6,591 stories from Stage and Cinema
AÂ DREAMY BEDTIME STORY Theater critics often speak of "universal themes" in the theater"these are topics to which people in any place and at any time can relate. One of the main reasons t…
THERE HAS TO BE ANOTHER WAY When Anna Ziegler's world premiere play Another Way Home began, it seemed that the thrust of the play would revolve around Joey (Daniel Petzold), a 17-year-old sp…
BETTER THAN THIN MINTS FROM A GIRL SCOUT The World Premiere of Patricia Scanlon's Death of a Salesgirl is a must-see surreal tragicomedy presented by The Bootleg Theater. Its fresh and innov…
MINING MEMORIES Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins remains the ultimate spelunking musical as it depicts a cave explorer entrapped by both hard rock and a media spectacle. The Burnt Part Boys, a 9…
FAR FROM WILD Thornton Wilder, especially as a playwright, looks to the commonality of all people to demonstrate the value in appreciating life, especially when the death of a loved one is i…
AFLOAT ON HIGH ASPIRATIONS Many positive things can and should be said about Sheila Callaghan's Port Out, Starboard Home, a play about a three-day cruise at the end of which the passengers p…
NOT IN THE CARDS Northlight audiences should cut the theater's revival of The Odd Couple some slack. The production took a major hit when co-star George Wendt was forced to drop out of the s…
HUMANS ARE THE SPECTACLE, NOT ANIMALS Childhood memories of circus fun include ringleaders putting heads in a lion’s mouth, dancing bears, and elephants resting a paw upon a lovely lad…
THE HAT'S JUST KEEP ON COMIN' Billed as the world's longest running musical revue, Steve Silver's Beach Blanket Babylon is a flamboyant, frivolous, and frothy burlesque that takes a jab at p…
AN IMAGINATIVE STORY AND SPECTACULAR VISUALS MAKE UP FOR CALCULATED FAMILIARITY It's quite an accomplishment for Disney that the multitude of elements in Wreck-It Ralph don't collapse in on …
HOW TO LAUGH AND CRY AND BE UNMOVED AT THE SAME TIME Playwright Bill Cain, after discovering his mother, Mary, had six months to live, moved into the family home in Syracuse, New York. Like …
AN AUGUST PROJECT In many ways, playwright August Strindberg's influence in the theater has been far more significant than his public reception. While theater historians and scholars speak o…
THERE'S A HOLE IN DONUTS' PROMISING STORY Arthur Przybyszewski, the gray bearded and ponytailed proprietor of a donut shop in Chicago, enters his store one morning to find it vandalized. Two…
TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE PLAY Developed by Raven Theatre's Workshop Series, these ten hit-and-run "playlettes" by John Weagly take only 52 minutes to rearrange reality into quirky juxtaposit…
THAT’S AMORE I hope San Franciscans actually know how advantaged they are to have a company like 42nd Street Moon, which presents fully staged productions of rarely-seen musicals. Whil…
THE FRAMEWORK IS A BIT ODD, BUT THE MOVEMENT IS GLORIOUS Not to be confused with the frenetic film starring Nicole Kidman or the older Oscar winner with Jose Ferrer as Toulouse Lautrec, this…
RED AND BROWNÂ IS THEATRICALÂ GOLD Los Angeles is usually the last major theater city in the states to see productions of playwrights whose works have received praise in their world prem…
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID Bootleg Theater continues its run of the world premiere of Death of a Salesgirl, an absurdist tragicomedy with integrated media, about one woman's struggle to fr…
HERE. THEN. NOW. WHEN? WHAT? WHY? Which 1970's TV show had the nicest Nazi's"was it Wonder Woman or Hogan's Heroes? Which cartoon character is stoned most of the time"was it Shaggy from Scoo…
FLEET FEET, HOLLOW HEART When notes jostled in and out of the written score during the overture of Musical Theatre West's 42nd Street, it portended a production that doesn't have all the ing…
FORGET YOUR TROUBLES. COME ON, GET HAPPY. When the lights go up on Wild With Happy, we see Colman Domingo, in cool shades and wearing his best Paris-Is-Burning attitude, speak his openin…
MAXWELL COUNTRY: WHERE HEROES ROAM There is only one Richard Maxwell and, in his extraordinarily textured Neutral Hero, he has gone back to his roots. For those of us who have longed for…
MONKEY BUSINESS Barrel of Monkeys has spent more than 10 years teaching writing workshops at Chicago schools, but they are best known for turning the creative writing from elementary school …
LESS ADO IS STILL MUCH ADO Shakespeare’s plays tend to be longer than those of contemporary playwrights, typically running 120-150 minutes. This leads many theatre directors to wonder …
NOT SURE WHAT IT IS BUT I LIKE IT Staged in the basement of The Chocolate Factory, with exposed pipes, beams and support columns, the drawbacks of Sibyl Kempson's wonderfully inventive new s…
