Theatre
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The Paper Hat Game at 3-Legged Dog
Torry Bend Blends Media with a Punch
By: - Jul 08th, 2016Scale is an important factor in how we respond to objects, art and theatre. Using the small frame of a puppet theatre, Torry Bend tells the story of a man who distributes paper hats on the Chicago Transit system. We could be anywhere in this intriguing take on urban life.
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Sense and Sensibility at Old Globe
Jane Austen Sparkles in San Diego
By: - Jul 23rd, 2016San Diego’s venerable Old Globe Theatre is currently staging a vibrant, engaging and thoroughly delightful production of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility”.
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The Tin Woman by Sean Grennan
Actor’s Playhouse The Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables
By: - May 19th, 2016Anyone who’s required an organ transplant knows the horrible ordeals of blood tests and waiting lists. But what happens after a successful transplant is complete? Does life revert to normal for the recipient, the donor and their families?
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Breath of Kings: Rebellion
Stratford Festival of Canada
By: - Jul 20th, 2016We welcome the distinguished critic Herbert Simpson and his coverage of Stratford Festival of Canada. Here he reviews Breath of Kings: Rebellion Richard II and Henry IV Part 1I which will be performed through September 24.
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How I learned What I Learned by August Wilson
Provocative Journey of Self-Discovery At Huntington Theatre
By: - Mar 11th, 2016In this wonderful solo show, the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson shares entertaining and provocative stories about youth-- his first few jobs, a stay in jail, various colorful friends, encounters with racism, music, and love as a young poet in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Directed by Todd Kreidler and featuring Eugene Lee, both longtime Wilson collaborators, this memoir charts Wilson’s journey of self-discovery through adversity, and what it means to be a black artist in America. This narrative journey, brilliantly performed by Eugene Lee, solidifies Wilson’s theatrical and cultural legacy.
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LaMama Discovers American Music
Dvorak Pricks Up His Ears
By: - Mar 12th, 2016The ever inventive Czecholovak-American Theatre tracks Antonin Dvorak's arrival in America and shows us how he discovered unique American sounds from cottonpickers in the South to Hiawatha.
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ATCA Announces Playwriting Finalists
Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award
By: - Mar 13th, 2016The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) has selected six finalists for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, recognizing playwrights for the best scripts that premiered professionally outside New York City during 2015.
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Barrington Stage Company Announces Programming
Rounding Out 2016 Season
By: - Mar 15th, 2016Following its world premiere at Yale Repertory Theater, Peerless by Jiehae Park (Hannah and the Dread Gazebo, Wondrous Strange), and directed by Margot Bordelon (Okay, Bye; At the Rich Relatives), will be the third production for the St. Germain Stage.
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Off Broadway Musical Ruthless
Falling In Love Again Is Simply Marvelous
By: - Mar 16th, 2016That NY critic, Edward Rubin, is a bit gonzo and over the top is no secret to his friends who know him as Fast Eddy. He refers to us as kids in a flurry of daily notes and links to reviews and articles of interest. In general we deplore the use of personal pronouns for reviews. Professional standards and decorum strive for objectivity. Now and then, as is the case here, his passion and enthusiasm know no bounds. Regarding an Off Broadway musical Ruthless he gushes "I loved, loved, loved Ruthless." That's just for openers.
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Lorca's Blood Wedding
Anemic Production at Chicago's Lookingglass
By: - Mar 18th, 2016Blood Wedding was part of Federico Garcia Lorca’s plan for a “trilogy of the Spanish earth”—unfinished when he was killed in 1936. Most critics include Yerma and The House of Bernada Alba in the “rural trilogy” but Lorca did not include the latter. The decision to set this production in the more-realistic Depression-era U.S. diminishes the mythic nature of Lorca’s story.
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Lucy Prebble's Compelling The Effect
Off Broadway at Barrow Street Theatre
By: - Mar 20th, 2016Lucy Prebble selects topics of heightened interest and then makes of them marvelous plays. Enron on the collapse of a fake US energy company is now followed by an exploration of drug trials and what they tell us about human beings.
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Sex with Strangers at LA's Geffen Playhouse
Talky Two-hander by Laura Eason
By: - Mar 24th, 2016In “Sex with Strangers, the plot revolves around Olivia (Rebecca Pidgeon), an intelligent, mid-career, one-book novelist who is having second thoughts about her ability is a writer, and Ethan (Stephen Louis Grush), a wildly successful, young, hyper-energetic stud/blogger with an ego to match, who meet in a mutual friend’s borrowed cabin on a snowy winter night in Michigan.
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Disney’s The Little Mermaid at Theatre 29
Theatre Still Delivers on Its Mission Statement
By: - Mar 24th, 2016“Disney’s The Little Mermaid” is one of the most ambitious productions Theatre 29 has tackled. And they have succeeded admirably. The California production continues through April 9.
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Endangered Species by Tony Padilla
Pearl McManus Theatre in Palm Springs
By: - Mar 24th, 2016“Endangered Species” written and directed by Tony Padilla stars Bonnie Gilgallon as Tina, a suburban Chicago housewife married to David a successful businessman played by Alan Berry. The couple married over twenty years are in New York on a holiday where they plan to relax and recharge their romantic batteries.
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Blackbird Not Broadway-Worthy
Disappointing Despite All-Star Cast
By: - Mar 25th, 2016The combination of Michelle Williams (Una) and Jeff Daniels (Ray) should have been Broadway gold. When the curtain went down at the Belasco Theatre my companion’s comment was “well there was a whole lot of garbage on the stage.” Indeed the entire play takes place in a lunchroom strewn with leftover food wrappers and empty paper cups. For a play about the damaging relationship between a 40+ man and the woman he had sex with when she was a girl of 14, there were no surprises and little character development. The play was a disappointment given such a potentially explosive topic and talented cast.
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Big Year for Bill Russell, One of Broadway's Best!
BCEFA Benefit Premieres an Exciting 2016 for Lyricist Russell
By: - Mar 25th, 2016Writer/Lyricist Bill Russell has brought us some of the best of on and off Broadway – yet many do not recognize his name. Creator of the moving and critically acclaimed Side Show, Russell recently staged a benefit performance of Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens (for Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS) at the Birdland Jazz Club in NYC which was spectacular. 2016 will be a big year for Russell, with world premieres and revivals of three of his shows (Side Show, Pageant, and premieres of both Brave New World and Unexpected Joy) in London and across the U.S. from Cape Cod to the Carolina's and the Black Hills of South Dakota!
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Tom Stoppard's Arcadia
Launches New Writers Theatre in Glencoe, Illinois
By: - Mar 29th, 2016Writers Theatre opened its spectacular new theater in Glencoe this week with an appropriately spectacular production of a play by Tom Stoppard one of today’s greatest playwrights, smartly directed by Michael Halberstam. It was almost a four-star evening.
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Ivo Van Hove Meets Arthur Miller
Stark, Timeless Setting Sets Emotional Wallup
By: - Mar 08th, 2016In anticipation of hot director Ivo Van Hove's production of Arthur Miller's Crucible, we re-visited his current hit production of Miller's A View from the Bridge. Physicalized acting in a plain set provides the perfect visual for the intense emotional action that impels Miller's drama.
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In a Little World of Our Own by Gary Mitchell
Irish Theatre's Chicago Production
By: - Mar 07th, 2016Playwright Gary Mitchell is from a working-class, loyalist background and grew up in North Belfast. He’s considered Northern Ireland’s finest playwright.
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Berkshire Theatre Group 2016
Lively Mix of Musicala Plays and Performances
By: - Feb 20th, 2016The Berkshire Theatre Group announces a full schedule of musicals, plays and performances at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield as well as its two stages in Stockbridge. The program includes events from June through October. As usual a musical, Little Shop of Horrors, opens at the Colonial just after the July 4th holiday weekend which launches high season in the Berkshires.
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Superhero Clubhouse's Jupiter at La MaMa
A Play About Power!
By: - Feb 20th, 2016Jonathan Camuzeaux, Jeremy Pickard and Sarah Ellen Stephens deliver powerhouse performances in Jupiter – A Play (literally) about Power. Camuzeaux & Pickard are also responsible (respectively) for the music and script for this futuristic “what if” that explores the potential disasters that lie ahead if we continue to abuse the environment. Jupiter will be at La MaMa through February 28.
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2666 at Chicago's Goodman Theatre
Adapted from Roberto Bolaño's Massive Novel
By: - Feb 22nd, 2016The Goodman's production of the late Roberto Bolaño's epic novel 2666 takes five-and-a-half hours to unfold on stage. It’s a beautiful mess.
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Denver Playwriting Summit Part I
Readings, Full Productions, Playwrights at Work
By: - Feb 22nd, 2016Readings, full productions, theatre has been key to Denver since Henry Lowenstein arrived to work for the Bonfilses. For the past 11 years Denver has put on a playwriting summit, celebrating theatre and bringing forward talent waiting to hit the main stage.
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Forest Whitaker Charms in O'Neill's Hughie
The Life-Sustaining Power of Performance as Mourning Becomes Morning
By: - Feb 23rd, 2016Erie Smith in Eugene O'Neill's Hughie is often played for the dark side of a fleabag world of dawls and bangtails. Chuckles erupt as a funny story is woven yet submerged. Forest Whitaker in his Broadway debut creates an incredible lightness of being in the dark night of an off-Broadway flop house.
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Denver Playwright Summit Part II
Measuring Degrees of Change
By: - Feb 24th, 2016A Greenland research project measuring climate change, perhaps caused by Shakespeare's death, and the passage of time when beloved possessions no longer work. These are all the subjects of wonderful plays in development in Denver. After years of work, Theresa Rebeck got her play The Nest ready for its well-received premier.
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