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Trevor isn't Dear Evan Hansen, but judging from the number of kids who were in the audience, parents feel it's close enough.
Christmas comes early this year, as Skylight Music Theater presents a rousing production of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s Little Shop of Horrors. It’s as adorable and clever as can be, and this revival is every bit as good as its first appearance in Skylight’s 2003-2004 season. This time, the show is directed by Artistic Director Michael Unger, making his directorial debut almost two years after joining the company. (No sooner was Unger hired than the pandemic hit; like all performing arts companies, Skylight had to “pivot” and switch to digital theater.)
British playwright Simon Stephens’s three-generation memory play Morning Sun runs through Sunday, December 19, 2021 at New York City Center.
For discerning theatergoers who live and die theater and perhaps still remember the dazzling effectiveness of Stephens’s Tony winning play, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night (2015) it is a must see.
Revivals and adaptations are proving startlingly relevant on and Off-Broadway. Some might consider Paul Osborn’s tender 1939 Morning’s at Seven totally dated and irrelevant for this moment of social upheaval and re-examination. The warmhearted comedy about four elderly sisters was rescued from obscurity by a smash-hit 1980 Broadway revival starring such beloved actresses as Teresa Wright, Elizabeth Wilson, Nancy Marchand, and Maureen O’Sullivan.
Revivals and adaptations are proving startlingly relevant on and Off-Broadway, including Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins, which remains shockingly fresh. This bizarre cult item has become even more dangerously accurate in its view of the dark side of the American dream.
Though it takes place five years ago on the brink of the incoming Trump administration, few plays are as of the present moment as Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s Cullud Wattah, now at the Public Theater. The poetic and political play depicts the devastating impact of the Flint, Michigan water crisis on a three-generation family of African-American women. The crisis continues right up until the final curtain when the actresses directly address the audience to inform us that as of the date of the performance attended, Flint has not had potable water for 2,769 days.
From the 70s to the 90s, country music made a definite turn, influenced by rock and such artists as Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Juice Newton, Garth Brooks, and George Strait. It became more mainstream, finding “Friends in Low Places.” As shown in Florida Studio Theater’s Goldstein Cabaret, it became more intimately connected to its audiences, identifying with their experiences and feelings.
In the iconography of 2021, the language of spiritual and earthly concepts still often overlap, and despite increasing social secularism in America, one nun can still be terrifying, but two or more nuns are considered to be as unquestioningly adorable as a flock of penguins (this Women-of-Mystery trope can be applied to witches, lesbians and amazons in fiction as well). Put these two precepts together and what you get is a perfect formula for a comedy whose appeal easily transcends sectarian barriers.
To hear LaChanze sing is like receiving a heavenly gift. That she's also an incredible actress makes any production she's in a sheer delight. Trouble in Mind is not a flawless play. What exactly is the meaning here of the title, taken from an old blues song about suicide? The story seems to ricochet from comedy to heartbreaking tragedy. But the cast is so superb, every moment plays out beautifully.
Douglas Carter Beane’s latest, Fairycakes, sounded fantastic on paper: the press release promised a mashing up of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with several traditional fairy tales.
The content of Simon Stephens’s Morning Sun is not extraordinary, earth-shaking, or even that unusual.
Even in 2021, the auto mechanics are still uniformly male at the Phillips 76 gas depot along North Carolina's Highway 57 between Frog Level and Smyrna, and the proprietors of the adjacent Double Cupp eatery likewise female, but the faces of these roadside angels who cheerfully provide comfort and entertainment to a busload of tourists (that's us, by the way) waiting for their stalled-out vehicle to be repaired are considerably different from those of 1982, when this hymn to Southern hospitality premiered.
Is there any story beginning more romantic than lovers fleeing hostile authority figures? The fugitives, in this case, are Wayland Early—a shoemaker blessed with talent, ambition and a trade ensuring a means of livelihood—and his loyal wife, Della Rose, already pregnant with their first child.
The custom nowadays is for shows to finish their rehearsal periods with a series of pre-opening performances designed to fine-tune delicate actor-audience interactions. This joint Goodman Theater/Seattle Repertory Company's production of Cheryl L.
While this powerful little musical was meant to be seen after 9/11, the theme is still particularly relevant today. While most of us are sympathetic to the Afghan refugees who were evacuated from their homes after having helped U.S. soldiers in our longest war, the question of where they should be resettled has raised the NIMBY (not in my backyard) response around our country.
The new musical Trevor could easily have been an extended After School Special, an overly preachy message tuner with more PSA vibes than entertainment value. Set in 1981, the show follows the travails of a show-biz-loving adolescent discovering his gay sexuality and attempting suicide after a humiliating incident in middle school. He meets a sympathetic volunteer in the hospital with a shared interest in pop-music divas and learns to accept and value himself.
This replication of an adult class in Catholic doctrine was already an exercise in nostalgia when it premiered at Live Bait in 1993. Since then, Chicago theatergoers have looked to twenty actresses in a dozen theaters for insights into the guidance of three Popes, four presidents and three mayors — an experience shared with audiences of over four hundred cities, in six countries on four continents.
The Visitor at the Public Theater, a new musical derived from Thomas McCarthy’s 2007, Oscar-nominated indie film, wants to be relevant, but turns out to be a half-hearted effort. Kwame Kwei Armah and Brian Yorkey’s book is like a watered-down, condensed version of McCarthy’s original screenplay about Walter, a recently widowed economics professor who finds an undocumented couple staying in his pied-à-terre apartment. The film focuses on Walter’s grief and his gradual, unlikely friendship with the couple who run into trouble with the authorities.
Revivals and adaptations are proving startlingly relevant on and Off-Broadway. Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind premiered Off-Broadway in 1955. The play centering on an African-American actress’s confrontation with racial stereotypes in the theater was all set to transfer to Broadway, but the playwright refused to tone down the controversial subject matter and the production was cancelled. Now, 66 years later, Trouble has finally made it to the Main Stem, and Childress’s fiery words are just as pertinent as the day they were written.
Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story is as much a biography of rock-and-roll music as of its titular hero. At Florida Studio Theater the spectacular rise of both comes to vivid new life via an impressive cast of actors-musicians. Director Jason Cannon has wisely guided them not to imitate the characters they play but to interpret their artistic and emotional effects.
If your idea of Irish people is leprechauns and “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya,” Autumn Royal may come as a bit of a culture shock. This Irish Repertory Theatre production flips the coin, and shows us the depression and squalor that can result from alcoholism, isolation, poverty, and despair. Tim (John Keating), and his sister, May (Maeve Higgins), live a dreary life in one hideous room, with a single thought predominant on their minds. Whatever shall we do with father?
A contemporary take-off on Everyman, the most famous English medieval morality play, Everybody still requires the title character to face death. But instead of emphasizing having to account for a life’s good and bad acts to God for placement in the afterlife. Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’s Everybody lead must reflect mainly on life’s meaning both to self and the society left behind.
In the final months (we hope) of the long Covid pandemic, one of Milwaukee’s scrappiest theater troupes, The Constructivists, is back on stage after a 20-month pause. Their fourth season opens with Wink, an edgy, absurdist comedy by Jen Silverman. Although this dark comedy should be taken very tongue-in-cheek, it does raise important questions about the nature of relationships (both human/human and human/animal) and what we do to survive in this crazy world. The play also demonstrates that there is indeed more than one way to skin a cat.
When it opened on Broadway at the tail end of the 2003-4 season after an Off-Broadway run at the Public Theater, Caroline, or Change was overshadowed by the rivalry between Wicked and Avenue Q. This difficult, strange, and complex musical by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home, Violet) about the relationship between an African-American maid and the little Jewish boy of the family for whom she works, was too rare a dish for audiences accustomed to a diet of witches and puppets.
Martyna Majok’s intense, well-meaning Sanctuary City has a split personality. The first hour of this tale of two young people struggling to deal with our inequitable immigration laws is told in short, fragmentary shards. Sometimes they are repeated to demonstrate the endless cycle of hope and betrayal encountered on the endless path to becoming legal. Most of these vignettes are less than a minute and their cumulative impact is like standing in the middle of a dramatic sand storm.
Ron Sossi, the Odyssey’s artistic director, directed the West Coast premiere of The Serpent 51 years ago, in the spring of 1970, as the second production of the brand-new Odyssey Theater. He revisited the play in March 2020 as part of the Odyssey’s 50th anniversary “Circa 69” season, only to see the play shuttered five days later by the onslaught of Covid-19.
The disappointing Diana—The Musical occupies an awkward position—not entertaining enough to be a guilty pleasure and not bad enough to be a campy hoot. Puerile, tasteless, and simplistic, this tabloid tuner is the first show to be streamed on TV before it opens on Broadway and will probably suffer big-time at the box office as a result. The live version of the musical portrait of the late Princess of Wales was forced to close up shop while in previews because of the COVID pandemic.
When the Hamilton national tour first played in Milwaukee three years ago, ticket buyers lined up around the block of the show’s venue. Now, so much has happened in terms of American history – and the performing arts – that it seems like eons ago when Hamilton came to town.
The same week I took in Broadway’s Caroline, or Change revival, I attended a cinema simulcast of the last performance of the historical production of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the Metropolitan Opera’s first presentation by a black composer. Like Caroline, Fire addresses hot-button issues of race and community and features a fascinating score (by Terrence Blanchard) brimming with multiple influences.
While Broadway theaters were shuttered and demonstrations erupted across the country protesting the killing of George Floyd, an African-American, by a white police officer, the industry underwent a reckoning to be more inclusive and diverse. As stages are slowly reopening, the number of productions written by African-Americans like Keenan Scott II’s Thoughts of a Colored Man and Douglas Lyons’s Chicken and Biscuits has increased above the usual token two or three per season. The latter play premiered at the Queens Theater in Feb.
While Broadway theaters were shuttered and demonstrations erupted across the country protesting the killing of George Floyd, an African-American, by a white police officer, the industry underwent a reckoning to be more inclusive and diverse. As stages are slowly reopening, the number of productions written by African-Americans like Keenan Scott II’s Thoughts of a Colored Man and Douglas Lyons’s Chicken and Biscuits has increased above the usual token two or three per season.
Second Stage has started its Off-Broadway season with Letter of Suresh, Rajiv Joseph’s companion play to his
While some current smaller-scale shows, like Is this a Room?, lose a degree of intimacy in their transfers from Off-Broadway to on, The Lehman Trilogy undergoes a metamorphosis in the opposite direction. This Italian play about the American financial empire played a limited run in the cavernous Park Avenue Armory after a smash London engagement at the National Theater. Now, set designer Es Devlin’s huge cube of a revolving set fits neatly into the Nederlander Theater and provides a memorable experience which is both vast and up-close.
Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s off-Broadway solo show, Lackawanna Blues, has found its way to Broadway without losing its snap. Originally presented at the Public Theater in 2001, Blues is the author-star-director’s autobiographical tribute to his beloved foster mother Nanny Crosby, who maintained a boarding house of eccentric characters in the titular upstate New York town while raising him.
After a long absence due to COVID, Broadway is slowly starting to come back. But the majority of new productions are not the typical Main Stem fare of jukebox musicals, revivals, or tuners based on popular movies. Most recent openings have been transfers or returns of unconventional Off-Broadway offerings. Two of them, Is this a Room and Dana H., playing in repertory after award-winning runs at the Vineyard Theater, are derived from transcripts of recordings of real people living frightening events.
After a long absence due to COVID, Broadway is slowly starting to come back. But the majority of new productions are not the typical Main Stem fare of jukebox musicals, revivals, or tuners based on popular movies. Most recent openings have been transfers or returns of unconventional Off-Broadway offerings. Two of them, Is this a Room and Dana H., playing in repertory after award-winning runs at the Vineyard Theater, are derived from transcripts of recordings of real people living frightening events.
Milwaukee’s nationally acclaimed children’s theater, First Stage, embarks on a new project this fall. The company is staging the second year of its “Amplify – BIPOC Short Play Series.” The project combines live and streaming versions of new work that has been created especially for this series. Due to the pandemic, last year’s version offered streaming-only productions. The plays and musicals in this series have been created by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and each one centers on the current viewpoints of young people.
The Lehman Trilogy is a saga of the vitality brought to this country by immigrants, good-old American know-how, and overweening ambition. Three brothers, Henry (Simon Russell Beale), Emanuel (Adrian Lester), and Mayer (Adam Godley) make their way to America. While we never understand how they came to make Mobile, Alabama their home base, it’s from here that the Lehman Brothers begin to make their fortune. First, they deal in garments.
Is there a family that doesn’t have a few skeletons in the closet? Surely not the new preacher, Reginald Mabry (Norm Lewis) and his nearly perfect wife, Baneatta (Cleo King). But pretty soon, things begin to unravel. Son Kenny (Devere Rogers) comes to his grandpas’ funeral with a friend, Logan (Michael Urie), who’s not only white but also Jewish, and much more than just a friend.
What was it like to enjoy performances of Eubie Blake’s music back in the days it was created and presented by Black people? Today’s Westcoast Black Theater Troupe’s audiences can experience that intimacy yet grandeur, under Jim Weaver’s direction, in Eubie. Adam Spencer’s simple set with background for screening and descending steps on both sides of the wide-area, black-floored stage nicely allows for both impressive scene-setting and commentary projections.
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