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Theatre

  • Lucas Hnath Gives Us Dana H.

    Probing a Mother's Kidnapping

    By: Susan Hall - Feb 25th, 2020

    Lucas Hnath has a gift for making the past present on stage. In a marvel of edited tape, brilliant acting and staging, the Vineyard Theatre is hosting his play, Dana H. We don't see Edgar Bergen manipulating Charlie. Yet we hear the tape voice of the real Dana as it is mouthed by Deidre O'Connell. Taking on the voice, O'Connell inhabits the character, soundless, but with more subtle and apt gestures than you can imagine. It is a stunning evening of theater.

  • Grand Horizons by Bess Wohl

    Superb Cast Burdened with Pedestrian Family Drama

    By: Karen Isaacs - Feb 25th, 2020

    What sets this apart are the fine performances. Any chance you get to see Jane Alexander on stage is one to take advantage of and treasure. Her Nancy exudes both steeliness and calmness.

  • Skylight in South Florida

    Popular David Hare Play at Palm Beach Dramaworks

    By: Aaron Krause - Feb 25th, 2020

    Palm Beach Dramaworks' production of David Hare's Skylight features terrific performances. Tension emanates from the stage as the character spar on stage. The production continues through March 1.

  • The Pajama Game a Perennial Favorite

    At California's Palm Canyon Theatre

    By: Jack Lyons - Feb 28th, 2020

    “The Pajama Game” opened last weekend in Palm Springs. The musical debuted in 1954 on Broadway, as the Korean War was declared over, and pajamas back then was still considered the choice of men’s sleep-ware. Enduring standards of the vintage musical include “Hey There,” “Steam Heat,” and “Hernando’s Hideaway.”

  • Beauty and the Beast

    At the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center in South Florida

    By: Aaron Krause - Feb 29th, 2020

    Beauty and the Beast is enchanting, playful, funny and magical at the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center. The classic Disney musical is timely with messages about tolerance and treating everyone with respect. The show is visual delight, but it also teaches people not to judge people based solely on their external appearances. The production, which is strong despite obviously fake fight scenes, runs through March 8.

  • Verdi's Il Trovatore

    At Opera San José

    By: Victor Cordell - Mar 01st, 2020

    The great Enrico Caruso once noted that all you need to make Il Trovatore a success is to cast the four greatest singers in the world. Although the production reveals a couple of minor glitches, the overall effect is so scintillating that the flaws are not worth discussing.

  • I Am My Own Wife

    At Long Wharf

    By: Karen Isaacs - Mar 01st, 2020

    Even the simplest human being is complicated and Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, the central character in I Am My Own Wife is scarcely a simple human being. She is incredibly complex and her story is amazing.

  • Hedda Gabler: A Play with Live Music

    World Premiere at Chicago's Raven Theatre

    By: Nancy Bishop - Mar 01st, 2020

    The Tuta Theatre world premiere production of Hedda Gabler: A Play With Live Music is adapted and directed by Jacqueline Stone. The play is set in the early 1890s in Kristiania, now Oslo. The original modern and sometimes punklike music is composed by Wain Parham and played by a three-piece band, led by Parham on keys.

  • Donald E. Lacy's Colorstruck

    Theater for the New City Mounts Premiere

    By: Rachel de Aragon - Mar 01st, 2020

    Colorstruck and its creators come to us from the San Francisco Bay area where they have been involved in radio, theater and film. They are also participants in community outreach in the arts. Lacy has crafted a one man show which straddles a gap where tears laughter and anger resolve. On an empty stage, Lacy emerges from darkness, a black man in black clothing. He speaks for 75 minutes, lighting up our hearts and minds.

  • The Confession of Lily Dare Off Broadway

    By Renowned Gender Bender Charles Busch

    By: Edward Rubin - Mar 07th, 2020

    In or out of drag, whether on stage or page, the 65-year-old actor playwright Charles Busch, with some forty years of show business under his belt, is a force to be reckoned with.

  • Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage

    Written and Directed by Elizabeth Williamson

    By: Karen Isaacs - Mar 07th, 2020

    Jane Eyre, just like Elizabeth Bennett in Jane Austin’s Pride & Prejudice, understands society’s preconceived notions about a woman’s role and a woman’s manner, and rejects them wholeheartedly.

  • Don’t Eat the Mangos is a Wonderful Play

    At Magic Theatre in San Francisco

    By: Victor Cordell - Mar 07th, 2020

    In Don’t Eat the Mangos, by Ricardo Pérez González, three adult Puerto Rican sisters remain close despite fractious relationships and the different directions their lives have taken. The action centers on clashes that siblings commonly confront in dealing with dying parents and their property. So it is that the sisters argue about how the dirty work of responsibilities are shared.

  • SWEAT by Pulitzer Prize Winner Lynn Nottage

    At the Palm Springs Woman’s Club

    By: Jack Lyons - Mar 07th, 2020

    Prolific, award-winning American playwright Lynn Nottage, the only female to win two Pulitzer Prizes in drama, is also considered to be one of the most produced playwrights not only in America but across the world. “SWEAT” is an absorbing and profound production that grapples with the issues plaguing most of America’s workforce today.

  • The Chelsea Symphony Celebrates Women

    Sojourner Truth, two Horn Players, Mazzoli, Frank and Tower

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 10th, 2020

    This evening, part of the Rise Up Year devoted to music that inspires and uplifts, two gentleman, a bass player and a violist, composed pieces celebrating women. Women composers, Missy Mazzoli, Gabriela Lena Frank and Joan Tower were performed with gusto.

  • Mean Girls

    Tina Fey Comedy's National Equity Tour

    By: Aaron Krause - Mar 11th, 2020

    An energetic national equity touring production of Mean Girls is playing in Ft. Lauderdale through March 15. Fires rage across the stage as Regina George bulldozes over the meek. The production features strong work from the cast to the technical folks. Mean Girls the Musical is based on the 2004 film of the same name, both written by Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live.

  • Love by Kate Cortesi

    World Premiere at Marin Theatre Company

    By: Victor Cordell - Mar 13th, 2020

    Against a backdrop of black and white, perpetrator and victim, playwright Kate Cortesi offers a provocative and stimulating world premiere play, Love, which humanizes the parties involved and explores the complexities of relationships that many depictions often simplify to the point of distortion.

  • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

    New York Production Opened and Shut

    By: Edward Rubin - Mar 13th, 2020

    With a sexy (for the late sixties) ad campaign depicting all four characters in bed, a headline that read “Consider the Possibilities” – some newspapers would not run this ad – and a titillating R-rated story which dealt with infidelity and wife swapping, the movie—the number 5 moneymaking hit of the year—rang up some 31 million dollars at the box office.

  • Mishima and Williams Celebrated in P'Town

    The 14th Annual 2019 Tennessee Williams Theater Festival

    By: Edward Rubin - Mar 14th, 2020

    A day late and a dollar short, NY critic, Edward Rubin, is notorious for blowing off deadlines. By now the September, 2019 14th Annual Tennessee Williams Theater Festival is a faded memory. Arguably a rose pressed between the pages of a book. But here in loving detail Rubin posts a definitively detailed, documentary account of an historic event. It also serves as a preview of what to expect this September. By then, hopefully, the virus will have passed and we will enjoy the last gasp of summer with magnificent theatre and high jinks by the sea.

  • A Puppet Universe Kosmos Invers at HERE

    Kalan Sherrard Laucnhes an Electric Take

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 15th, 2020

    Kosmos Inverse is the world below and the world way out there. We have a powerful feeling of infinity as we are being cast into a carnaval space. The central sphere resmbles a mop. Depending on the lights, it can be colored red and green and purple. Pigs, an elephant who strongly resembles Mo Willems’, two classic rubber dolls, and a busty woman bounce before us.

  • A Chorus Line

    At Boca Raton's Wick Theatre

    By: Aaron Krause - Mar 16th, 2020

    A Chorus Line's focus on the unheralded is particularly timely when many must make sacrifices. The Wick Theatre's wonderful production is postponed but hopes company officials hope to resume the production soon. Triple threat performers shine in this production.

  • White Blacks: The Saga of an American Family

    Melanie Maria Goodreaux Writes and Directs

    By: Rachel de Aragon - Mar 31st, 2020

    We begin as the guests at a black debutante ball in New Orleans. White staircase, be-gowned young women, stiffly poised young-men stand on the threshold of their presentation to society. Step by step we see the painstaking bows and courtesies of a society steeped in the mores of color and class that are expressions of the history of that city.

  • Grammy to Fantastic Mr. Fox by Tobias Picker

    Best Opera Recording Conducted by Gil Rose

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 19th, 2020

    The libretto by Donald Sturrock is based on a book by Roald Dahl. Three farmers, Bunce, Boggis and Bean want revenge on Mr. Fox for taking their chickens, their geese and their cider. They are frustrated by Mr. Fox’s clever tactics. Gil Rose brings the music and story to life in this masterful recording which won the 2020 Grammy for Best Opera Recording.

  • Anywhere by Theatre L'Introverte at HERE

    An Ice Puppet Oedipus Melts Before Us

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 16th, 2020

    The theater is pitch black. A mysterious figure wrapped in a robe writes on a screen in black ink which drips on the illuminated board. “I which have bled for so long are beginning to heal. Black tears no longer course down his cheeks, inspiring the horrific feeling in others that these are their own bloodied tears." These are Oedipus' words as interpreted by Henry Bauchau, author of "Oedipus on the Road," which inspired "Anywhere." This is an unusual portrait of Oedipus' harrowing final journey.

  • Terrence McNally at 81

    Renowned Playwright Succumbs to Coronavirus

    By: Aaron Krause - Mar 25th, 2020

    Prolific playwright Terrence McNally loses his battle with coronavirus. McNally was an American Theatre Hall of Fame inductee. The prolific writer also won five Tony Awards.

  • Tony Awards Postponed

    Annual Celebration Honors Broadway's Best

    By: Aaron Krause - Mar 26th, 2020

    The Tony Awards show will go on, albeit at a later date, due to the coronavirus pandemic. The CBS broadcast was slated for June 7 this year. Officials have not announced a replacement date.

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