Susan Hall
Bio:
Recent Articles:
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Jane Austen's Persuasion at Chicago Chamber Opera Theatre
Barbara Landis's Production in NY September 14 & 15
By: - Sep 09th, 2013Barbara Landis found Jane Austen’s language so perfect that she appropriated it as lyrics. Persuasion is set in music she plucked from the period in which Austen wrote. Landis, an assembler among her many talents, refers to this enterprise as a “mishmash.†We review the Chicago production which will be performed at Dicapo Opera Theatre, New York City , September 14 and 15.
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Chicago's Timeline Theatre's Raisin in the Sun Theatre
Hansberry's Play Lingers in the Imagination and Sadly in Reality
By: - Sep 01st, 2013Timeline takes brilliant advantage of its limitations to produce an irresistible staging of Lorraine Hansberry’s classic, A Raisin in the Sun. The play takes place in a family living room. We the audience are sitting there too, pressed up against the actors who seem more like family than stage presences as we join them.
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Jamie Nabers Annie Bosh at Steppenwolf Theatre
First Look Series is First Rate Theater
By: - Aug 18th, 2013Jamie Nabers recently workshopped a musical at Williamstown and is a presence around the US.
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Edith Freni's Buena Vista at Steppenwolf Theatre
A Good View, but a Dark One in Compelling Drama
By: - Aug 14th, 2013Playwright Edith Freni has been produced at Williamstown and almost every other important theater venue in this country. Steppenwolf's production of Buena Vista shows you why.
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The Gospel of Franklin at Steppenwolf Theatre
Playwright Aaron Carter Tackles Fathers and Sons
By: - Aug 11th, 2013Gospel is good news and glad tidings. Aaron Carter’s fascinating play presented by Steppenwolf’s First Look program at first blush appears to be good news. But quickly, we see that it is complicated. There are two characters who bear tidings, Franklin the father, and his son William. William is trying to piece together his own life and at the same time discover his father, not as a story, but as the truth woven from bits and pieces of information he has received over time. They are not in chronological order, but in the order of his discovery.
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Aida is Grand Opera Under James Conlon Music
Ravinia Brings Out Everyone's Best.
By: - Aug 04th, 2013Maestro Conlon promised that the audience would be thrilled, chilled, dazzled and besotted by his Aida, even though he could not bring on the elephants. Maestro Conlon delivers on his promises.
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Slowgirl with William Petersen and Rae Gray Theatre
Steppenwolf Transports Guilt to the Jungle
By: - Aug 01st, 2013Colors are muted browns. An intense red will come to dominate the feeling of the play. Playwright Greg Pierce conjures it up. We never see red. A dangerous snake is attracted to the color. And red blood signifies the cause of Becky’s guilt and perhaps guilt itself, like a bold red letter G emblazoned on a shirt.
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Music from Exile by James Conlon at Ravinia Music
A Ravishing Case Made for Squelched Music
By: - Jul 27th, 2013James Conlon, music director of the Ravinia Festival, laughs as he points out that the three B’s of music, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, actually top a long list of musical Bs. Some composers who are not prominent on the A list of Bs should be.
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Eric Owens to Sing Bass Role in Verdi Requiem Music
Tanglewood Subbing at the Last Moment
By: - Jul 23rd, 2013Make no mistake. Eric Owens is one of music's leading ambassadors today. Despite a demanding schedule as the go-to bass for roles ranging from Alberich to Handel's Hercules, Eric Owens is everywhere. Now he steps in for Ferruccio Furlanetto to heal the wounds of Andris Nelsons absence at Tanglewood. Bravo Eric Owens.
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Big Lake Big City at Lookingglass in Chicago Theatre
Theater Noir by Keith Huff Thrills
By: - Jul 21st, 2013At the play’s opening, a spot light focuses on the sculpture of a Modigliani head. Heads in all forms are the focus of Big Lake Big City. Detective Podaris’ head has become unscrewed, Stew’s head screwed with a driver, and head shrink Dr. Susan’s head is stolen. Go figure.
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Blood and Gifts at Chicago's Timeline Theatre
J.T. Rogers Compelling Play Produced Brilliantly
By: - Jul 19th, 2013Probing current issues is one of the Timeline Theatre’s missions. Blood and Gifts suits their purposes well. It is a terrific theater piece, full of mystery and high drama. Nick Bowling and the Timeline group offer not just a well-conceived and brilliantly acted version of J.T. Rogers play, but also an intimate one.
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The Jungle Book at the Goodman Theater Theatre
At Boston's Huntington Theatre Company. in September
By: - Jul 17th, 2013This curious mix of writer/director Mary Zimmerman and Disney creates an uplifting, visually gorgeous stage on which the dancers choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, prance and entrance.
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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Opens Ravinia Music
Dohnányi, Ax and the Orchestra Entrance in Beethoven
By: - Jul 13th, 2013You would never know that symphony orchestras are having a tough time if you sit in the hall or the shed of a Ravinia event. Like Tanglewood orchestras are fighting back for their place in the musical sun. And they are succeeding in their efforts to make classical music relevant for our times.
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Amy Herzog's Belleville at Steppenwolf Theatre
Disturbing, Intriguing, Good Theater
By: - Jul 10th, 2013The Belleville section of Paris, in which Belleville by Amy Herzog is set, is known as one of the hotbeds of the Revolution of 1848, as an ethnic melting pot, and also one of the high points of Paris, literally. It competes with Montmartre for the best view of the fabled city. Now it witnesses a couple unravel.
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Wagner's The Flying Dutchman in Zurich Music
Anja Kampe, Bryn Terfel and Matti Salminen Star
By: - Jul 06th, 2013A clock ticks on stage. We are in real time. The opera, through composed, is through produced. Kampe, Terfel and Salminen head a superb cast. Young conductor Alain Altinoglu brings forth all the glories of the score. Zurich, under music director Fabio Luisi, is an opera house you can count on.
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Opera Thrives in Budapest with Parsifal Opinion
The Palace of Arts an Acoustical Masterpiece
By: - Jun 23rd, 2013What pleasure is to be had in Budapest, even as it groans under poverty. From an afternoon at the thermal baths in City Park, just in back of Heroes Square, where water rushes you around in circles in an inner circles, and surprise jets massage your feet, shoulders and back, to a beautfiul performance of Parsifal at the 10-year-old old Palace of the Arts, Budapest is a treat.
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Nina Stemme Triumphs as Isolde in Vienna Music
A Highlight of 200th Anniversary of Wagner's Birth
By: - Jun 21st, 2013Stemme made her mark in the role of Isolde earlier this year in Houston, but her performance with a tender and often inspired Tristan in Vienna honored Richard Wagner in a very special production.
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A Sprightly Rusalka in Zurich Music
Attention Must be Paid: Ekaterina Scherbachenko, Pavel Cernoch
By: - Jun 13th, 2013The design of the Zurich Opera House comes straight from Brno, Czechoslovakia so it does not surprise that Zurich creates just the right feeling and tone for Dvorak's great opera.
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The Ensemble Studio Theatre's Marathon Theatre
Thirty-four-years Young and Still Going Strong
By: - May 27th, 2013The five one act plays presented in Series A at the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s 34th marathon promise a bang up series in 2013. At the top of the evening was John Patrick Shanley’s Poison, about which the characters should have had much doubt. Not the audience however who bought in immediately and hopefully as a young woman, rebuffed by her boyfriend, seeks a fortuneteller’s help in getting him back.
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Missy Mazzoli and the Gotham Opera Music
Le Poisson Rouge Showcases Opera and Other Music
By: - May 26th, 2013Neal Goren is the moving force behind Gotham Chamber Opera, eleven years old and mature beyond its years. Over and over again, in a variety of venues, Gotham brings us opera, intimate and at its best. Committed to bringing seldom performed opera to light, Goren also presents the cutting edge composers of our day. It was another brilliant evening at New York's arts cabaret Le Poisson Rouge
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Alan Cumming as Macbeth and Everyone Else Theatre
Descent into Madness Electrifies at the Barrymore
By: - May 23rd, 2013Shakespeare called his Macbeth the Scottish play, and it seems particularly appropriate that the Scotch actor, Alan Cumming, magnifying his burr, takes on the play. Cumming portrays all the characters as they whirl from his mind onto the stage.
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Five First-Rate One Acts in New York Theatre
The Distinguished Workshop Theater Presents
By: - May 20th, 2013The Workshop Theater is made up of 150 actors, directors and writers. In a small space, you are smashed up against the action. Each of the actors in this series found just the right balance between up close drama and in your face, It is particularly exciting to have performance next to you. You either enter the drama or embrace it or both.
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Andris Nelsons New Music Director of the BSO Music
Appointment of Youthful Conductor Shocks Music World
By: - May 16th, 2013With the numerous cancellations of former Music Director, James Levine, his inevitable retirement and a two year interregum, the past few years have been a nightmare for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Just in his mid 30s the Latvian born Andris Nelsons has been appointed as Music Director of the BSO and Tanglewood.
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Giulio Cesare a Triumph at the Met Opera Music
Natalie Dessay in Top Form
By: - May 12th, 2013Handel took eight months to compose Giuilo Cesare, an unusually long time for him. Rinaldo was composed in two weeks. Harry Bicket, conducting with his hands, sometimes on a harpsichord which held his score, brought forward all the delights of this superb score.
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Dumbarton Oaks in the Spring Fine Arts
Gardens by Edith Wharton's Niece and Pre-Columbian Art
By: - May 05th, 2013Dumbarton Oaks, the famous estate built on the highest point of the Georgetown section of Washington, DC, is a special treat in the spring.
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