Wednesday, July 19, 2023
DON’T BE SKIPPIN’ PIPPIN Here’s a can’t-miss opportunity: Beginning tomorrow, July 19, North Coast Rep is presenting the perky but dark 1972 musical, Pippin. With a book by Roger O. …
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 02:58AMTuesday, July 11, 2023
BREWING UP SOME GOOD CHUCKLES IN THEIR KITCHEN Cooking shows are typically feel-good shows. The calm of Martha Stewart. The sweetness of Rachel Rae. The edge of Emeril Lagasse. Of course, it…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 02:34AMTuesday, July 4, 2023
THESE PASSENGERS WON’T STAY IN THEIR SEATS! Die-hard fans of So You Think You Can Dance get to know their choreographers. For me, there was Sonya Tayeh (Moulin Rouge! The Musical) … and …
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 10:53PMThursday, June 15, 2023
WHEN KING WAS THE QUEEN OF THE COURT Ask most people what they know about Billy Jean King, other than fact that she played tennis, and there’s a good likelihood that you’ll hear a story …
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 03:01AMSaturday, June 3, 2023
AS IF TELENOVELAS WEREN’T MELODRAMATIC ENOUGH FOR YA’… As someone who blew off after-school activities because he just couldn’t miss General Hospital (in the grand days of Luke and L…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 07:32PMTuesday, May 16, 2023
XANA-DOOZY OF A MUSICAL Playwrights of musicals have frequently, with varying degrees of success, taken a successful non-musical movie and worked it into a staged musical. Billy Elliott, Wai…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 02:59AMVISHNU WERE HERE First, a little history lesson: In the Hindu religion, the god Vishnu incarnated ten times as different “avatara,” which can be interpreted different ways, including �…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 02:50AMMonday, April 17, 2023
VISITING THE PAST FOR PRESENT LAUGHTER If you’re looking to expose yourself to the plays of Noël Coward, this is where to start. Not only did he write Present Laughter (in six days!) to a…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 12:17AMMonday, March 27, 2023
WE BUILT THIS SILLY ON ROCK AND ROLL Most musicals start with a premise, develop a plot, and then write songs to fit the themes. Rock of Ages flips the process by starting with class rock so…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 03:02AMSunday, March 19, 2023
LIFE AIN’T JUST A BOWL OF CHERRIES IN 1903 RUSSIA Written and set in 1903 Russia, Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard would be the master playwright’s final creation. Unless one already…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 04:32PMFriday, February 10, 2023
ANOTHER FEATHER IN MOXIE’S CAP Playwright Anna Ouyang Moench uses the setting of a wooded area — beautifully designed at MOXIE Theatre by Robin Sanford Roberts — as the backdrop of thi…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 06:04PMSunday, February 5, 2023
A STORM IS BREWING IN THIS FAMILY Perhaps the two most chilling words that can be uttered in a family are “Alzheimer’s” and “dementia.” Physical pain, as horrible as it may be, i…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 09:03PMSunday, January 29, 2023
NO ONE’S WEEPING ABOUT THESE GREAT BLUES Everything comes out in blues music: joy , pain , struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. – Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis The blues is…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 04:30AMSaturday, January 28, 2023
SPELL “DELIGHTFUL” “D-E-L-I-G-H-T-F-U-L” — DELIGHTFUL! OB Playhouse used to do all of their own productions, but nowadays it is primarily a rental space. When I saw that The 25th…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 09:36PMSunday, December 11, 2022
2 PIANOS + 4 HANDS = 194 HAPPY ATTENDEES Around twenty years ago, piano bars started featuring “dueling pianists,” who would go back and forth, taking turns playing pop songs and, occas…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 04:24PMSunday, December 4, 2022
REELING IN A SWEETLY SUNG FAIRY TALE Some theater should cause you to think deeply, stir your motivations, and cause you to be a better person for the ride you were on. And some theater is j…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 02:03AMFriday, November 18, 2022
THE CHILDREN IS NOT CHILD’S PLAY One of the challenges of reviewing theater is figuring out how much to divulge without giving away what the playwright wants to let unfold. The Children is…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 03:07AMThursday, November 3, 2022
DAY OF THE DEAD, WITH A TOUCH OF KAHLO’S HUMOR If you think this is going to be the story of Frida Kahlo’s life set to operatic music, you’ve got another think coming. Conversely, if y…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 04:20PMTuesday, November 1, 2022
WOMEN IN PANTS? WHERE WILL IT ALL END? It’s 1942 and most of the men in Rhode Island are off to war. As such, most theatres, especially those who focus on the heavily male casts of Shakesp…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 02:23AMThursday, October 20, 2022
WHEN SHERLOCK ISN’T A SURE LOCK Arguably Arthur Conan Doyle’s most successful Sherlock Holmes mystery The Hounds of the Baskervilles was actually first run as a serial from 1901-1902. It…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 07:19PMTuesday, October 18, 2022
PLANT YOURSELF AT SDMT Let’s start with the fact that it’s a show about a plant that craves human blood. Oh, and there’s this nerdy botanist Seymour who raises him, whom the plant inti…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 02:59AMSunday, September 18, 2022
A MUSICAL ABOUT PRESIDENTIAL ASSASSINS & ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS? WELL, SHOOT! At the very least, you have to give credit for anyone coming up with this bizarre idea: A musical about the …
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 03:57PMSunday, September 11, 2022
SKI RESORT SKETCH SKILLFULLY SKIPS ALONG AND SKYROCKETS INTO OUR HEARTS Saturday Night Live has been notorious over the years for coming up with some bits that are funny enough to fill an en…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 08:11PMSunday, August 14, 2022
COME SEE THIS CABARET, MY FRIEND One of the wonderful things about period pieces, including musicals, is that they rarely feel dated because the book writer (Joe Masteroff, in this case) sta…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 02:24PMSunday, July 31, 2022
THIS MUSICAL IS RIGHT AT HOLMES When we think of Sherlock Holmes in the dank, foggy streets of London, investigating death and deception, probably the next thought we have isn’t, “This w…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 09:18PMSunday, July 24, 2022
QUITE THE AWAKENING Watching Spring Awakening in 2008 at the Balboa Theatre and again in 2022 at the OB Playhouse, it is interesting how different the play struck me. Not because of the qua…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 07:16PMThursday, July 14, 2022
WILD ABOUT WILDSONG A relatively new theatre company (and totally new to this reviewer) taking on a musical with a huge cast, intricate costuming, a stage smaller than you find in most eleme…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 04:14AMMonday, June 13, 2022
A TIDE THAT RISES SLOWLY STILL HAS POWER The description on North Coast Rep’s website for this show is quite vague and, having just come home from the program, it’s clear why. One of the…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 12:19AMMonday, May 2, 2022
YOU THINK YOUR DAUGHTER WAS A HANDFUL? Joan of Arc is remembered as a hero and a martyr for her active role in France’s defense from British invasion in the 15th century. How much the aver…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 12:15AMMonday, April 25, 2022
NOTHING’S FORBIDDEN IN FORBIDDEN BROADWAY Musicals are dazzling, vibrant, larger than life…and accordingly, simply ripe for parody. Creator Gerard Alessandrini saw that opportunity in 19…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 01:56AMTuesday, April 12, 2022
WHEN THE WELL IS DRY, YOU KNOW THE WORTH OF WATER In Sidney Sheldon’s hit 1973 novel, The Other Side of Midnight, every other chapter is about either Catherine or Noelle, the two stories o…
SOURCE: stageandcinema.com at 10:03PM 
