By ALAN SMASON No. It’s not a latter-day Our Town. Nor is it Love Letters for couples. It is, however, somewhere in between. Streaming sales for a filmed stage reading of Dan Clancy’s Middletown are ending today and with it the last chance to see Sandy Duncan (Peter Pan), Didi Conn (“Grease”), Donny Most (“Happy […]
By ALAN SMASON When playwright Becky Mode wrote her first piece Fully Committed, she wrote well of what she knew. She had worked for many years as a worker in fine New York eateries taking reservations and even checking customers’ hats on premises, so the topsy-turvy and sometimes wacky world of what goes on behind […]
By EDWARD RUBIN For great fun, and a breathless romp through one woman’s topsy-turvy life, Bad Dates, George Street Playhouses’ filmed version of Theresa Rebeck’s 2003 zany one-woman play starring Broadway actress Andréa Burns (In The Heights, On Your Feet, The Nance), is the hip place to be. Cleverly directed by Burn’s husband Peter Flynn, […]
By JACK LYONS How does one cover 2000 years of religious history of the Jewish people and Gentiles in the Common Era (C.E.)? Perhaps, a good start would be seeing life through the lenses of the others regarding the impacts that major religions have experienced on the planet we all call Earth. For starters, it […]
By ALAN SMASON Anyone who knows Theresa Rebeck’s writing knows she has a devilish sense of humor that has an odd way of popping up at the most opportune, yet unexpected moments. Her writing style has been marked by very taut scripts that say what is absolutely necessary with no countenance given for extra phrases […]
By EDWARD RUBIN The first name that comes to mind whenever the name Hershey Felder comes into play is that of actor Sacha Baron Cohen. Not only do both men physically resemble each other, are somewhat similar in age, but both are wizards, albeit at different ends of the spectrum, at being somebody other than […]
By JACK LYONS, Special to Theatrecriticism.com (Desert Local News) – When the movie “Casablanca” merged the powerful elements of love, war, and destiny in 1942, the film and its producers never saw the phenomenal appeal or its success coming until it won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1943. Seventy-seven years later it still […]
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By EDWARD RUBIN Ever since COVID-19 shut down our theaters, movie houses, museums, concert halls, opera houses, jazz clubs, and stadiums – in short, our country’s entire entertainment industry – there has been a marked increase in entertainment offerings on TV, cable and online through blogs, websites and streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Disney+. […]
By ALAN SMASON There is a minor, but pivotal moment in Marcus H. Rosenmüeller’s film “The Keeper” where a rabbi makes a major and dramatic declaration. Based on the real life story of Bert (Bernd) Trautmann, the film recounts how Rabbi Alexander Altmann, a noted, former German-Jewish scholar who had fled the Nazis, advocates his […]
By SCOTT BENNETT “Married to Math” is a film made as if it were a mathematical equation with unknown expressions of value being moved towards a solution. Created by Nina Zaretskaya, this documentary presents three mathematicians from the former Soviet Union who released the artistic expression of their youth after the distraction of their training […]