By BILL HIRSCHMAN For even those who only knew Herbert Simpson in passing, likely what they remember was his voice – usually deep and sonorous, a bit scratchy, but brimming with passion. They remember his voice because Simpson, the critic and educator who died Sunday, November 24, never passed on a chance to hold forth […]
By AARON KRAUSE NEW YORK, N.Y. — Dorothy Michaels is unstoppable. We learned that much in the Tony Award-nominated Broadway musical adaptation of Tootsie. It is based on the popular Academy Award-nominated 1982 movie with the same title. So it comes as no surprise that, even though the musical will close on Jan. 5 after 293 performances […]
By AARON KRAUSE NEW YORK, N.Y. — If you want to hear current members of the famed musical group The Temptations perform live this year, you’re out of luck. According to https://www.songkick.com/artists/499703-temptations, they aren’t touring. Moreover, organizers have not planned concerts for what is left of 2019. But you can travel back in time to the […]
By AARON KRAUSE NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. — The wording on the Playbill at Circle in the Square Theatre does not deceive your eyes: It really does say Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! Now, the sights and sounds onstage might make you think you need an appointment with your eye and/or ear doctor. But what’s transpiring on that […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) Smartly and deftly written by Karen Zacarías, Native Gardens is a dark comedy, but one that is at its very core, extremely funny. Given the particularly volatile political climate in contemporary America, Zacarías scores by highlighting specific areas where differences in cultures and age clash most. She […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) The cautionary tale of a lie spun out of control, teenage angst, suicide and the impact of the Internet is at the heart of Dear Evan Hansen, the 2017 Tony Award winner for Best Musical. This past week, local audiences were able to witness for themselves the […]
By EDWARD RUBIN Will Arbery’s latest play, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, having been extended two times by popular demand, is now running Off-Broadway through Sunday, November 17, 2019 at Playwrights Horizons. With more religious, personal, and political exposition (read talk) than many a mind can absorb at one sitting, Heroes of the Fourth Turning […]
By ANNE SIEGEL It has been a long wait, but the people of southeast Wisconsin finally get to be in the room where it happens. Hamilton has arrived. And what a reception it’s getting. The mostly sold-out performances in this three-week run offer a top-ranked professional tour, which is also visiting two other Wisconsin cities […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) Imagine Alice Walker’s book “The Color Purple” in which the story of Celie would be a happy tale. Walker would write of an idyllic, happy childhood in which Celie’s mother and father unconditionally love him and his brother Nettie. Later, when the siblings attend college together, they […]
By AARON KRAUSE WEST PALM BEACH — Brutal reality shatters sensitivity, fragility and illusion with the force of a monster hurricane in the professional, non-profit Palm Beach Dramaworks’ highly intense, heartfelt and heartbreaking production of A Streetcar Named Desire. To be sure, in this first-rate mounting of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, Stanley Kowalski (an […]