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Goodbye, Dolly!
Remembering Carol Channing at 97
By: - Jan 15th, 2019Broadway and cabaret star Carol Elaine Channing passed away today at the remarkable age of 97. She originated the iconic lead on the 1964 production of Jerry Herman's Hello,Dolly! It earned her a Tony award for which she was nominated three other times. She was still glamorous and forever young, but pushing 60, when I saw her in the late 1970s at Boston's jazz and cabaret club Lulu White's. That spectacular night evokes many fond memories.
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Debussy at the Metropolitan Opera
Nezet-Seguin Makes His Mark
By: - Jan 16th, 2019Claude Debussy only wrote one opera. Pélleas et Mélisande (based on a symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck) succeeds by destroying many of the conventions of the genre to which it belongs. On Tuesday night, the Met unveiled its revival of Pélleas, another acid test for its new music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and a younger generation of singers wandering through the hazy, maze-y woods of the mythical kingdom of Allemonde.
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What We’re Up Against by Therese Rebeck
Revival of 2011 Play in Chicago
By: - Jan 21st, 2019Playwright Theresa Rebeck is a master of dialogue and never hesitates to portray the bad manners of her contemporaries. Her 2011 play, What We’re Up Against, just opened as the inaugural production of Compass Theatre, a new Chicago Equity company.
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Awake at the Barrow Group
K. Lorrel Manning's Delicious Look at America Today
By: - Jan 21st, 2019In Awake, K. Lorrel Manning has created a triumphant piece which shakes sensibilities, upturns stereotypes and makes us smile at the sheer conundrum of being human. This is an entertaining , smoothly written and directed script . Nine skits with fifteen players are like leaves in the book of everyday America's s social and political issues as they inhabit our lives.
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Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon
By TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
By: - Jan 22nd, 2019Dramas such as Frost/Nixon – modern history as theater – present challenges. Those who lived through whatever subject at hand may feel they remember the facts well enough that a rehash will offer little interest. Those who sense there will be a political tilt to the play that doesn’t conform with their own may resist attending. In the case of Frost/Nixon relatively little time is dedicated to the interviews that were on television as part of the public history.
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Piper-Heidsieck Flows at Oscar Nominations
Lots Of Milestones
By: - Jan 22nd, 2019Each year, Piper-Heidsieck, the official Champagne of the Oscars, throws a party to celebrate the nominations. Attending the party is lots of fun. The highlight is always the Champagne.
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One County Film Company
South Florida Brothers' New Movie Business
By: - Jan 22nd, 2019Brothers Andrew and Tim Davis' appearance as siblings in True West inspired a film-making collaboration. Work is under way on a second feature film even while the first has experienced multiple showings. The Davis brothers have big plans for their One County Film Company.
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Looped at the Desert Rose Playhouse
Judith Chapman as Tallulah Bankhead
By: - Jan 25th, 2019It’s pure Judith Chapman totally immersed and completely in command within the skin, body movement, quirks, and tics of Tallulah Bankhead that reaches out and grabs the audience turning them into acolytes of an actor who knows how to take the stage and perform her special magic.
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American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford
Closed Since 1989 Now Up in Smoke
By: - Jan 27th, 2019In 1955 with funding from select patrons The American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut was launched. It was the third major Shakespeare festival conflated with the name Stratford, the home of the Bard. Initially there was less competition in the region for its season of summer and student oriented productions. Relying on a few with deep pockets the company failed to seek a broad base of support for its 1600 seat venue and lavish productions. When founding donors died in the 1970s decline set in with the company ceasing operations in 1989. The property was abandoned and decrepit when recently it went up in smoke.
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Janis Joplin at Harvard Stadium
In 1970 Bad Luck Came in Threes
By: - Jan 27th, 2019In 1970 I was hired to cover jazz and rock for the daily Boston Herald Traveler. To my dismay soon I was writing obituaries. It started with Al Wilson (July 4, 1943 – September 3, 1970) of the blues band Canned Heat. Then Jimi Hendrix (November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970). Not long after Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970). That was the class of 1970 with an average age of 27-28. A year later we lost Jim Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971).
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Carnegie Hall Presents Song Studio
Renee Fleming Gives Us The Song
By: - Jan 27th, 2019Renee Fleming has gone for the jugular in addressing the problem of song’s survival. How do singers communicate with an audience so people want to come and hear them? Her SongStudio took place in the Resnick Education Wing of Carnegie Hall.
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Jeffrey Lo’s New Comic Farce
Spending the End of the World on OK Cupid
By: - Jan 31st, 2019In Jeffrey Lo’s new comic farce, Spending the End of the World on OK Cupid, a prophet of doom named Alfred Winters had accurately predicted “The Vanishing” in which half of humanity recently disappeared at once without a trace. Now Winters has assured those who have survived that the world will end at midnight on the day that the action of the play takes place.
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Alister Spence and Satoko Fujii Orchestra
New CD of Imagine Meeting You Here
By: - Jan 31st, 2019Imagine Meeting You Here (Alister Spence Music, 2019) is the latest release by Alister Spence, a recognized leader in Australia’s new music directive and one of his country’s most original and distinctive jazz pianists and composers of orchestral pieces.
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La Boheme at Komische Oper Berlin
Opera by Giacomo Puccini
By: - Feb 05th, 2019When it comes to culture, Berlin is always worth a trip. And a great trip it was, to experience the opening night of Barrie Kosky's interpretation of La Bohème, by Giacomo Puccini, on Sunday, January 27 at the Komische Oper (Comic Opera) in Berlin.
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Red Rex at Steep Theatre
Rightlynd Neighborhood in Ike Holter’s play
By: - Feb 08th, 2019Red Rex, beautifully directed by Jonathan Berry, poses the contentious question of who gets to tell the story. It’s a play about a Chicago storefront theater staged by one of Chicago’s foremost storefront theaters in a space that used to be a grocery store.
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Late Company by Jordan Tannahill
At New Conservatory Theatre Center
By: - Feb 09th, 2019In Jordan Tannahill’s Late Company, that time has passed. Debora and Michael’s teenage son, Joel, has committed suicide. Although the obvious path for the parents is to suffer in silence and live with the memory of the lost loved one, Debora is driven by a need to find closure. That target would be someone who can be implicated for the condition that she feels had caused Joel to take his own life.
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A Reductive My Fair Lady
Compact Production at Central Square Theatre
By: - Feb 11th, 2019With the iconic music of My Fair Lady deleted this stripped down production, with a multi-tasking cast, gets at the essence of Shaw's masterpiece. Directed by Eric Tucker of Bedlam it is on view at Cantral Square Theatre in Cambridge. Much is done by few.
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Honky Tonk Laundry by Roger Bean
At Coyote StageWorks of Palm Springs
By: - Feb 11th, 2019Coyote StageWorks of Palm Springs delivers an early Valentine to fans and lovers of Country Music with a country-western comedy romp and hoot called “Honky Tonk Laundry”, written and directed by prolific playwright Roger Bean. It all comes out in the wash.
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Opera Philadelphia's A Midsummer Night's Dream
Acclaimed Robert Carsen Production Makes US Debut
By: - Feb 12th, 2019Opera Philadelphia has mounted a delightful production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The company reminds us, as it does so often, that opera can be highly entertaining and occasionally hilariously funny. Created by Robert Carsen thirty years ago in Aix-en-Provence, the stage is full of royal blues and lime forest greens until all is resolved in white. A new moon hangs in the sky.
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Williamstown Theatre Festival 2019
S. Epatha Merkerson and Uma Thurman to Star
By: - Feb 13th, 2019Yet again Williamstown Theatre Festival mixes old and new for its 2019 season.
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The Father by Florian Zeller
Chicago's Remy Bumppo Theatre Company
By: - Feb 14th, 2019The Father by French playwright Florian Zeller is a play about aging and dementia. But it’s not your typical touching human story designed to gain your sympathy for a troubled person and family.
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Berkshire Theatre Group 2019
Performances on Three Stages
By: - Feb 14th, 2019The 2019 program of Bwerkshire Theatre Group will occur at The Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield and on the Fitzpatrick Mainstage as well as Unicorn in Stockbridge. The season starts with previews of The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? by Edward Albee on May 24 in Stockbridge.
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Bonnie's Last Flight by Eliza Bent
Next Door at New York Theater Workshop
By: - Feb 14th, 2019Buckle your seat belts; the plane is still on the tarmac and we the audience, seated in airplane style aisles, are already anticipating a turbulent trip. There are technical difficulties. Flight attendants are rushing up and down the aisles shutting the overhead compartments, allaying our fraying nerves with snacks.
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Non Solus at BAM
Circus Dance from Hungary
By: - Feb 15th, 2019The Recirquel Company Budapest is presenting Non Solus at the Howard Gilman Opera House at BAM. The front of the stage is swathed in a glimmering material that reflects like plastic and moves like silk. Behind the curtain, misty lights of yellow and white are haloed like a desert mirage. The translucent curtain billows and then collapses in waves of light and texture.
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Fulfillment Center by Abe Koogler
A Red Orchid Theatre Production
By: - Feb 19th, 2019Abe Koogler’s play, Fulfillment Center, is the story of four working people (two of them educated ex-New Yorkers) trying to get by in a mid-size New Mexico city. Jess McLeod smoothly directs an excellent cast of four.
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