Theatre
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Adrienne Kennedy at Theatre for a New Audience
Compressed Memory Beautifully Staged
By: - Jan 31st, 2018Over the years, we have come to count on Theatre for a New Audience for superb productions of interesting work. They do not disappoint in their mounting of Adrienne's Kennedy's first play in a decade. At the Polonsky Center, the stage is configured with the audience on three sides. A very tall staircase looms in the center, bridging time and place.
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Brett Neveu's Traitor Updates Ibsen
Based on 1882 Play An Enemy of the People
By: - Feb 01st, 2018Brett Neveu has taken Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play, An Enemy of the People, and transmogrified it into a contemporary setting. Neveu transplants a scandal surrounding the water flowing through the Municipal Baths in a Norwegian town to the soil underlying a charter school in an Illinois town. Traitor in a slashing world premiere at Chicago's A Red Orchid Theatre, is directed by the company's most famous alum, Michael Shannon.
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Around the World in 80 Days
Seven League Boots for Solona Beach California
By: - Feb 01st, 2018North Coast Repertory Theatre (NCRT) of Solana Beach, CA is gifting its audiences with a ‘master class’ in farce/comedy ensemble acting with its delightful, whimsical, tongue-in-cheek, production of the Jules Verne classic tale “Around the World in 80 Days”.
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The Dining Room by A. R. Gurney
Produced by Sonoma Art Live
By: - Feb 01st, 2018Without the benefit of a narrative arc, A. R. Gurney has written a cohesive and compelling comedy/drama with a structure that moves successfully from one climax to another. Director Joey Hoeber has molded this small but significant play into a very convincing theater piece.
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Romance Romance by Barry Harman and Keith Herrmann,
At CV REP Theatre, of Rancho Mirage
By: - Feb 01st, 2018“Romance/Romance,” by Barry Harman and Keith Herrmann, is another stellar production that performs at CV REP Theatre in Rancho Mirage, through February 11, 2018. Emmy winning set designer Jimmy Cuomo doesn’t disappoint with another outstanding design
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Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau
Co-produced by Marin Theatre Company and Theatreworks Silicon Valley
By: - Feb 02nd, 2018Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau is set in an automobile stamping plant in Detroit in 2008. Its window to the greater world is the shabby break room of the laborers on one of the assembly lines, where the abiding concern is the rumor that the plant will shut down. And if so, when and how?
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Red Speedo by Lucas Hnath
At Center Repertory Company
By: - Feb 04th, 2018Center Rep has produced a sharply drawn realization of Lucas Hnath’s Obie winning play. The story line is riveting, and director Markus Potter’s pace is brisk and assured.
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Ernest Thompson's On Golden Pond
At South Florida's Palm Beach Dramaworks
By: - Feb 03rd, 2018The classic comic-drama On Golden Pond is enjoying a funny, touching production at Palm Beach Dramaworks. Cast members and director create complex characterizations. This production set in 1988 looks homey and rustic
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Julia Cho's Office Hour
Long Wharf Theater Co-production with Berkley Repertory Theatre
By: - Feb 04th, 2018Julia Cho’s play is often successful, yet the fantasies become less effective as the play goes on even though they are ratcheted up. Despite reservations about the play, the production is excellent.
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Blind Date by Rogelio Martinez
Robert Falls Directs Goodman's World Premiere
By: - Feb 05th, 2018The blind date actually took place on November 19, 1985, in Geneva. Goodman Theatre’s world premiere of Blind Date by Rogelio Martinez, directed by Robert Falls, takes us through the tense period and the negotiations leading up to that summit—and finally, briefly, the summit itself.
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Mark Rylance in Farinelli and the King
A Broadway Pratfall for Multiple Tony and Oscar Winner
By: - Feb 06th, 2018The appearance of famed British actor and multiple Tony winner, Mark Rylance, is always a much anticipated event. Accordingly, the run of Farinelli and the King is mostly sold out though a run that ends on March 25. The script by his wife, Claire van Kampen, entails a bonkers king, and his queen allegedly having an improbable affair with the castrato, Farinelli, who has abandoned his career to perform nightly for the king. Our critic was not amused.
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Clark Gable Slept Here by Michael McKeever
Pitch Black Comedy by Talented South Florida Playwright
By: - Feb 06th, 2018Clark Gable Slept Here is an unabashedly penetrating satire about the cutthroat world of Hollywood. A talented cast shines in a production of the play at Main Street Players in Miami Lakes. The company, which turned professional last year, delivers a fast-paced, furiously funny mounting of Michael McKeever's play.
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Williamstown Theatre Festival 2018
Five New Works and a Beloved One
By: - Feb 06th, 2018In a star studded program yet again Williamstown Theatre Festival brings Broadway to the berkshires. The season starts on June 26 and runs through August 19. There are three Main Stage productions and four on Nikos Stage. There will be a Main Stage world premiere musical;, Lempicka, as well as a new play , Seared, by Therese Rebeck on the Nikos Stage. Casting includes Mary-Louise Parker, Steven Pasquale, Jessica Hecht, Brooks Ashmanskas and Matthew Broderick.
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Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin
Produced by San Francisco Playhouse
By: - Feb 06th, 2018Audiences will possibly find many behaviors in Born Yesterday less acceptable and more abhorrent than in earlier times. But along the way, they will be mightily entertained by a powerful production. And for those of us with a lot of miles on our shoes who wonder how a stage show can compete with the great 1950 movie cast of Judy Holliday, Broderick Crawford, and William Holden, just sit back and enjoy the performances.
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Nice Girl by Melissa Ross
Finalist for Primus Prize at Raven Theatre
By: - Feb 07th, 2018Several years ago Nice Girl by Melissa Ross was a finalist for the Primus Prize for oustanding new plays awarded by the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA). It is being given a heartfelt and down-to-earth production at Chicago's Raven Theatre. The four actors carry off the middle class Boston accents almost perfectly, thanks to the work of dialect coach Jason K. Martin.
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Constellations by Nick Payne
Brief Evocative and Frustrating at TheaterWorks in Hartford
By: - Feb 08th, 2018This brief but problematic play by Nick Payne has overly ambitious content. It has top heavy themes from the time/space continuum, to the infinite possibilities of human interactions and quantum physics. There are mixed results supported by an excellent production at TheatreWorks. While frustrating to sit through its ambitious themes linger in aftershocks long after leaving the theatre.
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Reel to Reel by John Kolvenbach
World Premiere at Magic Theatre
By: - Feb 09th, 2018Playwright John Kolvenbach is a New Yorker with a strong spiritual link to Magic Theatre as a major interpreter of his plays. “Reel to Reel,” directed by Kolvenbach, is their fourth production of his work and the second world premiere. Its novel structure and content reveal a compact, intimate conversation piece of sharp ripostes that excites and provokes. The acting and creative designs of this production are stellar.
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Berkshire Museum: Monday Morning Quarterback
Sifting Through the Rubble
By: - Feb 12th, 2018The news of a "compromise" that really wasn't on Friday sent shock waves through the local, national and global art world. Other than the sale of Rockwell's "Shuffleton's Barber Shop" to an undisclosed museum, the Berkshire Museum got a green light to sell the 39 other works at Sotheby's. While morally and ethically flawed director, Van Shields, and board chair, Elizabeth McGraw, will proceed with catastrophic plans to gut the collection to raise $50 million. They will trash and rebuilid the museum creating its populist/ vulgarian New Vision.
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Opera Philadelphia Mounts Written on the Skin
A Stunning Production at the Academy of Music
By: - Feb 12th, 2018The tall grey walls which harbor the rotating rooms of a medieval manor are striking. They contain the action in the manor and offer opportunities for hide and seek. The Lord is known here as The Protector. Oddly in the medieval time, one of the King's services to the Lord was protection. The use of this word is one of the deliciously ambiguous elements of George Benjamin's opera, Written on the Skin, which has arrived in the US in Opera Philadelphia.
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The Revolutionists in Boca Raton
By Steinberg/ATCA Winner Lauren Gunderson.
By: - Feb 13th, 2018History comes to vibrant life in Theatre Lab's fun, funny and touching production of The Revolutionists. Colorful, visually appealing production is on stage at university's professional resident company through Feb. 25. Gunderson is the most-produced playwright for the 2017-2018 theater season in the U.S., according to American Theatre magazine.
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L'Elisir d'Amore at the Metropolitan Opera
A Swig and A Miss
By: - Feb 13th, 2018The soprano Pretty Yende is one of the more sensational discoveries at the Metropolitan Opera this decade, wowing audiences with her sweet tone and superlative bel canto technique since making her debut in the company’s January, 2013 revival of Rossini's Le comte Ory. This month, she sings Adina in the revival of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore, a charming love story that maintains its front rank among the most popular Italian operatic comedies.
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One Drop at Theater for a New City
Andrea Fulton Develops a Folk Musical
By: - Feb 13th, 2018One Drop is a family drama with music by Andrea J. Fulton. It brings to life the politics of a young mixed-race man in post-reconstruction Louisiana. He bravely risks love despite the bigotry of the community around him.
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John Lithgow: Stories By Heart
Smash Solo on Broadway
By: - Feb 15th, 2018Now 72, John Lithgow is a charming and much loved, award winning actor. His solo show Stories by Heart is both hilarious and poignant. It conveys stories told by his father during Lithgow's childhood. The show continues at American Airlines Theatre on Broadway through March 25.
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Fear and Misery in the Third Reich
Timely Brecht at Chicago's Haven Theatre
By: - Feb 15th, 2018Fear and Misery in the Third Reich can be described as Bertolt Brecht’s ghost arriving to warn us about the United States of Donald Trump turning into a fascist dictatorship. The play, now being staged by Haven Theatre, is a series of 18 loosely related scenes illustrating the progression of the German dictatorship from Breslau 1933 to Hamburg 1938.
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Opera Parallèle's Trouble in Tahiti
Leonard Bernstein’s Modest One-act Opera
By: - Feb 17th, 2018The always innovative Opera Parallèle has taken Leonard Bernstein’s modest one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti from 1952 and framed it with complementary wrapper to produce an exciting entertainment. This evening of opera is not traditional in many ways, but it is delightfully sophisticated and well executed
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