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Theatre

  • Ne Quittez Pas at Opera Philadelphia

    Patricia Racette Compels as Elle

    By: Susan Hall - Sep 26th, 2018

    Ne Quittez Pas is writ large on a marquee in a hot neighborhood of Philadelphia. Hold on, it says. Don’t leave. Stay on the line. This is a phrase used repeatedly in the old French telephone service, a main character in the opera to unfold inside the club, Theater of the Living Arts, a disco/nightclub near the harbor.

  • The Agitators at Gloucester Stage

    Remarkable Friends Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony

    By: Charles Giuliano - Sep 26th, 2018

    Beyond their names most folks don't know much about abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, and women's suffrage leader, Susan B. Anthony. The remarkable play, The Agitators, by Mat Smart, offers more than a history lesson at Gloucester Stage. It has been given a compact and powerful production sharply directed by Jacqui Parker.

  • A Classic Play by Ntozake Shange

    African-American Shakespeare Company

    By: Victor Cordell - Sep 27th, 2018

    Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf is a work of great moment that gave black women a platform, in some ways a pedestal, from which to denounce their double indignity of racial and gender discrimination and announce their worth and beauty.

  • Miller Theater Premiers Missy Mazzoli

    Proving Up Arrives in New York

    By: Susan Hall - Sep 27th, 2018

    Aware that all art forms now compete with Netflix, composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek seek out stories for their musical theater that will attract audiences. Mazzoli, a masterful young composer, can go very dark in tales because her music, in its blocks of beauty no matter what the subject, is compelling and evocative.

  • Luigi Pirandello’s Naked

    New Translation at Berkshire Theatre Group

    By: Charles Giuliano - Sep 30th, 2018

    The avant-garde master and Nobel Prize winner, Luigi Pirandello, was a prolific writer including some 40 plays. Other than the iconic Six Characters in Search of an Author they are rarely produced today. Notably Berkshire Theatre Group is presenting a new translation of the 1922 melodrama (his term) Naked.

  • Paula Vogel’s compelling Indecent,

    At Victory Gardens Theater.

    By: Nancy Bishop - Oct 01st, 2018

    Indecent blends time-jumping scenes with an occasional dance routine and klezmer-flavored music. It’s a fine example of a dramatic play with music. The story and its characters are paramount and the music provides a lyrical underpinning. It’s an epic story told on a very personal level.

  • 'Ol Blue Eyes In South Florida

    MNM Theatre Company mounts Frank Sinatra revue

    By: Aaron Krause - Sep 30th, 2018

    A quartet of performers in musical tribute find the emotion in songs Frank Sinatra made popular. MNM Theatre Company in West Palm Beach stages a lavish production that will leave you reminiscing. The male cast members offer no impersonations of Ol' Blue Eyes and don't sound like him. However, they, and their female partners, capture the legend's essence.

  • Janet McTeer in Bernhardt/Hamlet

    Roundabout Theatre Premiere by Theresa Rebeck

    By: Susan Hall - Sep 30th, 2018

    Bernhardt/Hamlet by Theresa Rebeck has arrived at the Roundabout Theatre where it plays in a limited run through November 11. Bernhardt is played by the glorious Janet McTeer, seen as a powerful Nora in Ibsen’s The Doll House and as Albert Nobb's Hubert Page, her Golden Globe and Academy Award nominated role.

  • Conrad Tao and Bruckner at NY Philharmonic

    Shock and Awe Under Jaap Van Zweden

    By: Susan Hall - Sep 30th, 2018

    Conrad Tao’s world premier composition Everything Must Go was performed by the New York Philharmonic and followed without a breath by Anton Bruckner’s powerful Eighth Symphony.

  • The Revolutionists by Lauren Gunderson

    At Town Hall Theatre Company

    By: Victor Cordell - Oct 03rd, 2018

    For the greater part, history has been made by and written by men. Like Olympe, Lauren Gunderson hopes to rectify gender imbalances in some small measure by sharing the stories of four women who impacted and were victims of the French Revolution

  • Bill Irwin On Beckett

    The Irish Repertory Theater's Delightful Production

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 03rd, 2018

    Bill Irwin, with his mastery of the physical, clownish gesture and the musical lines of language presents a moving portrait of selections from Samuel Beckett’s work at the Irish Repertory Theater through November 4. Interspersing his own commentary with performance, we are taken in and out of the playwright’s work, as Irwin explains clowning and physical theater, an important part of Beckett, and also productions past in which he has enjoyed the company of Steve Martin and the late Robin Williams whose body sailed into a Godot scene. In Beckett you laugh through pain.

  • Mendoza at Goodman Theatre

    Macbeth by Los Colochos Teatro of Mexico City

    By: Nancy Bishop - Oct 05th, 2018

    Mendoza, a thrillingly raw and earthy adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is being presented this week at Goodman Theatre in collaboration with the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance.

  • Downstate at Steppenwolf Theatre.

    Bruce Norris’ Uproarious, Heartbreaking, World Premiere

    By: Matthew Nerber - Oct 05th, 2018

    This is a group of detestable, rotten apples, but each of these men is also, in his own way, disarming and hilarious, with quirks and charms that make us forget why they are in this make-shift homestead wearing ankle bracelets; until we’re reminded, and once again infuriated by the hypocrisy. This is a world premiere by Bruce Norris.

  • Oslo by J.T. Rogers

    produced by Marin Theatre Company

    By: Victor Cordell - Oct 06th, 2018

    One complaint about Oslo that may be heard is that we already know its outcome. Twenty-five years beyond, notable progress has been made, but the condition between Israelis and Palestinians remains sad and unresolved.

  • Tosca at San Francisco Opera

    Carmen Giannattasio Debut in Title Role

    By: Victor Cordell - Oct 06th, 2018

    A star attraction on the European circuit, Italian Carmen Giannattasio makes her San Francisco Opera debut and role debut as the title character. The soprano was offered the part earlier in her career, but she declined.

  • Zürich by Amelia Roper

    At Chicago's Steep Theatre

    By: Nancy Bishop - Oct 07th, 2018

    Zürich is played by 10 actors—two each in five scenes—set in a luxury hotel room or rooms in that Swiss banking city. The play begins in a seemingly lighthearted way, with a man and a woman who have spent the night together in a room on the 40th floor of a Zürich hotel.

  • Mile Long Opera at The High Line

    Co-Created by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro and David Lang

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 06th, 2018

    The High Line is a big idea writ large, just like operas. It forms a perfect set for Mile Long Opera. Elizabeth Diller gets a director’s credit for an opera written specially for this location by David Lang. Anne Carson is librettist and Claudia Rankine, essayist. Mile Long Opera is subtitled, a biography of 7 pm, a time of transition from work to home.

  • Glass Menagerie at Barrington Stage Company

    Dehorning the Unicorn

    By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 08th, 2018

    The final fall production of Barrington Stage Company for a number of years had been coordinated with the reginal school curriculum. It has been the norm to explore an agenda with social justice theatre. This time, however, Barrington has opted to focus on ars gratia artis. Teachers as their lesson plan will discuss a harrowing masterpiece of American theatre, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.

  • Tom Stoppard's Rock and Roll

    At Chicago's Artistic Home Theatre

    By: Nancy Bishop - Oct 09th, 2018

    Kathy Scambiatterra directs this complex political/musical story, based on the Czech music fans and political dissidents in the years between the Prague Spring in 1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989.

  • Little Shop Of Horrors

    Popular Musical at Florida's Lightning Bolt Productions

    By: Aaron Krause - Oct 08th, 2018

    Audiences will eat up South Florida fun and funny production of Little Shop of Horrors. Over-the-top humor, mixed with some subtlety, add up to a biting Lightning Bolt Productions' mounting. The director serves double duty as the nerdy Seymour.

  • Man of La Mancha

    At Westport Country Playhouse

    By: Karen Isaacs - Oct 09th, 2018

    A successful production requires an excellent Cervantes/Don Quixote and Phillip Hernandez meets the challenge. His voice is expressive and powerful, he bring a sense of age to the part, and his acting totally encompasses the character.

  • A Picture of Dorian Gray

    Wilde at A Noise Within Theatre

    By: Jack Lyons - Oct 10th, 2018

    Wilde’s highly-charged, sexual novella, and the Hollywood production code-driven 1945 movie, intrigued A Noise Within theatre director Michael Michetti, into tackling a stage adaptation in 2006 at Pasadena’s Boston Court Theatre. Mr. Michetti’s 2018 production now on stage at the A Noise Within Theatre, in East Pasadena, closely adheres to Wilde’s original story and most of his dialogue.

  • Final Follies at The Cherry Lane Theater

    A.J. Gurney Lives On

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 09th, 2018

    Final Follies, an evening of one act plays by A.J.Gurney is playing at The Cherry Lane Theater home of Primary Stages, Gurney's primary producers over the past decade. The first play, titled Final Follies was delivered to Gurney's agent a week before he died last year. It is a juicy send off for a haute Wasp author, who sees acting in porn movies as a job solution for waning WASPs looking for a way to earn a living.

  • Girl of the Golden West at Metropolitan Opera

    Blazing Saddles

    By: Paul J. Pelkonen - Oct 10th, 2018

    The Girl of the Golden West returned to the Met this month with a good cast. On Monday night, a performance featuring tenor Yusif Eyvazov and soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek provided a much needed shot of red blood to an anemic fall season.

  • My Parsifal Conductor by Allan Leicht

    Cosima Wagner Redeemed, A Comedy

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 11th, 2018

    My Parsifal Conductor, Allan Leicht's hilarious and touching comedy on the late domestic life of Richard Wagner, which extends into immortality, is playing at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater through November 3. At the center of the curtainless stage is a big double bed over which a heavenly canopy hangs. We are somewhere between heaven and earth where Cosima Liszt Bulow Wagner is taking her last gasps. She is ninety and married Richard Wagner 60 years ago, after the birth of their three children, Isolde, Eva and Siegfried. Wagner died after 13 years of marriage.

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