The best thing about The Smartest Girl in the World is that it is not actually about how smart the titular girl is, but about how much she learns from her brother, and how much her brother learns from her. At its core, Miriam Gonzales’ breezy tale is about siblings who move from a rose-colored […]
Archives for October 2017
Tom Story plays God in Signature Theatre’s An Act of God
It isn’t every day that you’re asked to play God, so when 7-time Helen Hayes-nominated actor Tom Story was offered the chance to take on the titular role in Signature Theatre’s production of David Javerbaum’s An Act of God, no divine intervention was needed for him to say “yes.”
Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes (review)
Experiencing a Matthew Bourne ballet is like indulging in a whole box of Christmas crackers from Harrods – stuffed with surprises. It also reminds me of reading something by the late writer Vladimir Nabokov – yes, might we say “positively Nabokovian” – dazzling in the layers and turns of the story but always with a […]
Review: Nilo Cruz’s Sotto Voce
In 1939, the S.S. St. Louis set sail from Hamburg for Cuba with 937 passenger, most of them German Jews hoping to begin new lives away from the Nazis. Their hopes were based on a Cuban law which permitted people on a tourist visa to enter the country and stay indefinitely.
I’ll Get You Back Again review
I’ll Get You Back Again uses a band’s reunion as the basis for a combined comedy, drama, memory play, and meditation on the meaning of life. While the Round House Theatre world premiere production has some jammin’ moments, the elements never fully gel in a Sarah Gancher’s well-meaning but ultimately underwhelming play.
Musical The Mistress Cycle debuts at Creative Cauldron (review)
What is it about the idea of a mistress? Throughout history the “other woman” has been called all kind of names under the sun, shunned, cast-out, run out of town, off the land – or beheaded. But that doesn’t stop the prominence of her being. And interestingly, as noted in this script, there’s no male […]
Assassins from Pallas Theatre Collective (review)
In the wake of an historically deadly mass shooting and a historically unpopular president comes a musical comedy of sorts about guns, presidents, and their tragic interplay from Lincoln to Reagan. These elements, brought to life by the catchiest tunes in the Sondheim oeuvre, make for a musical that feels not only worth doing, but […]
Are you now, or have you ever been… review. Shameful Congressional hearing
A writer’s life is peculiarly isolated and the opening sequence of Are you now, or have you ever been… makes that abundantly clear. A typewriter sits on a table with a stack of papers and a wine bottle. The poet Langston Hughes. played by the terrific New York actor Marcus Naylor, enters in ruffled pajamas […]
Olney’s Our Town is everyone’s town (review)
It took Olney Theatre, surprisingly, 80 seasons to get around to Thornton Wilder’s iconic Our Town, and with acclaimed director Aaron Posner at the helm, they tackle the challenge of what this admittedly overproduced and arguably misunderstood play has to say to a contemporary multi-cultural audience, and how best to reach them. Perhaps that challenge […]
Review: Blancaflor. At GALA, the wizard is a girl
Another top-notch offering for young audiences began this past weekend: Blancaflor, the latest in the GALita series of theatre for children.
Night Train 57: A Sensory-Friendly Folk Opera review
Caravanning to the stars and beyond—to a planet of flowers somewhere at the edge of the universe—is a nice coda to a long week. Even if it is a journey designed for kids. Music, after all, is a magic meant for everyone, which is what Night Train 57: A Sensory-Friendly Folk Opera is all about.
Directing Constellation’s Wild Party. Creating safe space for intimate and violent scenes
“…It may strike you more like a high mass to low instincts … the characters are all id; desperately (and fueled by cocaine and bathtub gin) hoping to express their secret selves, and so realize their secret desires.”