Victor Cordell
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Recent Articles:
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Ruthless! The Musical Front Page
A Delightful Spoof of Mame, Gypsy, and The Bad Seed
By: - Mar 27th, 2023Send-ups can be tricky, since pastiche, and particularly farce, can wear thin. But “Ruthless! The Musical” pushes all the right buttons, offering a bright script and bouncy music with clever and provocative lyrics. Altarena Playhouse gives it a rousing rendition that is enjoyable from start to finish. The casting and acting are superb, and the creative elements sparkle.
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Tosca Front Page
Livermore Valley Opera's Fine Production of Puccini's Searing Verismo Opera
By: - Mar 15th, 2023In its essence, the opera is an intimate triangle of love, predation, betrayal, and murder. Yet the intimacy of “Tosca” plays against a grand canvas of three unrelated settings, which LVO executes deftly.
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Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer Front Page
An Homage to a Civil Rights Heroine
By: - Mar 13th, 2023Greta Oglesby gloriously reprises the role of Fannie Lou Hamer that she performed at Oregon Shakes’ vast outdoor Elizabethan Theatre. She brings a speaking voice brimming with passion and conviction, as well as a strong and melodious singing voice. She stalks the stage with a slight hobble as a wounded warrior who is too busy planning the next demonstration to let her nagging injuries slow her down.
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Falstaff Front Page
A Great Production of Verdi's Exquisite Comic Opera
By: - Feb 12th, 2023Frothy delights like “Falstaff” present particular challenges. Comic timing, enthusiastic affect, and vocal versatility must be heightened. Opera San Jose’s production excels in every dimension. Performers sing with joy and act with charm. All of the artistic elements strike the right note, resulting in a production that glitters.
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Everest: An Immersive Experience (Opera) Front Page
Innovative Format for a Compelling Work from Opera Parallèle
By: - Feb 07th, 2023For all of human history and eons before, Mount Everest has stood as steady as a rock – literally. In its eight years, the opera “Everest: An Immersive Experience” has had three very different realizations, even though under the baton of Nicole Paiement for each version. The genesis of the opera’s narrative is a real-life tragedy about three members on an Everest expedition in 1996, two of whom never came back.
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Paradise Blue Front Page
Urban Renewal and Human Destruction in 1950s Detroit.
By: - Feb 04th, 2023Dominique Morisseau has written a sometimes funny but always tense noirish drama which Director Dawn Monique Williams plumbs for all its nuance. The actors find the essence of each character and deliver a gripping entertainment.
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Cashed Out Front Page
World Premiere About Life on the Reservation and Addiction
By: - Feb 03rd, 2023“Cashed Out” takes place on the Gila River Reservation in southern Arizona, home to the Pima tribe, traditionally noted for their finely woven baskets – tightly twined bowls with crisp angular patterns. While the compelling narrative gives interesting insights into the culture of the native people, universal themes abound – the power of love in family and friendship; internal struggle and external conflict; forgiveness and redemption. The production is striking and highly appealing.
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Dear Evan Hansen Front Page
A Teenager's Conundrum
By: - Jan 29th, 2023Anyone who says they never got caught telling a fib is probably telling a fib. But what is worse is covering the tracks of the first lie with another, and then another, until the wheels finally come off. Often, the result is loss of respect from others, compounded by loss of self-respect. If there is a road back, it is an arduous one.
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Clyde's by Lynn Nottage Front Page
By Berkeley Repertory Theatre
By: - Jan 27th, 2023In the hands of some, a sandwich may be a most humble joining of Wonder Bread with a plain and prosaic filler of any sort. In another, it can be a sublime assemblage of aspiration and dreams. Such is the aesthetic divide between most of the truckers who patronize Clyde’s Sandwich Shop in Reading, PA, and the unseen kitchen staff who fill their orders. The Berkeley Rep production exceeds every standard the script demands.
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In Every Generation Front Page
Family dynamics and seder through the years.
By: - Jan 24th, 2023“Mah nishtanah, ha-laylah ha-zeh,mi-kol ha-leylot” (Why is this night different from all other nights?). This invocation, spoken by the youngest capable person at the dinner table at seder, is perhaps the most famous and evocative sentence in Judaism. Not only does the ritual that follows those words reflect on the traumatic history of the Jewish people, but it speaks to their very existence.
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Slow Food Front Page
Perhaps McDonalds is not such a bad choice after all.
By: - Jan 22nd, 2023All of us have had that restaurant experience in which we thought the food would never come. In this case, the cause is not a lost order or long prep time or overtaxed restaurant staff. It is willful delay by the server from hell.
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Ennio: The Living Paper Cartoon Front Page
Frenetic Cavalcade of Musical Skits
By: - Jan 14th, 2023In a fast-moving 60 minutes, mime comic Ennio provides cleverly curated cartoon characterizations of celebrities and lip syncs to songs, mostly recorded by the people portrayed. The music is the songbook of our lives (if you’re middle aged or older!), including rock-and-roll, pop of various sorts, and rap.
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Annie Front Page
Touring show at Broadway San Jose
By: - Jan 12th, 2023So, what makes “Annie” so popular? Where to start? Set during the Great Depression and opening in an orphanage with conditions straight out of a Charles Dickens novel doesn’t seem a likely starting point.
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Poetic Justice - When Art Is Everything Front Page
Vignettes of Robert Lowell and Rainer Maria Rilke
By: - Jan 10th, 2023In short order, playwright Lynne Kaufman offers enticing insights into two contrasting, important modern poets, and the simple production succeeds through fine acting. This compact but impactful taste of familiarity fully satisfies on its own, while many attendees will want to learn even more about these fragile artists and their robust literary works.
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Beetlejuice Front Page
SF Broadway's Gleefully Ghoulish Ghost Story
By: - Dec 17th, 2022Ghosts. Dancing skeletons. A giant toothy snake from Hell, like Saturday Night Live’s land shark on steroids. “The Handbook for the Recently Deceased.” When the title character mirthfully tells the audience that this is a play about death, he’s not kidding. Fortunately, it’s all in good fun, and there is plenty of it in this delightfully camp musical adaptation of the highly successful 1988 comedy-horror film.
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Little Shop of Horrors Front Page
TheatreWorks' Bubbly Chinatown Adaptation
By: - Dec 06th, 2022Okay – let’s cut straight to the chase. The unique chronical of “Little Shop of Horrors” is laugh-out-loud funny; the music is foot-stomping energetic; the production is superb; and the performances are great. Did I miss anything? If you see this TheatreWorks production and disagree, check with your physician to make sure you have the pulse rate of a sentient being.
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Wuthering Heights Front Page
An irreverent Contemporary Musical Adaptation
By: - Dec 02nd, 2022This rendering must be measured by a very different yardstick than traditional versions. By a calculation based on contemporary sensibilities, Adaptor/Director Emma Rice’s innovation succeeds in providing a multifaceted entertainment executed with top rate professionalism.
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Orpheus and Eurydice Front Page
At San Francisco Opera
By: - Nov 28th, 2022Christoph Willibald Gluck’s contributions to opera extend beyond the merits of his individual operas. Like Richard Wagner a century later, Gluck conceived an intellectual framework that changed the opera landscape.
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Clue Front Page
The Theatrical Version of the Board Game and Movie
By: - Nov 03rd, 2022Murder! Mystery! Mayhem! are the order of the day (er – night) as Center Rep takes on the classic trapped-in-a-scary-mansion who-dunnit? Did the butler do it? In a play that relies on style rather than gravitas, Director Nancy Carlin pulls all the right strings to make for a fluffy and entertaining ninety minutes.
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