Theatre
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Disney's Frozen
Magical Winter Wonderland
By: - Nov 24th, 2018Despite some critical pans, Frozen has a strong enough pre-sale to guarantee many weeks on Broadway’s turf. Thanks are due to all the little girls who can’t get enough of the tale of Elsa and Anna, two Scandinavian sisters who yearn to be close despite mysterious magic separating them.
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American Son by Christopher Demos-Brown
Kerry Washington and Steve Pasquale Star
By: - Nov 25th, 2018American Son by Christopher Demos-Brown won Berkies for its premiere at Barrington Stage Company. It has transferred to Broadway starring Kerry Washington and Steve Pasquale. Kenny Leon, credited with many August Wilson plays, has done a fine job directing this.
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Il Trittico at the Metropolitan Opera
Placido Domingo Celebrates 50 years at the Met
By: - Nov 28th, 2018No work by Puccini has suffered more neglect and critical ignorance than Il Trittico, his "triptych" of three single act operas that premiered at the Metropolitan Opera one hundred years ago. Part of what has hurt the reputation of this work- comprised of three operas designed to be performed together and in a certain sequence- is the unfortunate habit producers have of playing these works individually, or pairing them "Cav-Pag" style with operas by other composers.
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Chelsea Opera's Josephine Baker, Gertrude Stein and Picasso
Tom Cipullo's Opera Featured
By: - Nov 27th, 2018Chelsea Opera is a vibrant company committed to presenting new opera as well as the classics. On 1 December they will mount two one act New York premiers by the gifted composer, Tom Cipullo. Cipullo is rightly known as a composer for the voice, as well as a dramatist who creates a sound world of apt harmonies and melodies which reveal deep character and emotion. Opportunities to hear his work in New York are eagerly anticipated.
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Eve's Song at Public Theater
Patricia Ione Lloyd Is Playwright in Residence
By: - Nov 26th, 2018The invulnerability of middle-class achievement is haunted. Spooked by the present staccato-like news flashes from the television tell of black men shot, killed, dead . “We” don't discuss that sort of thing at dinner. Dark phantoms, shadows of women slide along the corridor where fear is a weakness which is not part of who 'we' are.
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Hello, Dolly!
National Equity Tour of Iconic Musical
By: - Nov 26th, 2018An equity national touring production the recent Tony-winning revival of Hello, Dolly! is splendid. A superb Betty Buckley stars in the tour, which recently played in Miami and is marching its way north. Buckley's Dolly is modest, patient, friendly, joyful and vulnerable. .
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Brian Dennehy at LA's Geffen Playhouse
Masterful One Acts by O'Neill and Beckett
By: - Nov 29th, 2018Actor Brian Dennehy is currently presenting a Master Class in acting with his one-man presentation of two One Acts: Eugene O’Neill’s “Hughie” and Samuel Beckett’s obtuse “Krapp’s Last Tape”.
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Understudy by Theresa Rebeck
At Coyote StageWorks
By: - Nov 29th, 2018Chuck Yates is one of the finest actors in the Coachella Valley winning many Desert Theatre League (DTL) Award trophies for excellence in theatre. In Rebeck's masterful The Understudy we have two male actor-candidates and one avenging female stage manager from Hell named Roxanne. She puts two male actors Harry and Jake auditioning for the role of the ‘understudy’ through their paces before giving them the okay to join the performing cast.
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Elaine May in Waverly Gallery
Back on Broadway
By: - Nov 29th, 2018In Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery, Gladys is the center of the story as her grandson, her daughter and son-in-law and a young artist she has befriended deal with this decline over a two year period. Elaine May is making a rare stage appearance.
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The Revolutionists by Lauren Gunderson
Liberté, égalité, sororité at Strawdog Theatre
By: - Nov 29th, 2018Lauren M. Gunderson has been the most produced playwright in America for the last two years, and her work has won several awards, including the Steinberg/American Theatre Critics New Play Award for I and You. Gunderson’s conceit about four women ready for revolution is clever, and in act one, a bit too mannered, even coyly cute. But act two becomes more serious.
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Shakespeare & Company Mourns Dennis Krausnick
A Founder of the Lenox Company
By: - Nov 29th, 2018Dennis Krausnick was a leader of Shakespeare & Compan, in Lenox, since its inception. In 1976 he was awarded an M.F.A. in Acting from New York University. It was at N.Y.U. where he met Tina Packer. They married in 1998. In 1978 Dennis helped found Shakespeare & Company with Tina and Kristin Linklater.
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Hello Girls at 59E59 Theaters
Over There is Brought Here
By: - Dec 01st, 2018Hello Girls takes a most serious context, the fate of the troops in the trenches of WWI, and tackles the still relevant issue of women's rights and equality. The play harvests an engaging, upbeat and energized performance. Interesting and visually meaningful use of overhead projections (Lacey Ebb) provides both context and mood. The set plays with use of wire and lines, telephone lines, stringed instruments, rail lines battle-lines, and lines of march, which work together remarkably well.
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HeLa by J. Nicole Brooks
Major Tom to Ground Control
By: - Dec 06th, 2018Sideshow Theatre accomplishes a lot on a small stage in its world premiere production of HeLa by J. Nicole Brooks at the Greenhouse Theater Center. The scenes in HeLa go back and forth in time from 1951 to 1981-84 and finally 2001 when Suhaila, now an aerospace engineer, visits her Aunt Bird, who is suffering from cancer.
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Kentridge at Park Avenue Armory
African Carriers in World War I
By: - Dec 05th, 2018The Head and The Load by William Kentridge was prepared at Mass MOCA and arrives full-blown at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. We come, if not to know, to appreciate the contributions of hundreds of thousands of Africans to the Western effort in World War I. Who knew that African men were forced into service?
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Annie In South Florida
Beloved Musical in Boca Raton's Wick Theatre
By: - Dec 07th, 2018Renowned performer Sally Struthers stars and shines as Miss Hannigan in regional production of Annie. The cast excels in a touching, but not overly cute mounting. Annie plays Boca Raton's The Wick Theatre through Dec. 23.
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The Apple Boys by Jonothon Lyons and Ben Bonnema
A Barbershop Quartet Offers Joy at HERE
By: - Dec 07th, 2018Apple Boys bring the Barbershop Quartet into the 21st century. This musical form my have started as early as Beaumarchais in Barber of Seville in the 18th century. Both black and white musicians claim ownership. Every culture which discovered “harmony” in combined voices has used the four singer form.
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Onsite Opera Follows Menotti's Star
Amahl and the Night Visitors Reimagined
By: - Dec 08th, 2018Amahl and the Night Visitors was commissioned as a Christmas television special a half century ago. The composer, Gian Carlo Menotti, would appear often at its live presentations. He often pointed out that this is a story of a boy who has problems with his mother. He would ask members of the audience to raise their hands if they did. Most of the audience held their hands up high. That is not the only reason to enjoy this Christmas classic to which OnSite Opera has brought a new vision for today.
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Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Shotgun Players at Ashby Stage
By: - Dec 11th, 2018As expected from any Stoppard work, Arcadia is highly literate and entertaining. It is also full of passionate characters, crammed with information, and plays like a grand detective story as the moderns unravel the mysteries of the past while entwining themselves in amusing interactions
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The Prisoner by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne
Large Questions at Theatre for a New Audience
By: - Dec 09th, 2018We are in a neutral country, anywhere in the world where crimes are committed and people are punished. The question that pervades the quiet space of The Prisoner by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne concerns appropriate retribution.
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The Wiz In South Florida
Classic Musical At Stage Door Theatre
By: - Dec 14th, 2018Stage Door Theatre's mounting of The Wiz is uneven. The production largely lacks magic and sound is a problem. However, the production improves in the second act, with strong singing and acting. Actress Nayomi Braaf makes a refreshingly bright-eyed, optimistic Dorothy.
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Strange Window at Next Wave, BAM
Marianne Weems Re-invents Henry James
By: - Dec 16th, 2018The Builder’s Association re-invented Henry James’ Turn of the Screw for today. Strange Window takes its title from a story James heard from the Archbishop of Canterbury. A woman was so fearful of strange figures who appeared in the windows of her home that she moved to protect her children.
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Actor/Director Charles Weldon at 78
Was Artistic Director of The Negro Ensemble Company
By: - Dec 18th, 2018During the recent NY conference of American Theatre Critics Association Charles Weldon was a lively participant on a panel focused on diversity. He was Artistic Director of The Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) since 2005. He joined the Negro Ensemble Company in 1970 and acted in many of its classic plays including "A Soldier's Play," "The Great McDaddy," "The Offering," "The Brownsville Raid" and the Company's Broadway production of "The River Niger."
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Riffing on Ibsen
A Doll’s House, Part 2 in San Diego
By: - Dec 20th, 2018“A Doll’s House, Part 2”, premiered in 2017- garnering 8 Tony Nominations – is a perfect example of how an iconic classic play coupled with talent, and a sense of curiosity from an original thinking playwright can become a fresh, smart, new work, that’s been dazzling audiences wherever it performs. (Lucas Hnath’s 2016 play “The Christians”, received a Tony nomination for his insightful story of a Pastor who questions his belief in God and The Bible).
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The Year to Come by Lindsey Ferrentino
At the La Jolla Playhouse
By: - Dec 20th, 2018Playwright Lindsey Ferrentino apparently felt the urge to inform audiences just how disparate are families and their need to share their ubiquitous stories with the world at large. Television has been the delivery system that best gets the comedy job done. Sitcoms have mastered the medium for more than 70 years. . But I’m not quite sure that Ferrentino’s comedy play “The Year to Come” is the vehicle to bridge so many gaps facing our ever changing society.
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The Lifespan of a Fact at Studio 54
By Playwrights Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell
By: - Dec 21st, 2018Playwrights Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell have balanced the piece carefully. This is based on the essay and book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal. They are the John and Jim of the story. But I suspect details have been changed, in fact it is billed as “a new play based on a true-ish story.” It is a tight 85 minutes enhanced by fine performances.
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