Theatre
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Lettice and Lovage by Peter Shaffer
Lindsay Ann Crouse Launches Gloucester Stage Season
By: - May 24th, 2016Veteran actor Lindsay Ann Crouse left LA several years ago to relocate to Annisquam the summer home of her theatrical family. In a now annual production she has been offered great roles by the local Gloucester Stage now launching its 37th season. She is stunning in the meaty role of an eccentric docent of a seedy British mansion. While entertaining she doesn't stick to the script. The play was written as a vehicle for Dame Maggie Smith by Peter Shaffer who wrote Equus and Amadeus. This play, as you will learn, is the cat's meow.
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John Douglas Thompson and Maggie Lacey
NY's TFNA Presents Ibsen and Strindberg
By: - May 25th, 2016Can men and women find themselves and satisfaction at the same time? This question has been asked since the beginning to time. Theatre for a New Audience, in their remarkable home, the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, features John Douglas Thompson and Maggie Lacey in Ibsen's A Doll's House and Strindberg's The Father, running in repertory.
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Presto Change-O at Barrington Stage
A Magical Three-Card Monte Musical
By: - May 29th, 2016Barrington Stage Company is launching its Pittsfield season with a commissioned musical Presto Change-O which is having its world premiere on the intimate St. Germain Stage. On many levels this perky production is zesty and magical and that's not just an illusion.
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Annie Baker's The Flick
Miami Theater Center
By: - May 30th, 2016The Flick by Annie Baker is being staged all over America. Given the scale of the movie theater with a theater the length of the individual productions varies greatly depending upon how long it takes for the trio of actors to sweep up all the popcorn between screenings. This is a review of a Miami production where it weighed in at about three hours.
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Haymarket: The Anarchist’s Songbook
Chicago's Underscore Theatre Company
By: - May 30th, 2016If the Haymarket story is unfamiliar, you can read about it before you see the play. The creators do a good job of telling a complex story, but everything will make more sense if you read before seeing this production.
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Spinning by Deirdre Kinahan
US Premiere at Irish Theatre of Chicago.
By: - May 31st, 2016Spinning is notable for its fine direction and acting. Dan Waller is one of those solid Chicago actors who plays many types of roles and makes each one his own. His portrayal of Conor is wrenching and passionate as he gradually learns so accept his responsibility for his actions.
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Annual Piccolo Spoleto Festival
Fever Was Red Hot in Charleston
By: - Jun 03rd, 2016Piccolo Spoleto Festival is officially the outreach arm of Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina. This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Spoleto Festival USA, and thirty-eighth year of Piccolo Spoleto.
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Tragedy of Eugene O'Neill
Family Ravaged as Long Day's Journey Into Night
By: - Jun 04th, 2016Currently Long Day's Journey Into Night, the masterpiece of Eugene O'Neill, is enjoying an all star Broadway revival. One of the last of his plays before a decade of illness he left instructions that it not be published until 25 years after his life. It was produced in Sweden within three years of his death. Based on the horrendous circumstances of his alcoholic, drug addicted family he hoped to avoid collateral damage to survivors. It begs the question of who owns the moral and legal rights when artists draw upon family and friends as material for their art.
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The Royale by Marco Ramirez
GableStage at Coral Gables, Florida
By: - Jun 04th, 2016The latter part of The Royale which played Broadway’s Lincoln Center Theater earlier this year, features one of the strongest, most powerful scenes of dramatic tension I’ve encountered in a theater in a long while
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Lauren Gunderson's The Taming at S&Co;.
Political Comedy Disconnects
By: - Jun 05th, 2016Lauren Gunderson is widely renegaded as among the best and brightest of American playwrights. She can be thoughtful and provocative. With The Taming, however, which is being given an energetic and ambitious production, the comedy of brought down as too clever, thinky and talky for its own good. It was just too difficult to connect with and care for the unmanageable characters and their absurd situations.
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Nunsense in Charleston
Footlight Players Part of Piccolo Spoleto
By: - Jun 05th, 2016Our coverage of Piccolo Spoleto in Charleston continues with Nunsense at Footlight Players. Saints preserve us.
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Beauty and the Beast
Road Company Visited Ft. Lauderdale
By: - Jun 18th, 2016Pretend we’re on an airplane, because the oxygen mask above will prove beneficial. Certainly it will help you deal with the spectacular, breathtaking special effects of the mostly impressive non-equity national touring version we will see of the beloved Broadway musical “Beauty and the Beast.”
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Golem Haunts Charleston
Robotic Presence in Annual Spoleto Festival 2016
By: - Jun 18th, 2016With a reviw of The Golem our Charleston correspondent, Sandy Katz, completes her coverage of the annual Spoleto Festival 2016. The mytical Golem was an exotic and exciting production.
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Macbeth at Old Globe
Lowell Davies Outdoor Festival Theatre
By: - Jul 12th, 2016Under the deft direction of Brian Kulick, this ‘Macbeth’ production has been updated to a visual setting more or less around the time of World War I. However, the language, spirit, and the murderous intrigues that Shakespeare loved so dearly are still present. It’s a clever way to update the core story that is familiar to all without sacrificing any dramatic elements or story points as conceived by the Bard.
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Wastwater at Chicago's Steep Theatre,
By English playwright Simon Stephens
By: - Jul 12th, 2016Wastwater by Simon Stephens is a loosely connected trilogy of stories, skillfully directed by Robin Witt. They’re set near London’s Heathrow Airport, where the village of Sipson is threatened with obliteration for the sake of a new airport runway. The playwright is best known for his Tony-winning adaptation, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
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Between Riverside and Crazy at Steppenwolf
Funny and Poignant Stephen Adly Guirgis Play
By: - Jul 14th, 2016Between Riverside and Crazy is a rowdy, raunchy play with lots of action. (Sensitive ears alert: When I said raunchy, that’s what I meant.) Yasen Peyankov directs it with style and glee.
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The Chinese Room at Williamstown
World Premiere of Michael West Play
By: - Jul 17th, 2016The hilarious comedy The Chinese Room by the Irish playwright Michael West is having its world premiere at Williamstown Theatre Festival. The current production allows for fine tuning for when the play transfers Off Broadway to Manhattan Theatre Club. It is sure to be a hit in New York.
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Kanze Noh's Inaugural at Lincoln Center
Traditional Japanese Theater Intrigues
By: - Jul 16th, 2016Even if you don't know the conventions of Noh Theater, developed over 600 years in Japan, there is great pleasure in its performance. The Kanze Noh troupe sports players whose descent can be traced back 22 generations. Deep emotions are generated by performances of dramas from this rich history.
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Musical 1776 in Palm Beach
At Don and Ann Brown Theatre.
By: - Jul 18th, 2016The well-known historical musica "1776" about our founding fathers’ mission to make America independent from England is on stage through July 24 in the intimate, semi-circular Don and Ann Brown Theatre in Palm Beach, Florida.
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Neil Simon's Broadway Bound
Stage Door Theatre Florida
By: - Jul 19th, 2016In “Broadway Bound,” Neil Simon shines a light on people who are flawed. You not only forgive them at the end, you feel as though you’re leaving part of your own family as the curtain closes.
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The Pirates of Penzance at Barrington Stage
Swashbuckling Rogues Invade Pittsfied.
By: - Jul 21st, 2016In a world gone utterly mad, for a great escape, there is nothing quite like an evening at Barrington Stage and the swashbuckling production of the perennial Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert & Sullivan. It has been masterfully created by that other theatrcal partnership Rando and Bergasse the pair that brought Barrington's On the Town to Broadway.
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Macbeth at Stratford Festival
Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino Rethinks the Scottish Play
By: - Jul 21st, 2016Shakespeare’s Macbeth was presented with no timid wariness about “the Scottish play” but instead a dark, mysterious exploration full of visual and emotional surprises, including a sexy young Macbeth and a terrifying, shifting landscape dominated by the three witches, not the royal killer couple. Stratford’s Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino is clearly the star of the production, directing it where it usually doesn’t go.
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Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme
French Production at Lincoln Center Festival
By: - Jul 21st, 2016Moiiere's gift for embedding comedy in character, and weaving the elements of musical theatre in a unified whole were on full display at the Gerald Lynch Theatre. We continue coverage of the annual Lincoln Center Festival.
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Buyer and Cellar at Miracle Theatre
One Man Show in Coral Gables
By: - Jul 22nd, 2016Barbra Streisand is in this original and highly entertaining play – sort of, although you believe she really is, judging from the electrifying, hyperventilation-defying, incredible performance from award-winning actor Chris Crawford. He plays a handful of characters throughout the roughly one-hour, 45-minute play with no intermission.
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Ira J. Bilowit at 90
Renowned New York Theatre Critic
By: - Jul 22nd, 2016Although elderly and in poor health Ira J. Bilowit, who has passed away at 90, continued to cover and work in theatre. Just last November he was co-chair, with Sherry Eaker, of a New York conference of the American Theratre Critics Association. He was among the most respected and revered members of that organization.
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