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OOPS! Make that 5 Musicals!

A bite of the big apple

From their weekend New York trip, Joel Markowitz, Debbie Minter Jackson and Gary McMillan give us a nightly review of some of the hottest shows on Broadway and Joel captures Stagedoor Greetings.

Friday, April 20^th It’s 1 am, Saturday morning, after seeing Curtains. What did our reviewers think?

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 Curtains Discussion: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Curtains Stagedoor: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By Wendy Wasserstein

Produced by Arena Stage                        

Reviewed by Debbie Minter Jackson

Emerie Snyder, Catherine Weidner and Ellen Karas as Heidi Holland (Photo: Scott Suchman)

I approached Arena’s production of The Heidi Chronicles hoping to finally get on board the love train for this signature Wendy Wasserstein work. I’ve enjoyed most of her other plays and can’t rave enough about American Daughter that I saw both in New York and at Arena Stage. Chronicles, on the other hand, has always eluded me and seemed filled with petty and chatty rather meaningless meanderings on the meaning of life, with sitcom sensibility. I was sure that I was missing something–the piece won both a Tony and Pulitzer, and I just knew that in the theater savvy hands of Tazewell Thompson, The Heidi Chronicles would finally bounce into my psyche with verve and spunk. Looks like I’ll have to settle for this solid rendition which while not buoyant, has at least helped answer my age-old question of what’s it really all about?

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Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue

By Quiara Alegria Hudes

Produced by GALA Hispanic Theatre

Reviewed by Rosalind Lacy

(l to r) Manolo Santalla (Pop), Laura Giannarelli (Ginny), Norman Aronovic (Grandpop)  (Photos: Daniel Cima)

               In its 2006-2007 season, the GALA Hispanic Theatre continues to put women in the spotlight, Her Work, His Staging. The third play in a series, Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue, is a memory play about a patriotic Puerto Rican family, written by Quiara Alegria Hudes, a rising Hispanic playwright from Philadelphia. It’s a story about how war stories from Korea, Vietnam and Iraq bind different generations in the same family together.

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By Jose Rivera

Produced by Rorschach Theatre

Reviewed by Ronnie Ruff

Scott McCormick as the Moon  (Photo: Marigan O’Malley-Posada)

Communication between men and women or the lack of it is at the very heart of Rorschach Theatre’s References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot. Oh I know! There is communication with the moon, some pretty erotic discourse between a scruffy coyote and a feline femme fatale that had the cold rainy evening warming up considerably in Columbia Heights when I attended this show on Saturday. Miscommunication is the case in the beginning for a jeans clad coyote and a kitty dressed to impress, references to being eaten seem erotic for the cat and literal (at first) for our scruffy coyote friend.

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