie: My Adventures with George Rose, written and performed by Ed Dixon at Barrington Stage Company. Himself a distinguished character actor, this is a drama about drama, in the telling of a father/ son mentoring relationship with the renowned British born character actor George Rose.
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Robert O’Hara’s Barbecue
Chicago's Strawdog Theatre
By: - Aug 31st, 2017Robert O’Hara’s Barbecue is not a treatise on meat-grilling. It’s a satire that roasts our attitudes about race, class and money. It’s a funny, biting family story with a twisty, turny plot that never stops surprising you.
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The Sunshine Boys in The Sunshine State
Neil Simon Comedy at Margate's Stage Door Theater
By: - Aug 28th, 2017Neil Simon's one-liners are a refreshing change-of-pace to unsettling plays in the era of Trump. Actors nail comic timing in Broward Stage Door Theater's production of The Sunshine Boys. Director and cast don't forget the pathos in the Neil Simon's play
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Out of the Mouths of Babes
Israel Horovitz Play at Gloucester Stage
By: - Aug 28th, 2017Forty years ago playwright Israel Horovitz was a founder of Gloucester stage which has produced many of his 70 plus plays. Many have Gloucester settings but the latest Out of the Mouths of Babes is a part of a Parisian trilogy with one more to go. It was produced last summer at Cherry Lane in Manhattan. It is having its New England premiere in Gloucester and debuts in London this fall.
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Dell'Arte's Calisto and Cunning Vixen
Two Worlds Mix and Match in Opera
By: - Aug 26th, 2017Separated by almost three hundred the years, the full productions of Dell’Arte’s annual festival both looked at how two worlds mix and match in Calisto and The Cunning Vixen. Both productions were at once delightful and moving.
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Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble Untamed
Impeccable Opera Produced with Verve
By: - Aug 25th, 2017Opera is a form comprised of many elements. Seldom are all of them addressed successfully. Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble succeeds in producing intriguing and complex theater with attention to every detail. How do they do it, opera after opera, concert after concert?
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Robin Hood the Musical by Kem Ludwig
World Premiere at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre
By: - Aug 21st, 2017San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre has the honor of mounting the World Premiere of Ken Ludwig’s newest comedy/farce “Robin Hood”, deftly directed by longtime stage and TV veteran Jessica Stone.
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Sophie Treadwell's 1928 Machinal
Chicago's Greenhouse Theater Center,
By: - Aug 19th, 2017Machinal, a new production of a neglected 1928 play by Sophie Treadwell at the Greenhouse Theater Center, is stunning in its balletic staging and the nuanced performance of Heather Crisler, playing the Young Woman.
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Hamlet in San Diego
Lowell Davies Outdoor Festival Theatre
By: - Aug 16th, 2017“Hamlet” once again graces the Lowell Davies Outdoor Festival stage as part of the Old Globe’s Summer Shakespeare Festival. The ‘melancholy Dane’ and his travails is crisply directed by the Old Globe’s Erna Finci Viterbi artistic director Barry Edelstein, who caps off another winning season of plays and musicals selected and produced under his stewardship.
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True West Explodes in Ft. Lauderdale
Late Sam Shepherd's Play in Florida
By: - Aug 14th, 2017New City Players presents a blazing production of True West. The Sam Shepherd play sizzles in sunny, suffocating South Florida Expect plenty of fireworks in powerfully acted production.
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Ian Bostridge Reimagines Winterreise
Mostly Mozart Offers Hans Zender's Interpretation
By: - Aug 12th, 2017Netia Jones has combined tenor Ian Bostridge's thirty year passion and a brilliant "compositional interpretation" of the piano music for orchestra into a hydra-headed tour de force with video, sets and the suggestion of cabaret. Bostridge has the perfect voice for the wanderer, a stranger at the start and at the end. The staging works well.
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The Curious Dog in Los Angeles
All the Bells and Whistles for Ahmanson Theastre Production
By: - Aug 11th, 2017To help the audience experience what takes place inside the head of Christopher, director Elliott employs the full technical arsenal of the Ahmanson that is available to her. The set design by Bunny Christie, is a huge three sided space staging area with colored LED lights both on the walls and the floor that are cued by Christopher’s dialogue and stage movement. It’s all very technical and very eye-popping. In a transfer from Lodon “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” won a Tony Award in 2015.
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Hamlet Opera in Oakland
West Edge Opera at the Pacific Pipe Warehouse
By: - Aug 11th, 2017Much of the criticism of this work is noteworthy but inappropriate. Complainers argue that the opera misses much of the play, which must be expected unless you want a five-hour opera. This is the same argument people use when they’ve read a long book and then see the movie.
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The Chastity Tree by West Edge Opera
Pacific Pipe Warehouse In Oakland
By: - Aug 09th, 2017The music of The Chastity Tree is very much of its time and place. From the classic era, it still embraces baroque traces in tinkling harpsichord and clipped recitatives. The Bay Area is blessed with and attracts an abundance of great young opera singers, and West Edge always casts well from this enviable pool.
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Shakespeare in Love
Oregon Shakespeare Festival Premieres Play from Movie
By: - Aug 09th, 2017Shakespeare-centric theater companies like Oregon Shakes must provide a balance of Elizabethan era works with other offerings to attract sufficient audiences. Sometimes, a hybrid, and especially a sophisticated comedy that is about Shakespeare or one of his plays can be well received. So it is with Shakespeare in Love, the U.S. premiere of the stage version of the highly successful film.
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Blues Is a Woman
Custom Made in San Freancico
By: - Aug 09th, 2017After development at music venues, the musical revue "Blues is a Woman" has begun a theatrical run at Custom Made Theater in San Francisco. In a memorable production, six women wail and moan and plead in a rewarding evening of blues standards and original music by lead singer Pamela Rose in a format that is as informative as it is entertaining.
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