The costumes, makeup, and set all create this bizarre world, within which characters refuse to look at each other, staring straight at the audience, or start trembling and convulsing, throwing tables and chairs, and behaving in generally outlandish and weird manners. It’s sort of like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on a very heavy Ibogaine trip. And it works so well.
This material could be really vital, really brutal, heart wrenching stuff. But instead it’s just entertainment. It doesn’t really grapple with the issues, you don’t leave the theater thinking about how our school systems need to be changed, updated, for the times.
A Little Night Music is something of a novelty: it is a musical set completely in waltz time (technically 3/4, although there is also some 6/8). This makes it sound like it could get monotonous: how varied can music be if it’s nothing but one time signature? But America has never had a problem with music in only one time signature (has Lady Gaga done anything that’s not 4/4 yet?), and what’s more, Sondheim’s music is so rich, so varied, so clever and complex, that it is anything but monotony.
I never thought I’d ever say that I liked the later, more sanitized versions of Grease much more than this revival! ATC’s 2011 production was simply too long and too unfocused as it contained a vastly inferior score than the later Broadway stage productions and the film. I believe, at 2 hours 45 minutes, the show is 45 too long
The intricacies of plot and character are manifold, as one would expect from a play of this era, and moreover of Shaw. His wit is clever as ever, and his eye is particularly keenly pointed towards British society. He dissects what money is to those who don’t have it, what it’s not to those who do, and what sorts of things people would have to go through to get it, or keep it.
Goggins songs are worthy and the hooky comedy is spiced-up with terrific work from Alene Robertson, Felicia Fields, Lauren Creel and Nicole Miller. Mary Robin Roth’s performance was particularly funny and heartfelt.
Leave it to the creatives at the American Blues Theater to come up with a fresh, raw dark comedy – Rantoul and Die by Mark Roberts – now in its Regional Premiere at the upstairs space at Victory Gardens Biograph Theater. Written by a TV sitcom writer/producer, Mark Roberts (“Mike & Molly”), Rantoul and Die is far from a tame TV sitcom- rather it is a raw, foul-mouthed edgy dark comedy about four skankiets yet heartbreakingly real characters.
The use of two pianos utilized the orchestrations created by the original producers but locked away for 50 years was made available to Porchlight Music theatre by R & H Productions ( owners of the Rodgers & Hammerstein rights) after they found the orchestrations a few years ago. So, this production contains “world premiere” orchestrations that Eugene Dizon and Allison Hendrix played marvelously.
Why anyone would want to make a musical about mental illness and it’s debilitating effects on a family is one of life’s mysteries? And, if anyone really must have such darkness expressed in song, they best use serious baroque or other classical chamber music influences to express the pain, angst and agony of the mentally ill on and her dysfunctional family.
The 16 brave performers blend an original electronic score (composed by Jean-Phi Goncalves) with 10 different urban dance and circus arts. The skilled talents (from seven countries) showcase thrilling skills such as juggling, contortion, in-line skating, stilts, Cyr Wheel, hand balancing, straps, bike trial, Chinese pole and various aerial silks that move swiftly toward the spectacular finale on the dynamic trampowall