Theatre
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Pippin Spellbinding At American Rep
A Brilliant Re-Creation of Iconic Show
By: - Jan 04th, 2013From the first note of the overture to the final bow, this Diane Paulus directed revival of Pippin at A.R.T. is a magnetic effervescent theatrical treat. This is musical theatre as scrumptious life is a circus delight. Along with incredibly talented supporting players, Patina Miller, Andrea Martin and Matthew James Thomas bring athleticism, humor and just plain talent to a new interpretation of a now classic musical score and narrative. This is must-see before it goes to Broadway. There is Magic to do here.
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2012 Theatre Highlights
Berkshires and Beyond
By: - Dec 29th, 2012With a diverse staff of contributors Berkshire Fine Arts strives for national theatre coverage. In this year end roundup we provide an overview with highlights rather than a top ten or best of list. There are numerous links to plays, features and interviews. Overal,l it was a great year that include a week in Chicago for the meeting of the American Theatre Critics Association as well as in depth coverage of the Berkshires and a taste of Broadway.
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Black Angels Over Tuskegee
Layon Gray’s Play in Third Year Off Broadway
By: - Dec 18th, 2012For an entertaining, intimate, insightful evening of theatre it doesn’t get much better than Black Angels Over Tuskegee. Leon Gray wrote, directed, and acts in this award winning play now in its third year Off Broadway.
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Dezart Performs’ Play Reading Series
Three Winning One Act Plays
By: - Dec 16th, 2012Dezart Performs’ Play Reading Series is an annual event held every spring in Palm Springs and receives playwright entries from all over the country. This year the organization received 121 submissions. The three One-Acts in this year’s festival are: “Feeding Time at the Human Houseâ€, written by David Wiener and directed by Lenny Ripps. “The Blind Dateâ€, written by Tanis Galik and directed by Don Cilluffo, and “Mourning Glory†written by Rich Orloff and directed by Dezart’s artistic director, Michael Shaw.
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Other Desert Cities at Mark Taper Forum
Jon Robin Baitz Play Fails to Impress
By: - Dec 15th, 2012As a Palm Springs-based theatre critic, I felt I had the inside track on Jon Robin Baitz’s insight concerning his latest play “Other Desert Citiesâ€, now on the stage of LA’s Mark Taper Forum. I was partially correct. Listlessly directed by Robert Egan, features a nice cast in a less than stellar vehicle.
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Dead Accounts By Theresa Rebeck
Show Me the Money
By: - Dec 14th, 2012With her third Broadway production, Dead Accounts, Theresa Rebeck is running on vapors. Perhaps this half backed, ersatz sit-com is a part of the collateral damage of last season's struggles with the brilliant but embattled TV series Smash. She has departed from the show which she originated. Whatever the reason this new play entirely lacks focus. It is little more than a one liner and gag stretched out in two miserable acts. It does however have the star power of Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz and tabloid regular Katie Holmes to sell tickets.
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Zelda Fitzgerald in P.H. Lin Play
Lost Generation Icon Remains Missing
By: - Dec 13th, 2012Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was the wife and muse of author F. Scott Fitzgerald whose The Great Gatsby helped to define the Jazz Age of the 1920s. P. H. Lin's play Zelda at the Oasis portrays her as a deranged drunk washed up in a down and out New York bar during the Great Depression. In her New York debut Gardner Reed brings passion and energy to Zelda matched by Edwin Cahill in a variety of roles.
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Our Town At Huntington Theatre Enthralling
Rethinking Thornton Wilder's American Masterpiece
By: - Dec 12th, 2012In 1901 Grover's Corners, George and Emily fall in love, marry, and live out their lives as one New England town becomes a microcosm of everyday life. Or maybe not? Cleverly conceived and directed by David Cromer, this is a wonderfully intimate yet contemporary staging of the Thornton Wilder American classic. In several ways, Our Town is everyone's town. Due to demand the show has been extended to January 26.
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Mamet on Broadway
Hit and Miss
By: - Dec 10th, 2012As a testament of "America's greatest living playwright" there is a currently a double header of plays by David Mamet on Broadway. A proven chestnut "Glengarry Glen Ross" starring Al Pacino is just up the street from a new work "The Anarchist" with Patti LuPone and Debra Winger. With mixed reviews "Glengarry" is a hit while following dreadful reviews "The Anarchist" is a flop. But "The Anarchist" may have suffered a particularly vicious treatment by the NY media. Perhaps in another life in regional theatre productions it will come to be regarded as a great work in the late oeuvre of Mamet.
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Barrington Stage Announces 2013 Season
On the Town and New Play by Mark St. Germain
By: - Dec 10th, 2012Barrington Stage Company will launch its season with the musical On the Town from June 12 to July 13. It will be followed by The Chosen, Chaim Potok’s acclaimed novel has been adapted for the stage by Aaron Posner and Chaim Potok. A rare for Barrington Shakespeare play completes the main stage season with Much Ado About Nothing. The St. Germain Stage features The Chosen, Chaim Potok’s acclaimed novel which has been adapted for the stage by Aaron Posner and Chaim Potok. Followed by the musical Southern Comfort and a premiere of Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah by Mark St. Germain.
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Donald Margulies at Geffen Playhouse
Holiday Show in LA
By: - Dec 10th, 2012Journeyman playwright and 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner in Drama, Donald Margulies, the author of such notable plays as “Time Stands Stillâ€, “Collected Storiesâ€, “Brooklyn Boyâ€, and “Sight Unseenâ€, among others – all dramas, by the way – now sails into less turbulent waters with “Coney Island Christmasâ€, a delightful Christmas season show.
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Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Challenging Musical at La Jolla Playhouse
By: - Dec 10th, 2012This is the 21st century, and “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots†is designed for younger audiences who really dig the Internet, video games, and Blackberry phones along with the many and various “apps†as a way of connecting or communicating and/or learning. “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robotsâ€, is definitely not your father or grandfather’s musical.
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Ching•lish Speaks Volumes At Lyric Stage
Brilliant Show of Manners & Mores in Contemporary China
By: - Dec 02nd, 2012One of Time Magazine’s 10 best plays of 2011, Ching•lish cleverly follows the journey of an American businessman as he tries to cash in on Chinese booming economic potential. This is a hilarious well-made comedy of mistranslation and manners by Tony Award-winning playwright, David Henry Hwang, author of M Butterfly. Using humor, sex and heartache, there is a poignancy to the profound isolation and terrible vulnerability of people who don't share a common culture or language.
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Zelda at the Oasis by P.H. Lin
Play Focuses on Complex Wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald
By: - Nov 28th, 2012F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were the heart and soul of the Lost Generation of the Roaring Twenties. Wildly eccentric the brilliant and witty Zelda was the muse for Scott. It is often implied that he stole her ides for his best selling novels and short stories. Both of their lives devolved in tragedy as the era for which they were signifiers passed. This new play by P.H. Lin focuses on her alone and on the prowl at the Club Oasis in New York City during the Depression years of the 1930s.
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Chicago Shakespeare Theatre 2013
Four New World Stage Presentations
By: - Nov 21st, 2012Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) announces four new World’s Stage presentations in 2013—bold theatrical events from across the globe, each in its own voice, provoking discussion on issues of international significance. On the heels of celebrating the Year of Creative Scotland with two critically acclaimed National Theatre of Scotland productions this fall, Chicago Shakespeare Theater continues to demonstrate its commitment to engage audiences in global issues.
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Sleep No More at NY's Emursive
A Unique Theatrical Experience
By: - Nov 19th, 2012Emursive Co. introduced "Sleep No More" to an American audience and/or participants if you are game. What better place to rattle and shake but in New York City. It is an import from the UK and what fun!
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The Palm Desert Stage Company Revives Mark Twain
Is He Dead Adapted by David Ives
By: - Nov 16th, 2012The Palm Desert Stage Company kicks off its third season in the Joslyn Center’s Arthur Newman Theatre with Mark Twain’s revived comedy/farce “Is He Deadâ€, adapted by Chicago-born and New York City-based author/playwright David Ives. The comedy is stylishly and briskly directed, by the valley’s reigning comedy/farce director Tres Dean. (Dean directed another Ives’ play, “All in the Timing†at College of the Desert, just last month).
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Pinter's Betrayal At Huntington Theatre Company
Layered Relationships And Deceit Express Playwright's Best Work
By: - Nov 14th, 2012With its usual crafted quality, the Huntington presents Harold Pinter's most famous and perhaps most resolved play. Here, for seven years, Emma and Jerry engage in a passionate love affair, deceiving their spouses, each other and perhaps even themselves. Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter innovatively explores the complexities of love, guilt, and duplicity in this contemporary classic.
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Mark St. Germain’s The Best of Enemies
New Jersey’s George Street Playhouse Nov. 27 – Dec. 23
By: - Nov 07th, 2012Barrington Stage Company announces that the acclaimed new play, The Best of Enemies, by Mark St. Germain (Dr. Ruth, All the Way and Freud’s Last Session), will be presented from November 27 through December 23 at New Jersey’s George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ. For tickets call 732-246-7717 or purchase online at www.georgestplayhouse.org. Opening night is Friday, November 30 at 8pm.
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Louis Armstrong: Jazz Ambassador in New York
Jeremy Giraud Abram is Satchmo in Myla Churchill's Play
By: - Nov 05th, 2012Satchmo's part in the Little Rock Nine, his world ambassadorship, and his Time cover all zing in this terrific production, in which Jeremy Giraud Abram becomes Louis. The band, featuring Queens College’s Hot Six and aptly selected Armstrong songs are just what you want to hear as you wait for God to make up his mind about the greatest jazz musician of the twentieth century.
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Chinglish at Lyric Stage of Boston
David Henry Hwang Play November 30 to December 23
By: - Nov 01st, 2012Named one of Time Magazine’s 10 best plays of 2011, Chinglish follows an American businessman as he heads to a bustling Chinese province looking to cash in on the area’s growth potential. It is a hilarious comedy of mistranslation and manners by Tony and Obie Award-winning playwright, David Henry Hwang, author of M Butterfly. It comes to Lyric Stage of Boston from November 30 to December 23.
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The Wasteland Resonates in a Timeline Production
Chicago Gets Another Hit in Susan Felder's Play
By: - Oct 30th, 2012Timeline consistently delivers great theater, historical settings often provide a jumping board to bigger ideas of the human condition. But never at the sacrifice of entertainment. The playwright Susan Felder and the director William Brown succeed in suggesting a broad message without in any way burdening the specificity of the performance.
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Gayby Jenn Harris’ Qwan Song
How Randy Harrison Goes Viral
By: - Oct 30th, 2012For the brilliant young comic, Jenn Harris, the indy film, Gayby, which was screened at the recent Williamstown Film Festival may be her breakthrough. We spoke with her about the film and her work with the young company QWAN. She and Randy Harrison appeared for a one nighter with Qwan at the Colonial Theatre this past summer.
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Old Jews Telling Jokes
Oi Vey Such a Play
By: - Oct 30th, 2012Forget about Next Year in Jerusalem and get off your butt – tokhes if you are Jewish – over to the Westside Theatre to see Old Jews Telling Jokes. Whatever your persuasion, religious or otherwise, unless you are made of stone – and in that case stay home – you will leave the theatre laughing.
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Cyrano de Bergerac Returns to Broadway
A Nose Job by Douglas Hodge
By: - Oct 29th, 2012Cyrano, thanks to the Roundabout Theatre Company, is back on Broadway with Douglas Hodge as the nosed one. I wish I could say that their production of Cyrano – among the most romantic theatrical chestnuts and long a favorite of mine – blew me away. Alas, and sadly, no such occurrence took place.
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