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 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 ROY BERKO Suzan-Lori Parks, Lynn Nottage and Tonya Barfield are noted as emerging African-American playwrights. Another member of that sorority is the award-winning Dominique Morisseau, the author of “The Detroit Project,” a three-play cycle which includes The Skeleton Crew, Detroit ’67 and Paradise Blue. The third in the cycle by the MacArthur Genius Award […]
By AARON KRAUSE INDIANAPOLIS — Hairspray might not offer the most in-depth examination of race and racial attitudes. Nevertheless, this big-hearted, tuneful and sweet, (yet not saccharine) Broadway favorite from 2002 remains a refreshing reminder. It’s one that we need especially today. Among other things, the multi-award-winning Hairspray reaffirms how a little activism, teamwork and solidarity can effect change […]
By ROY BERKO In its off-Broadway production, Shakespeare R&J (which is now on stage at convergence continuum) ran for a year, making it the longest running version of “Romeo and Juliet” in New York history. The piece was described as “Hot-blooded … Wrenching … pulsates with an adolescent abandon and electricity of which Romeo himself […]
By ROY BERKO Kenneth Lonergan is noted for writing about decent people who are unexpectedly challenged by issues of ethics. In his Lobby Hero, now on stage at Blank Canvas, the 2016 Oscar winner for “Manchester by the Sea” specifically asks, “What happens when emotions come in conflict with principles.” The play premiered Off-Broadway in […]
By ANNE SIEGEL MILWAUKEE, WI. – A small but energetic theater company, Off the Wall Theatre, has produced a memorable production of one of Tennessee Williams’ later works, Small Craft Warnings. This rarely-produced work received lukewarm response when it opened Off-Broadway in 1972. At that time, Williams was 60 and feeling very aware that he […]
By ROY BERKO Jeanine Tesori (music) and David Lindsay-Abaire (books and lyrics) developed the creative Shrek: The Musical from DreamWorks Animation’s film and William Steig’s book of the same name. The script, which tells the tale of Shrek, who on his seventh birthday is sent out by his parents into the “Big Bright Beautiful World,” […]
By ROY BERKO Susan Hill, author of the book “The Woman in Black,” the source of the play of the same name now being staged at the Cleveland Play House (CPH), relates: “The Suffolk coast. Winter. The early Seventies. Behind the path giving onto the shingle beach and the North Sea, are marshes, mysterious places […]
By ROY BERKO God, or a facsimile thereof, in the form of Mike Polk Jr., who in his other life is a local comedian and Fox 8 personality, is appearing on the Beck Center for the Arts stage, in a mock spiritual conversation with his audience. The script, which was written by David Javerbaum, and […]