By EDWARD RUBIN Be it an accent, a foreign phrase or an idioglossia (a made-up language) spoken between characters on stage, there are plays in which my mind is hijacked. No matter how hard I may try to decipher what I am hearing, the words being delivered from the stage remain largely unintelligible to me. […]
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out”) Perhaps the darkest of the Disney animated films, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” was the last of the film series known as the Disney Renaissance that began with “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” in 1998. Like earlier projects by Menken and his celebrated lyricist partner Howard Ashman (“The […]
By ROY BERKO In December, 1968, about 50 Lorain County Community College students flew to New York. Some in the clean-scrubbed conservative group, coming from a campus void of political turmoil, had never traveled as far afield as downtown Cleveland. The first play they saw on their Big Apple adventure was Hair: The American Tribal […]
By ED RUBIN For many a theatergoer, John Lithgow, the much beloved 72-year-old actor, could read from the phone book and his legion of stalwart fans would gift him with countless oohs, ahs, and a standing ovation. In fact, given his four decades long award-winning film and TV appearances – six Tonys, six Emmys, two […]
By LOU HARRY A tip of the (ice) cap to Portland, Oregon’s Artists Repertory Theatre, which has given E.M Lewis’ epic play “Magellanica” a worthy production, even if its cracks show. Set primarily in an isolated Antarctic research station in 1986, its five-and-a-half-hour, four-intermission scale puts it in the “event” category, attracting a lively, adventurous […]
By EDWARD RUBIN Even before Farinelli and the King opened on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre, I was chomping at the bit in anticipation of seeing the ever brilliant Mark Rylance unleash his incandescent magic once again. Rylance was the winner of three well-deserved Tony Awards for Boeing-Boeing (2008), Jerusalem (2011), and Twelfth Night (2014), […]
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out”) When ballet stars Robert Fairchild and Leanne Cope began their roles as expatriate American artist Jerry Mulligan and native Parisian ballerina Lise Dassin, they had no way of knowing their performances would last for most of three years as they opened first in Paris in 2014, transferred to […]
By ROY BERKO When Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s name appeared on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ballot, there were many who thought, Sister who? Little did those not familiar with the history of the genre, know that “she was wailing on the guitar before Chuck Berry, shouting call and response before Little Richard, and […]
By ROY BERKO An unnamed woman (Anjanette Hall), in an Air Force jump suit, confidently stalks the stage telling us, with eyes flashing and intense verbalizations, the thrill she gets from being in the blue, flying missions over enemy territory, and getting together after her missions with the guys to “throw back a few.” This […]