Side by Side by Sondheim
May 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Profits and pleasure. Both words accurately describe the happy circumstances of Signature Theatre’s current revival of Side by Side by Sondheim. Profits aplenty for Signature as a legion of Sondheim fans make the theater’s turnstiles sing. And pleasure is exactly what that audience will get as they enjoy this lively, never-a-dull-moment, first rate production. [Read more...]
This spring’s outstanding NYC musical performances
May 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment
A look at 7 New York spring musicals, and a Stephen Schwartz opera
Before the Tony Awards are upon us, I wanted to talk about some of the musicals I saw in NYC this spring.
There was a tsunami of book problems this year with many of the musicals. All you have to do is go to this wonderful website – StageGrade – and read what the critics had to say, and you’ll see one thing popping up over and over again – “the book was lousy”. [Read more...]
The Day John Henry Came to School
May 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Even in this age of iPads, mobile apps and handheld computer games, show-and-tell still holds an irresistible allure for grade-schoolers. The Day John Henry Came to School, a world-premiere play by Eric Pfeffinger debuting at Imagination Stage, affirms the triumph of man over machine. [Read more...]
The Green Bird
May 10, 2011 By 9 Comments
Fairy tales and philosophy should make for strange bedfellows, and, at least in theory, even stranger bedtime stories. But in Constellation Theatre Company’s wondrous production of the 18th-century Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi’s The Green Bird, the two cozy up with remarkable affinity. Like all good relationships, they also bring things out in each other that even their best friends never would have guessed were there. Constellation’s artistic director Allison Arkell Stockman adapted and directs, commedia dell’arte-style, with not simply a creative thirst that drinks in fantasy, but gives the play the power to make audiences drunk on it. [Read more...]
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark and A Minister’s Wife
May 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Lynn Nottage’s Ruined won the Pulitzer Prize and a slew of other honors a couple of seasons ago [and just opened at Arena Stage]. Her Intimate Apparel was also acclaimed in its Roundabout production. But her bio is filled with other awards for other plays. She is prolific, she is gifted, and she seems to have no limits to her range. In this, her first play since Ruined, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark reveals a comic agility, and its current smashing production courtesy of Second Stage Theatre brings its own set of distinctive rewards.
Everything Was Possible: The birth of the musical Follies
May 10, 2011 By 1 Comment
What a find! There are many books on the development of individual musicals but few, if any, provide half the pleasure of this chronicle of Follies from the preparation for rehearsals through to the opening night party. It was written by a man who, as a youth infatuated with the world of musical comedy, had the opportunity to be a “fly on the wall” as a “go-fer” who went for coffee, drove cast and crew to appointments, took notes for the co-director, escorted a star thrice his age and typed the changed script pages including the lyrics fresh from the pen of Stephen Sondheim. [Read more...]
Arthur Laurents, theatre original, dies at 93
May 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Arthur Laurents, whose fabled Broadway career as a writer and director began with two short lived productions but who eventually wrote the book for such monumental successes as Gypsy and West Side Story died May 5th of complications from pneumonia. He was ninety-three. [Read more...]
DC Mayor proposes tax on theater tickets
May 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Washington Mayor Vincent Gray has unveiled a 2012 budget which would subject tickets to DC theatres to the City’s 6% sales tax. The tax, Gray predicts, would generate $2,303,000 in FY 2012 and nearly ten million over the next four years. [Read more...]
Matthew Scott and Nancy Anderson sing for Company
May 9, 2011 By 1 Comment
They’ve come to Signature Theatre to sing side by side with two-time Helen Hayes Award-winner Sherri L. Edelen in the just opened Side by Side by Sondheim. They are two of my favorite performers, so I asked Matthew Scott and Nancy Anderson to talk about the songs they will be performing, and to tell us about the man who penned them, Stephen Sondheim. [Read more...]
Snow White and the 7 Dwarves
May 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The Puppet Company has energized the old fairy tale with a fresh original script, solid story-telling, great media projections, and the most adorable prince and princess imaginable. [Read more...]
