Recent Reviews
Review: Evita by Woodlawn Theatre
by Kurt Gardner
Published on August 16, 2016
The Woodlawn production directed by Christopher Rodriguez is virtually flawless.
Evita is one of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s best musicals, and certainly one of their most enduring. The story of a woman who used her body (and any other means at her disposal) to achieve fame and power, it also presents audiences with a moral dilemma. Are we meant to cheer for someone who relied on such unscrupulous means to achieve her success? The answer is both yes and no, as the musical …
Review (#2 of 2): POSTVILLE by Don Fried, Last Act Theater Company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on August 06, 2016
POSTVILLE is a very American story with a very real origin in America’s heartland. Everyone involved has given it a beautiful and brief life at the Trinity Street Theatre. Do not miss it.
Finding Heart in America’s Heartland The opening scene is quaint, peaceful and idyllic: a café on a nearly deserted main street of small town America. The locals slowly occupy the rocking chairs and tiny tables waiting both patiently and impatiently for the succor of their morning coffees. The inevitable weather conversations begin along with a re-hash of the past year’s events. Past year because it seems only a few events happen a year here. A …
Review: Mary Poppins by Zach Theatre
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on August 05, 2016
As director Dave Steakley muses in his production notes: Mary Poppins lives in a fantasy world, and the point of visiting her is to forget your cares in the real world. And there is nothing wrong with that.
“First of all let me make one thing quite clear… I never explain anything.” Perhaps my favorite line from the musical Mary Poppins, this classic one liner of delightful irony sums up the story of a magical nanny who descends from the sky to teach two unruly children (and their parents) the true meaning of family. Many things in the story are non-linear and silly for silliness sake: Any part of the scenery can be …
Review (#1 of 2): POSTVILLE by Don Fried, Last Act Theater Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on July 31, 2016
Postville emphasizes that sources of refuge and support often lie across religions, across cultures, across voting lines, across the tracks, and sometimes just in the rocking chairs along Main Street.
The latest production of Last Act Theatre Company involves life in a small town in Iowa, based on actual events in the 1990s. Named for the town, the play Postville captures many of the events, some characters, and almost all of the feelings of the time when Hasidic Jews arrived in Postville to purchase and reopen a meatpacking plant for marketing of kosher meats. The closed plant had been the only realistic source of employment …
Review: Hold Me Well by Shrewd Productions
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on July 28, 2016
The characters are on a raft adrift upon an empty sea with no hope in sight. We the spectators are the ghosts in the room.
The Immediate Jewel of the Soul “Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, is the immediate jewel of their souls. Who steals my purse steals trash. (…..) But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.” These words from Act 3, scene 3 in Othello summarize both Iago’s fiendish plan and one of the play’s largest themes. It is the …
Review: The Glass Menagerie by City Theatre Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on July 24, 2016
Ben McLemore's delivery of Tom’s final soliloquy, full of street wanderings and everlasting love for his sister, evokes the later concerns and sensibilities of the Beat poets.
The Glass Menagerie is a study in pressure cookers, a modernist work, and a snow globe of the 20th century age of alienation. Much has been written about the play and its author Tennessee Williams, including how the play very likely models significant features of Williams’ family as he was growing up. Many call it a memory play. None of that matters. The Glass Menagerie generalizes brilliantly the squirming discontents of North American family life …