Tuesday, March 27, 2018
WOULD SHAKESPEARE BY ANY OTHER PLAYWRIGHT SMELL AS SWEET? If the title King Charles III sounds rather Shakespearean, yet you cannot recall a “Charles” among all his Henrys and …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:43AMMonday, March 19, 2018
A JEWISH JOKE WAS NO LAUGHING MATTER IN THE 1950s When the nation went into Commie panic in the ‘40s and ‘50s, one of the first places to get hard hit was Hollywood. In 1947, Congress’…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:16AMSunday, March 18, 2018
CYGNET DIDN’T SEND IN ANY CLOWNS ON THIS ONE Much like modern art, Steven Sondheim musicals aren’t for everyone. They are purposefully discordant in places, often dark in tone,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:24PMWednesday, March 14, 2018
WELL-PLANNED IRONIES Facebook and LinkedIn have illuminated the error in the supposed six degrees of separation theory, which asserts that all living things and everything else in the world …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:47PMSaturday, February 24, 2018
THREE GREAT MINDS MAKE FOR INTRIGUING THEATER There’s a game where you get to pick three famous people and go to dinner with all of them. In Mark St. Germaine’s Camping with He…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:40PMTuesday, January 30, 2018
THE LAST WIFE GETS IT RIGHT Historical fiction can be a dicey game, let alone a modernization of historical figures. When the results are as captivating as Kate Hennig’s The Last Wife,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:36AMSunday, January 28, 2018
THE FULL MONTY IS WORTH BARING IN MIND When the main factory in town shuts down and only menial work, far below previous pay grade, can be found, what’s a man supposed to do? For the t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:42AMMonday, October 30, 2017
EVIL RIGHT AT HAND What could go wrong when a newly widowed mom leads three teens in a wholesome, Lutheran, extra-curricular church class tasked with creating a Christian puppet show? Thankf…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:30PMTuesday, October 24, 2017
GEORGIA MCBRIDE AIN’T NO DRAG Playwright Matthew Lopez (The Whipping Man) has created a theatrical recipe: Take one part Torch Song Trilogy, mix in some La Cage aux Folles and, for a …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:27AMMonday, October 2, 2017
A HERO’S JOURNEY FROM 1862 SPEAKS VOLUMES FOR OUR TIMES Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 first played in 2014 at NYC’s Public Theater, yet Suzan-Lori Parks’ play…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:28AMSunday, September 24, 2017
TOO BIG FOR ITS BRITCHES With his touching screenplay as a basis, Lee Hall adapted the 2000 indie Billy Elliot for the stage, setting his moving lyrics to Elton John’s music. There…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:53PMSaturday, September 23, 2017
WORLD PREMIERE MUSICAL ADAPTATION MADE EVEN BETTER BY BRYCE PINKHAM It’s tricky turning a movie into a play, given that without the auteur’s camera gimmicks and edits, it can be …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:05PMWednesday, September 13, 2017
THE EFFECT OF GOOD THEATER “You know, maybe someday you will be pretty,” says Beatrice to her teenage daughter Tillie. Gee, thanks, Mom. Ah, mothers. The Glass Menagerie. Ordin…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:59AMWednesday, August 9, 2017
DON’T CRY, BUT SEE ARGENTINA The crime of being a legend is to be simultaneously loved and hated, while the truth will always be a matter of perspective and interpretation. Eva Duarte,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:31AMMonday, August 7, 2017
THE 90’s ARE BACK AND SOUNDING SWEET While the nineties might not sound that long ago to an older crowd, when was the last time you thought about Lorena Bobbitt? Or tamagotchis? Or won…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:00PMMonday, July 24, 2017
IT MAY SUCK TO LIVE ON AVENUE Q, BUT NOT TO SEE IT In the right setting, irreverence is so jovial. Our era of thought-police and political correctness has made it delicious to pervert that w…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:18PMThursday, July 13, 2017
A SWEET SAMPLING OF ANIMAL CRACKERS, ALBEIT A BIT DAY-OLD One can easily see why Animal Crackers was a Broadway hit from 1928-1929, followed by a successful movie version. Start with the zan…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:52AMMonday, June 19, 2017
HOW’S THE WITHER? (JUST IN CASE YOU WERE WUTHERING…) A complicated nineteenth-century story of love and retaliation, featuring 13 characters, could be tough to pull off in nin…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:31AMSunday, June 4, 2017
DAMN, YANKEES DOESN’T HIT IT OUT OF THE PARK While many of Jerry Ross and Richard Adler’s songs from the 1955 Broadway classic hold up rather well, Douglass Wallop and George Abb…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:52AMSaturday, June 3, 2017
WHAT A SHOCK In 1845, German psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann wrote a disturbing but popular children’s book featuring the perils of children who misbehave. A century and a half later, …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:49PMSunday, April 9, 2017
A FIRST DATE THAT GOES WELL The device of having characters receive advice from a conscience or someone from their past is tried and true in musicals: They’re Playing Our Song‘s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:35PMTuesday, April 4, 2017
IT’S WORTH SINGING ABOUT GETTING OLDER Perhaps the only thing worse than getting older is thinking about it. So when a nascent theater company puts on a show—a musical no less—abou…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:53PMMonday, April 3, 2017
A LONG RIDE ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In today’s world of seeing T-shirts in fancy restaurants, it’s almost difficult to envision that, once upon a time, people would dress to the nines f…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:41AMMonday, February 13, 2017
I COULD WATCH 9 TO 5 24/7 In 1980, an unlikely film trio, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton, was the center of 9 to 5, an amusing feminist romp with lovable characters. Years later…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:49AMTuesday, January 24, 2017
BAD JEWS MAKES FOR GOOD THEATRE, BUT OY SUCH AGITA There’s an old joke: “What do you get if you put three Jews in the same room? Four opinions.” In Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews, the jo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:04PMSaturday, May 14, 2016
LAMB’S SERVES UP A TASTY DINNER WITH MARLENE There’s an old parlor game of trying to decide: If you could attend a dinner party and choose any guests you wanted around the tabl…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:24PMMonday, March 28, 2016
GIVE YOURSELF OVER TO ABSOLUTE PLEASURE Those familiar with the movie version of The Rocky Horror Show may be shocked to find that there is no typo in the title of the stage version: Here, t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:25AMMonday, January 25, 2016
WHEN IT RAINS, IT SOARS Let’s start with the unavoidable down-side so we can end with the up-side. While Cygnet Theatre’s When the Rain Stops Falling is spectacular, it is terri…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:35AMSaturday, August 1, 2015
IN GOOD COMPANY In a world of musicals that are filled with catchy harmonies and melodies that stick in your mind, Stephen Sondheim’s songs have frequently been the rebels. Sondheim is n…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:05PMSunday, January 25, 2015
IT DOESN’T SUCK TO BE AVENUE Q AT CORONADO In the right setting, irreverence is so jovial. Perhaps our era of thought-police and political correctness has made it delicious to pervert that…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:18PMMonday, July 28, 2014
DRAG YOURSELF DOWN TO PAGEANT Exiting Cygnet’s revival of Pageant, my writing pad, normally filled with pages of barely decipherable notes, had nothing upon it but the title. This su…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:38AM 
