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Tom Williams

La Tragedie de Carmen

Cube Ensemble’s first full music production is a bold 90 minute scaled down adaptation of Georges Bizet’s 1875 La Tragedie de Carmen is an efficient affair featuring music from a stand-up piano that produced a unique sound for an opera. This intimate opera is staged in a minute studio space at the Den in Bucktown. Sung in French without super titles, best to read the “director’s Notes’ in the program to get a feel for the story. I must say that the staging does allow for us to understand both the action and the motivation of the opera.

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Tom Williams

Depraved New World

Based on the premise: “Ever wonder what people are really thinking,?” the cast of skilled comic Equity performers have designed a fast-paced, laugh-a-minute comedy revue that easily grabs us from the start and keeps us belly laughing through. Chelsea Devantez, John Hartman, Mike Kosinski, Tawny Newsome, Emily Walker and Steve Waltien use everything they have, their vocal chops, their physical appearance, or their cute smiles including their ability to play animals to garner laughs.

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Tom Williams

Erth’s Dinosaur Zoo Live

The creatives for Australia, Erth-Visual & Physical have created and are now touring the world with their Erth’s Dinosaur Zoo Live. This experiential theatre production is part paleontologist lesson, part puppet show, and part audience appreciation of prehistoric animals. This kid friendly show utilizing video projections, amazing plant props, and live sized dinosaur puppets is narrated and hosted by Australian Aimee Louisanne, a charismatic young woman who has a way with both kids and paleontology.

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REVIEWSTheatre ReviewsTom Williams
Tom Williams

Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England

Mammoths is an ambitious comedy that has twists on academic politics, the worthiness of a small museum as well as romantic relationships with a middle aged woman and a much younger woman. This sex comedy has unique twists that emerge when a 20something Andromeda- a New Age advocate – loves a pure academic and now is thrust into living with a dying doctor of philosophy. These exchanges are witty and quite funny. In act two,as Greer is growing sicker, the tone shifts as Andromeda becomes the main caregiver to Greer as Wreen is bogged down with campus business.

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Tom Williams

Road Show

The main problem is John Weidman’s book. that quite superficially presents the Mizner brothers with a too broad a scope. The brothers, as presented, are two con men out to fleece the public on their way to pursuing the American Dream. Addison is presented, despite terrific work by Michael Aaron Lindner, a weak personality who is a failure as a con man completely subservient to his younger brother.. Wilson, played nicely by Andrew Rothenberg, is presented as a shiftless, ruthless and charming entrepreneurial con man whose addiction to cocaine and gambling made him always in need of cash.

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Tom Williams

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – 2014 National Tour

For 50 years, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat has been rolling through Chicago. My first time seeing it, the Cadillac Palace put on a fun spectacle for the whole family. Directed and Choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler, the show will leave you in awe. A story about always shooting for your dreams, Joseph, his 11 brothers, and the rest of this stellar cast will put you in your own dream.

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Tom Williams

God of Isaac – Florida Review

Isaac is not a heroic figure — not Tom from the Glass Menagerie, not the Marlon Brando character from On The Waterfront, not Huck Finn fishing along the Mississippi, not Professor Higgins or Colonel Pickering from My Fair Lady. But all of these (often introspective) persona (and others) interrupt –and yet reinforce — the plot with their famous and familiar lines altered to reflect his struggle (complete with unexpected yet hilarious yiddishisms).

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