Saturday, June 15, 2013
DON’T COME TO THE CABARET It’s the first time I have ever seen someone on stage in flop sweat. Poor Anastasia Barnes had a rough go in her opening of The Ruby Besler Cabaret. One would s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:04PMWednesday, June 12, 2013
GIRL, PLEASE! Prior to curtain at Musical Theatre Guild’s concert staging of Girl Crazy, we were warned that the Gershwin brothers’ 1930 musical was written before “the code” (read: …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:15PMTuesday, June 11, 2013
BOBBING FOR APPLES While perusing through a Peanuts anthology recently, I found my mind beginning to wander after about 15 panels. Regardless of Schultz’ insightful social commentary and u…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:05PMTHE FRUSTRATING LABORS OF A FASCINATING COMPANY It is said that Roman Philosopher and Playwright Seneca’s Hercules Furens (c. 54 CE) was never produced but only read in Seneca’s life…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:50AMWednesday, June 5, 2013
CHICK ‘N’ SCHTICK THEATER It’s no small feat when a play inspires me to do something with my life. While watching Stephen Sachs’ Heart Song at the Fountain, I felt compelled to join …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:03PMMonday, June 3, 2013
PIXIE DUST TO PIXIE DUST After a funeral many years ago, a group of my buddies all declared their desire to be cremated when the time comes. Shockingly, however, all four of us avowed to hav…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:53PMSunday, June 2, 2013
AMERICAN TRAGEDY BECOMES MUSICAL COMEDY 1931 was a crossroads in American history. With no economic recovery in sight, the Depression had people edgy, and when Americans are edgy, they are d…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:11AMThursday, May 23, 2013
FANTASTIC, INDEED Fantasticks may be the longest running musical in America, but Amanda Dehnert’s magical production at South Coast Rep should run forever. The backdrop for this timeless w…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:36PMA FRATERNITY OF MASTER THESPIANS At its core, Jeff Stetson’s Fraternity is about the two options that face black men in today’s society (or, at least, the society of Birmingham in 1987, …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:02AMSaturday, May 18, 2013
BEDEVILED An off-stage character is tortured by a Salem court in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a play which dramatizes the Salem witch trials of 1692. As heavy stones are placed upon his c…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:14AMWednesday, May 15, 2013
NOW THIS YOU GOTTA SEE Of the 32 shows I attended in Chicago recently, the most charming experiences were with four musical revivals, three from Broadway’s heyday — the 1930s through…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:16PMThursday, May 9, 2013
A fascinating phenomenon is occurring in the theater, one which was elucidated by many shows that I saw in Chicago over the past couple of weeks. As the art of playwriting (to wit: storytell…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:34PMTuesday, May 7, 2013
I REMEMBER THE AMUSEMENT PARK BUT FORGOT WHAT THE RIDE WAS ABOUT The more I think about the Hypocrites’ latest theater spectacle, Ivywild, the more entranced I feel about the imaginative p…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:31PMSunday, May 5, 2013
CORNOGRAPHY It’s been 70 years since Rodgers and Hammerstein ushered in the “golden era” of Broadway musicals with Oklahoma! and some dust has settled on the green corn of the 40s. Wel…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:58PMSaturday, May 4, 2013
DYING TO DIRECT It turns out that a career as a top literary agent at William Morris and CAA served as a solid stepping-stone for Michael Peretzian’s dream job: directing in theater. As an…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:24PMPERFECTED STORIES Ever since Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories premiered at South Coast Rep in 1996, and especially after it hit the Broadway boards starring Linda Lavin in 2010, the…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:05PMTuesday, April 30, 2013
LEAVE IT TO CHILDREN’S THEATER TO MAKE THE BIGGEST STATEMENT OF ALL The biggest opening in Chicago last week was the behemoth pre-Broadway spectacle Big Fish, but right across town a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:43PMMonday, April 29, 2013
BLIZZARD TALE In meteorology, the phenomena known as Lake Effect occurs when a cold system glides over the warmer water of a large lake and dumps huge amounts of precipitation, usually snow,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:30PMPLOUGHED UNDER BY GOOD INTENTIONS AND BAD SONGWRITING What a great idea: Create modern folk songs to represent Americans whose voices have been given short shrift (or ploughed under) by hi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:52PMSaturday, April 27, 2013
FAUST IN SPACE Just because I recommend Trap Door’s latest production doesn’t mean that I understand it. Core of the PUDEL (pronounced “poodle”) is an Avant Garde/Experimental/Moveme…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:00AMFriday, April 26, 2013
ALMOST A FULL MOON The theater has been sorely affected by electronic communication. Since the advent of the internet, at least, the cumbersome amount of news bits and twittering has infecte…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:48AMThursday, April 18, 2013
OH BROTHERS! Seven Brides for Seven Brothers: Talk about a musical with a strange history! It begins with the Ancient Roman legend “The Rape of the Sabine Women” – attributed to Plutar…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:48AMMonday, April 15, 2013
THE MUSICAL WITH LEGS Musical Theatre West’s (MTW) exuberant production of A Chorus Line proves that the musical is as fresh as the day it appeared almost forty years ago, when the standar…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:06PMSaturday, April 13, 2013
SO MANY ATROCITIES IN ONE EVENING When stories appear which elucidate the carnage during WWII, many look to heaven and ask, “Why?” But the script and execution of Our Class, about a true…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:06PMMonday, April 8, 2013
NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED Henrik Ibsen stated that he had no conscious thought of making propaganda with A Doll’s House (1879). Yet many productions have a feminist bent: Nora is the mi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:26AMSaturday, April 6, 2013
BETWEEN IRAQ AND A HARD PLACE A soldier named Mario returns from Iraq just in time for the 2005 New Year’s celebration with his East Los Angeles family, friends and novia – but he also r…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:13PMTuesday, April 2, 2013
MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL Although he wrote at least 15 complete operas, Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) is not a familiar name, even to many in the opera world. The first-generation modernist…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:25PMSunday, March 31, 2013
FOOD FIGHT Using Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children (1939) as a template, writer Peter Howard has created a wartime tale about the need to survive in challenging times. But the war i…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:56PMWednesday, March 27, 2013
EVERYBODY HAS A BALL AT THIS CINDERELLA Gioachino Rossini’s Cinderella (La Cenerentola) was written in 1817 during the bel canto era when operas were written to showcase beautiful singing,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:58PMTuesday, March 26, 2013
NETHER NOR Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, right? Not anymore. It’s fascinating that the World English Dictionary defines reality as “the state of things as they a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:40PMMonday, March 25, 2013
HAVING ISSUES WITH ISSUES Ken LaZebnik’s On the Spectrum, which opened last week at the Fountain Theatre, belongs to a genre known as Theatre of Identity, aka Social Issues Theatre; the id…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:50AM 
