Thursday, March 26, 2020
The acclaimed performer shares the history of a once-popular trick involving a shaker that could make any drink you could imagine, and its now-forgotten creator, Charles Hoffman.
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:40PMMonday, December 18, 2017
Bad Dates, by Theresa Rebeck, is the third one-person play I’ve seen in the past two months. The others were 2.5 Minute Ride, an autobiographical drama by Lisa Kron which was produced at T…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:45PMSunday, December 17, 2017
This report on New Records includes three Alan Menken shows that recently received fresh recordings, plus a Broadway show from this year that unfortunately closed after a modest run. God Ble…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:58PMTuesday, December 12, 2017
The Leonard Bernstein Centenary continues with concerts by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra. Last weekend’s performances featured one of Bernstein’s most interesting…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:43PMThursday, November 30, 2017
Concert Operetta Theater moved into new artistic territory with its November production of two unfamiliar operettas. Daniel Pantano’s Philadelphia company teamed up with a European organiz…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:48PMThursday, November 23, 2017
Metropolitan Opera audiences, paying up to $393 for a ticket, can relate to the wealthy party guests in The Exterminating Angel. And so do some prestigious critics, who called this “the on…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:53AMSunday, November 19, 2017
The New York premiere of William Bolcom’s composition, From the Diary of Sally Hemings, could not be more timely. With so much news focused on racial tensions, as well as the recent uproar…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:52PMSunday, November 12, 2017
The Barnes Foundation presented an unusual recital of avant-garde music composed by Henry Cowell, John Cage and George Crumb. These three giants of experimentation remind us of Albert Barnes…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:27PMSaturday, November 11, 2017
For fifteen years, a California theater company has been presenting the drama The Manor in the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills — an appropriate spot because the play is based on a true …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:07PMFriday, November 10, 2017
Verdi’s Il Trovatore was revived at the Academy of Vocal Arts for the first time in 20 years this week, and it’s a revelation. Filial love inspired Verdi, and that intense emotion is pas…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:21PMTuesday, October 31, 2017
The Philadelphia Orchestra concerts on the last weekend of October featured a fascinating match-up of old versus new, and conservative versus radical. It also was divided between French and …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:48PMFriday, October 20, 2017
The new Metropolitan Opera production of Norma, which opened the company’s season, is the most intimate presentation of Vincenzo Bellini’s classic that I’ve ever seen. Norma is an impr…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:30AMThursday, October 19, 2017
West Side Story has never sounded as good as in last weekend’s performances by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra. It even surpassed Leonard Bernstein’s own recording,…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:03PMTuesday, October 10, 2017
Claude Debussy’s only opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, is a unique masterpiece. But it’s very long: five acts, around four hours. So director and playwright Peter Brook in 1992 devised an …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:18PMSunday, October 8, 2017
When Opera Philadelphia’s O17 Festival was announced in October of 2015, the company headlined its importation of the Berlin’s Komische Oper (Comic Opera) production of The Magic Flute. …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:47PMMonday, September 25, 2017
The sole Philadelphia-based offering in Opera Philadelphia’s O17 Festival is We Shall Not Be Moved. Its powerful message is that the city’s children, and particularly its black children,…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:13PMWar Stories is a clever pairing of two music dramas dealing with battles, presented by Opera Philadelphia as part of its O17 Festival. The two separate compositions are staged in adjacent a…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:25PMSaturday, September 23, 2017
Inside a museum dedicated to art from the past, the O17 Festival has brought a new opera which celebrates musical and literary styles from the past. Composer/librettist David Hertzberg built…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:09PMThursday, September 21, 2017
Sondra Radvanovsky’s recital as part of Opera Philadelphia’s O17 Festival was a spectacular event. That may seem like an oxymoron to some readers, who expect singer/pianist recitals to b…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:12AMSaturday, September 16, 2017
The British statesman Winston Churchill coined the expression, “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” He was speaking of the Soviet Union. The quotation, however, also c…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:58PMThursday, August 31, 2017
This Santa Fe production of Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus was the least Viennese of any I’ve ever seen. No, director Ned Canty did not set it in the American Southwest — which might …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:00PMMonday, August 28, 2017
Steve Jobs was a revolutionary genius in communicating. He showed the world how to get “everything” anyone needed on a single gadget. Yet he was a spectacular failure in communicating wi…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:28PMSaturday, August 26, 2017
Editor’s Note: Our Steve Cohen is in Santa Fe, New Mexico this week, where he’s enjoying the local arts scene and seeing the work of Santa Fe Opera, a company with a close connection to …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:29PMMonday, August 21, 2017
Did you ever wonder why Picasso chose to paint in blue? The earliest stage of his famous career is known as his Blue Period, and this new play by Tanaquil Márquez shows how and why he made …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:57PMSunday, August 20, 2017
This month we focus on two more shows that opened on Broadway this year and are currently running. War Paint (Ghostlight Records) War Paint is an old-fashioned show, in the best sense of tha…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:27PMSaturday, July 29, 2017
Tony Kushner divided his epic play, Angels in America, into two parts. The second half, subtitled Perestroika, was beamed live to cinemas worldwide on July 27 from London’s National Theatr…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:55PMThursday, July 27, 2017
Angels in America remains a sad, hilarious, hallucinogenic theatrical achievement. The juxtaposition of those seemingly-opposite qualities is what makes the play memorable. It has even great…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:37PMMonday, July 24, 2017
Guys and Dolls is a paragon of American musical theater. Considering its blend of interesting characters, clever story and glorious songs by Frank Loesser, it deserves more frequent revivals…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:11PMThursday, July 20, 2017
New Records is our column about recordings of shows and concerts. It’s a companion to the reviews that regularly appear here on DC Metro Theater Arts. This month we take a look at albums f…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:12AMSaturday, June 10, 2017
On the Record is a new column that discusses recordings of theatrical shows. It’s a companion to the theater reviews that appear here on DC Metro Theater Arts. This week, in connection wit…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:31AMFriday, May 26, 2017
Golden Cockerel (Coq d’Or) is a musical fantasy that was popular in the first half of the twentieth century but rarely seen since. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov composed it in 1907 with splashy …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:49AM 
