Theatre
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Kingdome City by Playwright Sheri Wilner
World Premiere at La Jolla Playhouse
By: - Sep 18th, 2014The La Jolla Playhouse launched the world premiere of “Kingdome City†by playwright Sheri Wilner directed by Jackson Gay. “Kingdom City†is playwright Wilner’s take on the state of censorship in the United States in the 21st century. Like Arthur Miller before her she uses the metaphor of “The Crucible†to examine thorny problems and issues plaguing American society when it comes to religious issues versus political situations and protected First Amendment rights to free speech.
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Brook and Estienne's The Valley of Astonishment
Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn
By: - Sep 17th, 2014Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne stage mesmerizing moments at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center. In a program note, Brook makes clear that theatre must both amaze and hit the audience in its gut. Four unusual characters are presented under examination by neuro-scientists. The result is charming, engaging and provocative.
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Far From Heaven At SpeakEasy
1950s Musical Deals With Sexual and Cultural Issues
By: - Sep 17th, 2014Set in the Eisenhower era of complacency and Norman Rockwell family and Main Street values, Far From Heaven is by the creators of the musical Grey Gardens and Tony Award-winning playwright Richard Greenberg, It is a a lushly operatic adaptation of Director Todd Haynes' romantic melodrama of private longings and social taboos. A beautiful 1950s Connecticut housewife's perfect life is shattered when she discovers her husband's secret and then seeks comfort in a forbidden relationship. The world is never what it seems..
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Beef and Boards Announces Season
Dinner Theatre in Indianapolis
By: - Sep 13th, 2014Our Indianapolis contributor and ATCA member, Melissa Hall, is set for another season of dinnert theatre at Beef and Boards. The company is note for lavishly staged productions of popular musicals. As well as decent roast beef.
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Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis
Launching 2014-2015 Season
By: - Sep 13th, 2014This season the Phoenix Theatre is presenting the various ways we laugh. Humor is how we manage to get through the tragedies and absurdities of life. They've put together a lineup of stories featuring a rich variety of comedic styles.
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Guess Who's Coming To Dinner At Huntington
The Very Human Pain of Confronting the Us and the They
By: - Sep 11th, 2014Set in the 1960s, this an alternating funny and poignant new stage adaptation that offers a contemporary interpretation of the 1967 Academy Award-winning star-filled film. It features Julia Duffy (“Newhartâ€), Tony Award winner Adriane Lenox (Doubt), and Will Lyman with Malcolm-Jamal Warner (“The Cosby Showâ€) making his Huntington debut. Still relevant nearly 50 years after the movie it was based upon, this is a story about race, prejudice and acceptance.
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Theresa Rebeck's Seminar
Palm Desert's Arthur Newman Theatre
By: - Sep 11th, 2014“Seminar†is not a study in intellectual rigor by a long shot, but it can be an entertaining evening of theatre, if one goes not expecting to challenge the gray matter in one’s head. The ensemble cast throw themselves into their portrayals with gusto, sometimes, a little too much gusto
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Noel Coward's Fallen Angels
North Coast Rep Theatre in San Diego
By: - Sep 11th, 2014North Coast Rep Company, of Solano Beach, CA, launched its 33rd season last weekend and hit the ground running with Noel Coward’s delightful spin on the 1920’s comedy-of-manners genre “Fallen Angelsâ€. This wonderfully hilarious and fast-paced romp has the very good fortune to have San Diego-based director Rosina Reynolds at the helm.
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Modern Theatre at Suffolk University
The 2014-2015 Season
By: - Sep 11th, 2014The Modern Theatre at Suffolk University announces the programming lineup for its 2014-2015 season, featuring conversation, film, and new and classic plays.
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Sweeney Todd Thrilling At LyricStage
Music and Performances Create Haunting Theatre
By: - Sep 07th, 2014Stephen Sondheim's Tony-Award winning Sweeney Todd is a macabre musical thriller that blends wit with a hauntingly beautiful score and grisly humor. Elegantly and wonderfully produced at the LyricStage, the musical follows the homicidal barber Sweeney Todd on his quest for justice and vengeance after years of unjust imprisonment and exile. With the aid of Mrs. Lovett, the twisted proprietor of a failing Fleet Street meat-pie shop, Todd sets out to avenge the terrible wrongs done to him and his family while adding filler to tasty pastry.
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Jenny Gersten Quits NY’s High Line
Returns to First Love the Arts
By: - Sep 03rd, 2014At this time last year Jenny Gersten did not renew a three year contract as artistic director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival. She took a job as director of NY's High Line. For the interim she programmed the recently concluded 2014 WTF season. In a recent e mail exchange I told Gersten that her return to theatre was inevitable. It's in her genes. She corrects me that she hopes to return to "the arts."
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Clemente: The Legend of 21
Chicago's Night Blue Produces a Dramatic Tale
By: - Sep 03rd, 2014Clemente: The Legend of 21, is a musical drama being developed as it is performed. This work in progress is well worth the effort. Music, videos, Spanish language with subtitles, a bit of this and a bit of that mix wonderfully. Modesto Lacén makes you feel that Clemente lives again, he so captures the vitality of the man.
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Berkshire Theatre 2014
Highlights of a Diverse Season
By: - Sep 02nd, 2014From the first of May through the end of August we posted 86 theatre articles by a diverse staff of contributors. This overview is limited to the four major Berkshire companies: Barrington Stage Company, Berkshire Theatre Group, Shakespeare & Company, and Williamstown Theatre Group. Our summary is based on reviewing most but not all of the 2014 Berkshire Summer Season.
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My Name is Asher Lev at Timeline
Chaim Potok's Portrait of an Artist in Chicago
By: - Aug 31st, 2014My Name is Asher Lev is the story of a boy brought up in an insular world with very particular beliefs and practices. Until recently this world has succeeded in keeping its own in the fold. Very few escape or leave behind the families, religious observances and commitment of the Hasidic world. Lubavitcher ambulances rush all over the boroughs of New York today. Live chickens arrive to be properly slaughtered in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Young couples are married as soon as parents can make an arrangement. They don’t have a chance to think about leaving when they are surrounded by a gaggle of young children. You still see teenage mothers aged by their wigs and their nun-like dress and tied down by several kids hanging from their hems.
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Uncle Vanya in Weston, Vermont
New Adaptation Tuned to American Audiences
By: - Aug 30th, 2014Chekhov strove to make his works "just as complicated and just as simple as ... in real life," He wrote, "People are sitting at a table having dinner, that's all, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being torn apart." This production of Uncle Vanya shares Chekhov’s intentions and brings his work to life much as he must have envisioned.
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The Future of Theatre
Theatre Communications Group Conference
By: - Aug 29th, 2014When seeking news of what’s happening in American not-for-profit theatre, you can track those happenings via the Theatre Communications Group (TCG). Once a year the organization convenes its National Conference in a different city, allowing members and interested parties to come together, press the flesh, attend workshops and panels, and exchange ideas on the state and future of American theatre.
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Two Gentleman of Verona at Old Globe
Shakespeare Summer Season to September 14
By: - Aug 22nd, 2014This time The Old Globe wraps up their highly successful 2014 Shakespeare Summer Season with the delightfully entertaining rom/com “Two Gentlemen of Veronaâ€, directed by acclaimed Globe Alum and Tony Award nominee Mark Lamos.
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A Hatful of Rain at Berkshire Theatre Group
Once Provocative Play Is Rarely Revived
By: - Aug 20th, 2014While the play has relevance to today’s veterans dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and sometimes resulting addictions, the material is dated. Too much information has been spread about war, its effects on families and society, to make these characters’ shock seem real.
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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
Long and Short of the Bard
By: - Aug 20th, 2014With The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) there is a lot of farce crammed into an evening at the Tina Packer Playhouse of Shakespeare & Company. Based on a raucuous response of a near to packed house on a week night this is the run away comedy hit of the Berkshire season.
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Contemporary American Theater Festival
Production of Uncanny Valley Transferring to New York
By: - Aug 19th, 2014CATF has been invited to transfer its world premiere production of Uncanny Valley by Thomas Gibbons to New York City’s Off-Broadway venue 59E59 Theaters. Hailed as the Festival’s “most satisfying offering†by The Washington Post, Uncanny Valley will be presented by CATF for a four-week run beginning on October 2.
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The Mousetrap in Dorset, Vermont
Still Surprising Audiences After 62 Years
By: - Aug 17th, 2014The murders in Agatha Christie’s mysteries are almost incidental. Though there is suspense and intrigue, there is no pandering to mayhem and horror. A puzzle is introduced, enhanced with complications, and finally solved through clever reasoning. The well-acted production at The Dorset Theatre Festival is classic Christie at its best.
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Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Durang Off the Hook at Shakespeare & Company
By: - Aug 16th, 2014Directed by our friend the late Nicholas Martin of Williamstown Theatre Festival Christopher Durang's serious comedy Vanya and Sonia and Macha and Spike won a Tony for Best Play. Since then it has been widely produced and now through September 14 by Shakespeare & Company. Matthew Penn has directed an awesome cast in this side splitting gonzo riff on Anton Chekhov. It's a fresh, fun, zinger that rounds off a top heavy summer of the Bard in Lenox.
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The Marvelous Wonderettes: Caps & Gowns
Fun and Frolics at Weston Theatre’s Second Stage
By: - Aug 16th, 2014For pure, unadulterated entertainment the juke box musical The Marvelous Wonderettes: Caps & Gowns can’t be beat. It’s polished and professional while retaining the freshness of youth and good-natured fun. It is basically a family-friendly burlesque, a humorous exaggeration of the teen years and loves of four young women.
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Reasons to Be Pretty at Geffen Playhouse
Neil LaBute Play Through August 31
By: - Aug 15th, 2014In his latest play “Reasons to be Prettyâ€, directed by artistic director Randall Arney, now playing on the Gil Cates stage of the Geffen Playhouse, Neil LaBute introduces us to four characters in their mid-twenties, who are what some might label as border-line losers. The younger generation come off as spoiled, self-indulgent, and suffering from a lack of parental oversight when they were growing up. And, they’re still not grownups when we catch up with them.
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Walldogs at Hatch Art Collective
An Economy of Means by New Pittsburgh Company
By: - Aug 15th, 2014Hatch Arts Collective is a relatively new enterprise (they are in their second year of existence), and in this production of Walldogs director Adil Mansoor has made the smart choice to embrace and make a virtue of the company’s poverty of resources. The scene design is simple and spare, foregrounding the play’s “third character,†the wall, and the costume and lighting design are equally pared down.
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