Composer-lyricist Meredith Willson’s 1960 musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” was inspired by an exaggerated tale about the exploits of real-life Titanic survivor Margaret Tobin Brown…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 01:42PMThe first quarter hour of “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice” depicts Bob and Carol at The Institute at Big Sur, a ‘new age-y’ retreat, where the thirty-something couple is converted…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 12:22PMCharles Fuller’s “A Soldier’s Play” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1982. Loosely based on Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd,” it was originally staged by the off-Broad…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:05PMIf, as hypothesized, there are only seven basic plots, it is a sure bet that Shakespeare used them all. (I count four in “Hamlet” alone.) It is no wonder, then, that playwrights through …
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 12:12PMIt seems that one-actor stage presentations have increased in number over the past decade or so. And as critical attention to them has grown with that proliferation, the quality level has ri…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 11:15PMMany a fine play is waylaid by shoddy acting and/or directing. (Recall your last misbegotten Shakespeare.) Conversely, a lesser theater piece can be enhanced by superior efforts in those cat…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:17PMKen Ludwig’s 1980s farce “Lend Me a Tenor” revolves around two operatic tenors being mistaken for one another in costume and makeup for the same role. The play is funny…or not, depen…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:56PMWant to be like the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players? Just pick a niche-market art form and become a world-class expert at it. Founded in 1974, NYGASP’s performance-ready repertory …
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 03:45PMA conundrum/problem/challenge: How to describe a Broadway musical that pretty much exceeds familiar superlatives in pretty much all its facets. Well, let’s try, by first thanking Alanis Mo…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 04:30PMIf it is true, as often stated, that there are only seven basic plots from which all plays are derived, one of the seven certainly involves conflicted parent-offspring relationships. Think �…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 04:22PM“Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella” comes by that official title honestly. Having gone through several revisions since its debut as a TV special in 1957, the show depends for its su…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:23PMThe overture to “Guys and Dolls” is unique in that it is scripted as well as orchestrated. It is a street scene collage danced – acted-out really – by the ensemble: floozies, society…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 12:27PMTwo recent adaptations of Edmond Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac,” both titled simply “Cyrano,” play fast and loose with the 19th-Century French playwright’s masterpiece. At Two Ri…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 10:16PMTwo things to know about “Lily,” the world-premiere play at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch. First, Christopher Daftsios’s play is constructed like an orderly three-part fa…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 10:38AMIt is generally conceded that “Period of Adjustment” is Tennessee Williams’s only full-out comedy, but “The Rose Tattoo” could claim a close second, especially as the second half…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 01:48PMHow long after seeing some musicals does it take to get a song out of your head? I’m stuck with “NYC” a full week after every “Annie,” and “Goodbye to blueberry pie” after “G…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 04:15PMYou needn’t be familiar with 20th Century Russian – Soviet Union, that is – history in order to appreciate D. W. Gregory’s “Memoirs of a Forgotten Man.” While a sense of that h…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:06PMThe theme of the mysterious stranger who arrives on the scene and changes people’s lives has long been a staple of American fiction, never more than it was in the 1950s. That decade produc…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 04:54PMLet us clarify up front: the title of Jacqueline Novak’s 90-minute theater piece is not an invocation to prayer. Rather, it refers to a position oft identified with the performance of oral…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:55PMThe best element of the musical “I Spy a Spy,” running through September 21 at the Theatre at St. Clements, is its music. Sohee Youn’s diverse score is mostly easy-to-take rock and jaz…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 08:09PMThe Stratford Festival in Ontario routinely employs the talents of two Theatre geniuses, separated in their endeavors by four centuries. The earlier is, of course, William Shakespeare, aroun…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 12:09AMThe Broadway theater season, which ends in late April, culminates with the American Theatre Wing’s Antoinette Perry Awards – the Tonys. For the 2018-19 season 42 nominators considered 34…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 12:24PMA lot of stuff in plays happens offstage. Not just unsavory events, but things that are easier to tell than to show. (The plot of the play reviewed here last week, “Happy Talk,” turns on…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:59PMThere is a limit to how much can be revealed about The New Group production of Jesse Eisenberg’s “Happy Talk,” without crossing into spoiler territory. That there are five characters i…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 05:09PMAny time someone appears on stage in tap shoes, I’m all in. Jodi Long brings that footwear and more to “Surfing My DNA,” world-premiering through May 26 at New Jersey Repertory Company…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 02:07PMSomething special is afoot at Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, where Maureen Silliman is embodying Emily Dickinson in “The Belle of Amherst,” William Luce’s one-woman play ab…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 06:28PMDo you read a newspaper? Watch cable news? Discuss politics and world affairs with co-workers or friends (or former ones)? If you answered yes to any of the above, you could surely use an en…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 04:57PM[In a departure from my usual content, below is a (lightly edited) re-print of a feature that appeared in The Palm Beach Post on April 1.] After surgery for brai…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 11:47AMIf your attention has wandered during the last third of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” you are not alone, but redemption is at hand. Theatre for a New Audience’s portrayal of the aft…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 04:32PMDespite an occasional misfire, tailoring some shows to a performer in a particular role can be a gimme. Dolly Levi and Mama Rose, for example, come with the territory. Lilli Vanessi does not…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 06:13PMEver wonder what happens to the inhabitants of Anatevka after they are driven from their village at the end of “Fiddler on the Roof”? We know that some of Tevye’s family will be stayin…
SOURCE: sceneonstage.com at 11:47AM
