2,240 stories by "Christopher Arnott"
The May 6 Connecticut Forum event at The Bushnell will feature Alan Alda instead of the previously announced film director and producer Rob Reiner. The other scheduled guest in the forum, fi…
In its yearlong journey from Hartford to Broadway, "Anastasia" has found itself. When this sweet-natured musical of self-discovery premiered a year ago at Hartford Stage, it was just as lush…
Connecticut has welcomed some remarkable tours of the iconic 1990s New York starving-artist rock musical "Rent" over the years. When the first national tour played The Bushnell in 1998, it s…
Ladies and gentlemen, two circuses cross paths in Hartford the same week " one, a new, modern vision of what a circus must have been like 114 years ago; the other among the final performance…
When the Tony Award nominations are announced May 3, Connecticut will rejoice. So many Broadway shows this season had world premieres, readings or workshops in the state that some warm refle…
You think you know Shrek? Big green guy. Enchanted. Talks to a donkey. The musical theater version of the DreamWorks fairytale movie isn't all that ancient or distant " its Broadway producti…
The sun will come out the day after April 23, apparently, when the latest national tour of "Annie" has a single performance at the Garde Arts Center in New London, and the same tomorrow-lovi…
It's Jeanine Tesori season in Connecticut. Three of the composer's musicals happen to be at local theaters this spring, offering a convenient career retrospective of a versatile artist that'…
HartBeat Ensemble is holding a Women's Theater Festival, charmingly titled "WTF!," for three consecutive weekends April 21 through May 6. Of course, you could say that HartBeat Ensemble has …
Asked to describe "Islands: The Lost History of the Treaty That Changed the World" " a grand-scale, multidisciplinary project that's taken five years to create, taken him to Indonesia on res…
What's next for "Next to Normal"? Yet another week of performances. TheaterWorks' production of modern pop/rock musical "Next to Normal" has extended its run a second time. The show, by Tom …
The Canadian circus theater troupe Cirque Eloize brought its freewheeling Wild West-themed show "Saloon" to Foxwoods Resort Casino last year and has returned with something much more moderni…
There's nothing "absolute" about "The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey." James Lecesne's one-man show makes a series of interesting choices. It tells a tragic story, but in broad comic …
Rob Ruggiero regularly directs musicals at the Goodspeed and The Muny in St. Louis. Why would he see the need to bring one to the small-staged, low-ceiling, acoustically complicated TheaterW…
Carol Burnett is all ears. Including the one she liked to tug at the end of her popular TV variety show. The legendary comedian shares stories and video clips from her six decades on stage a…
It sings "Leave, Leave" but happily it doesn't. "Once " The Musical" has been in Connecticut four times, and here comes a fifth. The show is based on the 2007 John Carney film that won a bes…
The host: "For this next routine, we'll need a location, a style of performance and, hmmm, the name of an established Hartford comedy ensemble." The crowd: "Spotlight Cinemas! Improv Comedy!…
New Haven's International Festival of Arts & Ideas welcomes The Wailers, Wu Man, "Whitman, Melville, Dickinson"The Passions of Bloom," "We Are Citizens" and "The War Room" this summer. And t…
Trains. A coal furnace. Apartheid. The lunatic, the lover and the poet. Hartford Stage's wide-ranging, multistyled 2017-18 season was announced today. It follows some familiar patterns for t…
"Next to Normal" may be the new normal at TheaterWorks. Once this would have seemed a highly ambitious project for such an intimate, small theater to take on. But in a season that began with…
He has a warm, gentle voice. A sharp wit. A sense of history coupled with an interest in the here and now. An interest in where the world is going and a concern about how to live in it now. …
Stephen Sondheim has given us the warm nostalgia of "Follies," the contemporary relationship foibles of "Company," the summer magic of "A Little Night Music" and the passion of "Passion." He…
Sarah Ruhl's feminist reworking of the ancient Greek myth "Eurydice" is set in the present day and gives its heroine a firmer hand in deciding her own fate " something she's been denied for …
From the 1930s into the 1970s, you could find stars such as Groucho Marx, Carol Channing, Bob Fosse, Eartha Kitt, James Mason, Mae West and Ethel Waters at the intimate Ivoryton Playhouse on…
Desdemona Chiang says she knew that directing Lydia Diamond's hit drama "Smart People" was going to be challenging. But she also knew that this was the best time to do it. With "Smart People…
