By JACK LYONS The country’s pandemic hit the Coachella Valley pretty hard. We lost CoyoteStageWorks, one of our multi-award-winning leading professional theatre companies, who after more than ten years, was forced to turn off their “ghost light” forever. Other theatre companies have been hanging by their fingernails amid this pandemic monster. But, for how long […]
By ANNE SIEGEL MILWAUKEE, WI. – Next Act, one of the city’s longest-running theaters, opens the new year with an exhilarating, funny and disturbing Wisconsin premiere of Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline. The play, which runs one hour and 40 minutes without an intermission, moves at breathtaking speed as it describes the world of a Black family […]
By EDWARD RUBIN Despite countless closings, postponements, cancellations, empty seats, COVID interventions, and the annoying requirements of having to wear a mask, present proof of a vaccination with a valid government-issued photo ID, and go through a security check, even before you enter the theatre, New York City’s theater scene appears to be chugging along, […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) One of the most unanticipated closures on Broadway due to the COVID pandemic was the announcement from the Disney Theatrical Group that Frozen: The Musical would not be reopening once it was safe to return. While the cost for the musical to be mounted at the St. […]
By ROY BERKO Vickie Bussert, the director of Lizzie: The Musical, an exploration of the Lizzie Borden story, now on stage as a joint production between Baldwin Wallace’s nationally respected Musical Theater Program and Beck Center of the Arts, is no stranger to the show. Bussert staged the show at the 14th Street Theatre, in Playhouse […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Times have been very busy both together and separately for the composing team of composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Michael Korie. The team had worked previously on the opera The Grapes of Wrath, which premiered in 2007 and was later revised and expanded in 2010. In […]