By AARON KRAUSE CINCINNATI — Theater and history buffs have a rare chance in Cincinnati to witness Shakespeare like they’ve never experienced in school. Chances are, you never studied Othello in the modern, painfully-timely manner Cincinnati Shakespeare Company (CSC) is presenting the Bard’s tragedy. Folks also might not have learned about the first African American […]
By ROY BERKO The history of American musical theater is laced with firsts and trendsetters. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma” introduced the well-made book musical in which a story was told, with music, lyrics and dance all integrated and setting the pattern of the first act ending with a conflict that would be solved in the […]
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out“) While ruminating about the current production of A Streetcar Named Desire playing at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carré, there was the thought of a scene in the hilarious fake rock biopic “This Is Spinal Tap” that sprang to mind. In describing an amplifier’s output, Christopher Guest’s […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) When Robert Harling first created the six Chinquapin, Louisiana leading ladies who hang at Truvy’s salon, America was still living through the Reagan years. Steel Magnolias was Harling’s reference to the nature of the ladies, who, season after season, stand firm and tall like trees, dealing with the […]
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out“) Three years ago the National World War II Museum’s entertainment staff decided to move away from the standard fare they offered, which was mostlyWorld War II-centric material. While the mission of the museum is to recall the triumph of the “Greatest Generation,” it makes sense to market […]
By EDWARD RUBIN Eve Ensler’s groundbreaking play, The Vagina Monologues, first came to the attention of New York audiences when it opened Off Off Broadway in 1996. Since then it has been published in 48 languages and performed in over 140 countries. Fashioned from some 200 interviews Ensler conducted among women from all walks of […]
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 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 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), […]