6,591 stories from Stage and Cinema
START THE PRESSES! Imagine the Hardy Boys times ten or Nancy Drew's crew times five and you're still not close to Newsies, perpetual motion in a blast from the past. Never before witnesse…
HOME HEALING FOR BROKEN DREAMERS How much "home" can first-generation Americans abandon in order to make a new one? Acculturation, assimilation, adjustment"they're not necessary evils but th…
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…
THE RIDICULOUSNESS OF IT ALL I had a college film-course assignment: Read Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella The Heart of Darkness and then watch Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film adaptation, Apoca…
THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF SAVAGES Who would have imagined that a 30-year-old stage adaptation (by Christopher Hampton) of a 1782 novel (by Choderlos de Laclos) would be so devastatingly of the …
FREAK OUT Comedy writers have complained about the challenge of writing jokes during the Trump administration. There’s too much material. And the breakneck pace of news, scandals and c…
VENGEANCE STALKS THE CENTURIES, ORÂ DO DO THAT VOODOO It's a (forced) marriage made in musicals. You don't immediately think of Marie Laveau and Medea as soul sisters with a common cause: …
THE SPARK OF LOVE, OR CURRENT EVENTS Sarah Ruhl's 2006 drama In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play ruefully wonders whether sex can be turned on like a light bulb. Or is love the best…
A SPLISH SPLASH MISHMASH After a successful out-of-town tryout in Chicago, SpongeBob SquarePants The New Musical is opening on Broadway this November. To whet the public’s appetite Ã�…
A REY OF SUNSHINE ENDS UP CLOUDY Director Chay Yew mounts a spectacular production of Luis Alfaro's Oedipus El Rey, a reworking of Sophocles' tragedy set in the Barrio of present-day Los Ang…
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 SEX STRIKE FOR SMALL STAKES, OR JONESING FOR LESS Maybe—dammit!—we get the comedy we deserve, cut to fit and ready to wear. Take Lysistrata Jones (please). Aristophanes' …
LIGHTING UP THE SOUTHERN SKY Carmen Cusack is luminous. She uses her whole self"physically, emotionally, vocally"to open herself to the audience, holding every last one of us in her loving a…
HIS FALL FROM GREATNESS By 1980 Tom "Tennessee" Williams was on a constant skid: His last great play, The Night of the Iguana, had premiered two decades before. Ever since, the once-supre…
DANCES OF THE DEAD Both classic ballet and romantic fantasy, Adolphe Adam's 1841 masterwork is for a rightly renewed reason a worthy offering by Chicago's Joffrey Ballet. Playing the gorgeou…
GREAT OPERA, GREAT CINEMA, GREAT PARTY! A familiar fairy tale takes on a broader and deeper subject"the transformative power of love and art. Jean Cocteau's stunningly beautiful 1946 cinemat…
THE SOLITARY LONELINESS OF LOSS There is something cheeky and even a bit dangerous about a writer reaching far outside his or her community, culture, or country. When an outsider succeeds, t…
BUREAUCRATIC NIGHTMARE; OPERATIC DREAM After witnessing Long Beach Opera's extraordinarily satisfying production of Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Consul, starring the magnificent Patricia R…
DRY WIT AND RIGHTEOUS OUTRAGE The best sequence in this one-man show starring Joe Morton as civil rights activist, comedian, and writer Dick Gregory, is playwright Gretchen Law's dramatizati…
DANCING OUT A DREAM Billy Elliot was born to dance; likewise his cinematic tale just had to become a musical. But it's a case of apples and oranges: If you loved the Universal Pictures…
CHARLES DICKENS, RINGMASTER EXTRAORDINAIRE This exuberant offering first appeared 16 years ago: Lookingglass Theatre Company reinvented Charles Dickens' tough-loving and always topical Ha…
LOST IN TRANSFUSION Halloween is dangling out in the future, which means that Washington D.C. is finally getting competition in the terror market. The indefatigable Sean Graney, disruptive d…
SCHOOLED BY CALLAS; ENTERTAINED BY HENNESY If you've ever been to a master class, then Terrence McNally's Master Class will seem very familiar. If you haven't, then you're in for a real eye-…
EXIT TRAGEDY Fierce, funny, and relevant under Deena Selenow’s choreographic direction, Ike Holter’s entertaining but uneven melodrama takes place in a Chicago high school that&#…
SHUFFLE ALONG Is stuff magical only because it can't be explained? Perhaps it's more than just the absence of logic, probability, or reason. There's a presence too: Magic evokes a child-like…
