By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) It’s hard to believe, but until three years ago there had never been a revival of Funny Girl on Broadway. The starring vehicle in 1964 that turned New York phenom Barbra Streisand into a nationally known recording artist and a soon-to-be cinema star was deemed too iconic […]
By SCOTTY BENNETT One of the fascinating things about humans is how easily they mask intense feelings in a cloak of smiles and good humor. Pain, both physical and emotional, can be disguised but not completely hidden from the discerning eye. It sometimes emerges as an edgy joke or sarcastic observation. Regardless of how glimpses […]
By ELIZABETH SCHABINGER The Bedwetter, based on Sarah Silverman’s memoir of the same name, is an intimate look at Silverman’s year as a 10-year-old. In The Bedwetter, Sarah is a fifth grader in a new town with newly-divorced parents, a filthy mouth (thanks, dad!), and nocturnal enuresis. We follow a year in the life of […]
By ROY BERKO Parade, which is now on stage at the Palace Theatre as part of the Key Bank Broadway series, is a musical with a book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. It is a dramatization of the 1913 trial and imprisonment, and 1915 lynching, of Jewish-American Leo Frank. […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) As hard to believe as it may be, Mamma Mia!, the ABBA hit jukebox musical is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. It continues to enthrall fans of the Swedish rock group with its fast-paced and cleverly written book by Catherine Johnson that brings the hit songs […]
By LOU HARRY, Special to Theatrecriticism.com Yes, “Henry IV” is the complete title. Sans the “part 1” and “part 2” that traditionally complete the title of William Shakespeare’s historical take, this adaptation fuses the two plays into a three-act, approximately four-hour one-nighter. At Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn, the result is a crisp, […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Sam Shepard’s powerful play about the toxic relationship between two brothers – True West – is back at the Jefferson Performing Arts’ Westwego Theater for the Performing Arts. The two-act dark comedy celebrates its 45-year anniversary this year, first introduced off-Broadway in 1980 and, two decades later, […]
By LOU HARRY, Special to Theatrecriticism.com It’s made clear from the first moments of “The Antiquities” that the human race is history. Jordan Harrison’s play, a co-production of Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theatre and Goodman Theatre, opens with a pair of humanoid “inorganic” hosts introducing us to a museum that gives long lost humanity the treatment […]
By LOU HARRY I’ve only seen Liza Minnelli once live. That was at a concert with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, where her batteries seemed fully charged and she treated the audience like we were all guests in her living room. Warm, confident and damn entertaining, she even stopped the orchestra after a few missed vocal […]
By ANNE SIEGEL, Exclusive to Theatrecriticism.com MILWAUKEE – Okay, we’re not Iowa. But when the Broadway national tour of Shucked opened this week in Madison, WI – the Wisconsin state capitol – it attracted more theatergoers than the number of deer grazing in an acre of corn. When Shucked ended its respectable Broadway run in […]