By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) John Cullum, the two-time Tony Award winning leading Broadway actor, might have been content to rest on his well-deserved laurels. But as he admonishes us, he has been working as a performer since he was “knee high to a grasshopper” (what Broadway star uses a term like […]
By AARON KRAUSE If you search Emily Dickinson on Google, one of the photos you’ll find is that of an austere-looking woman dressed in black. The famous poet from Amherst, Massachusetts (1830-1886) appears to be a no-nonsense, severe woman, rigid in her thinking. But the Emily Dickinson one encounters in William Luce’s one-woman, 1976 Broadway […]
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 ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) The story of God of Vengeance (Got fun Nekome), the three-act drama in Yiddish by Sholem Asch, was famously recounted in 2017 with Paula Vogel’s Indecent. That remarkable Tony Award-winning work spoke about the playwright, the success of his work, its controversial 1923 Broadway run that was shut […]
By AARON KRAUSE A problem with online theater, especially a taped production, is that performers cannot take bows. In addition, the actors cannot bask in bravos, cheers, and sustained applause. Certainly, cast members of New Normal Rep’s inaugural production of the dramedy Jericho deserve high praise. They are offering impressively natural, nuanced performances. And New Normal […]
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 ROY BERKO Beck Center often coordinates with Baldwin Wallace Music Theatre program to produce some of the Cleveland area’s best musical theatre. Not only does the stage often sparkle with BWU students, but thespians from all over the area are cast in some of the Beck shows. Hosted by Kathleen Rooney Faubel, a BWU alum whose […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) For three and a half years, Joseph Kesselring was the toast of Broadway with his dark comedy Arsenic & Old Lace. The play, which opened at the Fulton Theatre in January of 1941, transferred to the Hudson Theatre in the fall of 1943 and closed in July […]
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 […]