Patti LuPone, who won a Tony, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award and Drama League Award for her work as Rose in the Styne/Sondheim/Laurents musical Gypsy, is the recipient of Signature Theatre’s third annual Stephen Sondheim Award, the company announced this afternoon.
Archives for October 2011
The Amazing Adventures of Dr. Wonderful and Her Dog!
If family theatre ratings, like Olympic diving, included a degree of difficulty factor, the Kennedy Center premiere of The Amazing Adventures of Dr. Wonderful and her Dog! would earn a very high score. It’s not easy to tackle the scientific method and solar fusion in a musical for children ages six and up. Yet, thanks […]
Can’t Scare Me: The Story of Mother Jones
“the best one-person show we’ve seen in many a year.” The Theater of the First Amendment’s latest offering—Can’t Scare Me: The Story of Mother Jones—is a virtual blast from the past with a few lessons for the present. This vigorous, one-woman one-act drama was conceived, written, and directed by its star, OBIE Award-winning actress Kaiulani […]
A Conversation on Race and Performance with Parade’s Kevin McAllister
Once headed for a career in opera, Kevin McAllister is giving three breakout performances in the musical Parade at Ford’s Theatre If the 1913 criminal trial of Leo Frank – and the lynching that followed two years later – seems to you like uncomfortable fodder for a Tony Award-winning musical, actor Kevin McAllister can relate. “The […]
Readers wanted for Source Festival 10 minute play submissions
DC’s Source Festival, which produces a dozen-and-a-half ten-minute plays each June to go along with full-length plays and productions from blended disciplines, seeks interested Source audience members to help cull next year’s selections from 700 submissions.
She Loves Him: Kate Baldwin Live at Feinsteins
Recorded show music comes in many guises. One genre that can be thoroughly enjoyable when done right is the live recording of a club act of show songs. A fine new release that falls in the “done right” category is Kate Baldwin’s act recorded last March at Feinstein’s, the Broadway-themed nightclub on New York’s Park […]
Love Potion #1
If you need relief from the news and the economy, here’s an aspirin on an elegant platter. Staged in the elegant mini-opera house of the GALA Tivoli Theatre, the In Series’ Love Potion #1 is a heady hit to ease all headaches. It’s pure escapism, a charming satire of the glorious, well-known comic opera, The […]
A Bright New Boise
Giddy-up Armageddon! could be the rallying cry for evangelical misfit Will (Michael Russotto), the sad-sack hero of Samuel D. Hunter’s A Bright New Boise, a divinely inspired heartland comedy directed by John Vreeke.
It Shoulda Been You
It’s nowhere near June yet love and marriage seem to be in the theatrical air as Hallowe’en approaches. On October 14th. the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey opened a new musical comedy called It Shoulda Been You with all the attendant hoopla of a Hollywood preem. Klieg lights searched the sky, a […]
The Book Club Play
These days, asking how someone takes their books will yield more answers than asking how they take their coffee. Hardback? Paperback? Nook? Kindle? Barnes and Noble? Amazon? iPad? Google? Walmart? Library? The used book store around the corner that has what you need more often than what you want? The avenues for reading are endless, but no matter how we now take our books, […]
Hellspawn
Plays the devil made them write There was once a kid who lived in Cottage City, Maryland. In 1949, in fact. Research says the boy—Ronnie Hunkeler—was very “off.” A loner with classic anti-social traits, by all witnesses, he was a miscreant who enjoyed causing pain and anguish, going so far as occasionally torturing small animals, […]
Quien lo probo, lo sabe/Those Who Taste It, Know
Love! How do you define it? An insane passion kept Lope de Vega (1562-1635) churning out plays, sometimes a play a day. Nothing could stop this 17th century genius, once called “a monster of Nature,” from writing so truthfully about what he observed.