You’ll know how “Half Time” ends about five minutes in. So what; getting there is the fun part. And “Half Time” is fun. Its premise is simple enough (even to a fault, but anyway): …
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:32PMCountry music has never appealed to me. I might leave it on a rental car pre-set, but would never seek it out. If, however, it was all as flavorful as Lauren Pritchard’s music and lyrics f…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 05:57PMPlaywright Arthur Miller maintained a lasting interest in his own plays, frequently popping in to productions unannounced. (I once spotted him at a performance of “Death of a Salesman” i…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 10:50AMHenry James’s 1903 novella “The Beast in the Jungle” is a melancholy treatise on unrealized romance and thwarted passion that unfolds in James’s characteristically elaborate prose. T…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 04:00PMLast weekend I saw a play about a man who lies about pretty much everything. Despite claiming to be a stand-up guy – ardently religious even – he’d con you out of your socks given half…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 06:01PM[This article was written for Digital First Media’s Michigan newspapers, where it ran on Sunday May 13, with reviews to follow during the summer.] Ontario’s Stratford and Shaw Festiv…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:30PMTennessee Williams’ women tend not to fare very well. Blanche Dubois is led away by kind strangers, and Amanda and Laura Wingate are stuck with each other after being twice abandoned. “S…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 04:25PMPlaywright Bran Friel has been called “the Irish Chekhov.” (Friel died in 2015 at 86.) Like the plays of that century-earlier Russian author, Friel’s are character-driven rather than…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:13PMWhen I commented to Holmdel Theatre Company’s “Much Ado About Nothing” producer that I did not recognize any cast names (except hers) from prior community productions, she explained …
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:31PMWhat do you look for in a musical? Songs and singers that make you glad you have ears? Multi-style choreography and dancers adept at every one of them? How ‘bout a plot that freezes your a…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 01:39PMI am sitting in Jersey Mike’s eating a mini number seven sub when I hear that Stephanie “Stormy” Clifford is suing Donald “Grab ‘Em” Trump. That sentence is in the present tense,…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:23PMIn order to enjoy a jukebox musical, it helps to be a fan of the songbook going in, but that’s no guarantee. ABBA-adoring fans kept “Mamma Mia” running for years on its easily replic…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 04:26PMAnother fourth wall bites the dust in The New Group’s production of “Good for Otto,” at the Pershing Square Signature Center. David Rabe’s play, which premiered in 2015 at Chicago’…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:09PMIt takes more than memorization to put across a solo play (although that element should not be minimized). Those sometimes deceptively crowded affairs require the establishing of unique pers…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 05:36PMA Pulitzer Prize-winning piece by Thornton Wilder opens with no curtain, no scenery. Presently an actor enters and addresses the audience. He names the play and who wrote it. He sets the loc…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 04:45PMMy exposure to the Jerry Springer Show has been limited to an occasional YouTube clip, but I’ve seen enough to know that the following topics are representative: “My mom used to be my da…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 09:58AMThey’ve stormed the Reichstag, turned terrorism into absurd comedy and asked their audiences for answers. Meet five theatre-makers grappling with crises across the continent.By Daniel Boff…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00AMAs if we needed a reminder about the difference between governing and politicking, along comes “The Outsider,” running through February 18 at Paper Mill Playhouse. The wide chasm tha…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 12:52PMHere’s a list of those individuals who should see “A Chorus Line”: Anyone who has ever auditioned for a show or competed in any way for any job; anyone who has ever sung, danced and/or…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 05:36PMWrite what you know, the saying goes. Playwright Matt Barbot and director José Zayas both credit their Hispanic heritage with having inspired their collaboration on “El Coquí Espectacula…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 10:42PMSelected by NJPAC’s Stage Exchange as one of 30 plays by New Jersey playwrights to be produced at in-state venues, Monmouth University adjunct professor of playwriting Joel Stone’s “Th…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 05:12PMIt may be a tad unfair to begin a review of Ensemble for the Romantic Century’s serious play “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” by recalling the most irreverent take ever on Mary’s crea…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:52PMRe-visit with me, if you will, some of the comments I made in reviews of “Once On This Island” in Ocean Grove in 2004 (“…undistinguished, although pleasant enough”) and at Paper Mi…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 09:09PMI couldn’t find an English translation of Henry Becque’s 19th-Century farce La Parisienne, upon which Beau Willimon based “The Parisian Woman,” but it’s a safe assumption that the …
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:18PMIn a modern play about Oscar Wilde, he says “I have spent my life holding language up to the light, making words shimmer.” (Wilde might well have said that.) Then his 1895 play “The Im…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:11PMAn unscripted moment on opening night of Phoenix Productions’ “Seussical” revealed much about how the show was being received. Nearing the end, the Cat in the Hat addresses the audienc…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 05:27PMThere’s a mind game we used to play in college built around someone finishing the sentence “Life is like a ___” with a concept (film noir, say) or item (a coke bottle is one I recall…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 08:49AMWe like to think we can size up strangers in a first meeting, but we really can’t. Everyone is guarded for a while, with deep feelings and values held in check, at least until the atmosphe…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 12:24AMTwo things to know about George Street Playhouse’s temporary home on the Cook College Campus of Rutgers University: One is that the venue is temporary only in the sense that GSP will be mo…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 04:41PMThere must be as many ways of creating the Forest of Arden onstage as there are productions of “As You Like It.” In director John Doyle’s minimalist production of Shakespeare’s roman…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 09:11PMThere is little that I can add to the praise that has been heaped upon Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” virtually from the hour it opened on Broadway in 1959. Ms. Hansberry,…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:29PM
