Stacey Flaster has found a rich emotional core that often is overlooked in many productions of Carousel. Natalie Ford, a terrific singer with strong acting abilities quite subtly but ever stead fast both understands and loves Billy Bigelow (Cooper David Grodin) unconditionally
In Love’s Bright Coils is a study on how we have expressed our love throughout the past 300 years, to how we express it today. It was inspired by the letters written by director Kat Paddock’s grandparents during World War II
The core of the show’s energy came form the strong supporting cast led by the Michael Weber’s exuberant Charlie Davenport, the Wild West show’s manager. Weber and George Hearn (Buffalo Bill) and Michael Accardo (Wilson/Pawnee Bill) deftly landed the show’s tribute to show biz with their wonderful “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”
One of the great innovations of Chicago theatre in the 1960’s was the creation of America’s first and finest dinner theatre, the Candlelight. As early as the mid 1950’s, the fledgling Barksdale Theatre discovered that it could lure hungry theatre-goers to their rustic and historic Hanover Tavern just outside Richmond, Virginia, for an extremely diverse range of plays. I had the good fortune of knowing three of the original founders of Barksdale, which never considered itself a “dinner theatre”.
Among the things that made this work a long 80 minutes are: the entire cast mostly spoke their dialogue in such a fast pace with their words running together that it was hard to understand much of it especially with that Southern drawl. What has happened to enunciating? Southern folks speak slowly – they do not machine gun their speech even when upset.
Featuring the fully lush sound of the full Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Women’s Board 2010 Gala sponsored another birthday celebration (his 80th) for Stephen Sondheim in a concert that featured a rich assortment of Sondheim’s songbook with emphasis on his terrific wordplay lyrics.
Once upon a time – way back in 1936 –an organization (some say it might have been a church, but others give the dubious credit to the U.S. Army) created an anti-marijuana morality play called Tell the Children.
In the 70’s, cannabis smokers (and others) rediscovered the script, now renamed Reefer Madness and, finding it an excessive, hilarious (if unintentional) comedy gave it new life.
The play’s ambiguity and the simple-minded portrait of Mary by Polly Noonan left me wondering is she just learning how to be an adult or is she just learning that she is really a lesbian? Red is so butch that gender and sexual identity sure steams between the two women.
From the early scenes where we see Shrek, the ogre, being cast out by his parents into the cruel world to fend for himself at age seven, we are suppose to empathize with the green-faced ogre – I never felt his pain. I guess the movie helps? The Broadway production lasted only 478 performances and had a $24 Million Dollar budget – the show lost money despite rave reviews.
Watson takes us back to the time when Holmes is so engrossed with bring down arch criminal Professor Moriarty (Nathan Thompson) that he is willing to rick death to accomplished just that. Watson’s help is needed and accepted. However, just as that adventure is about to embark, a strange visitor to the Baker Street house arrives with a challenge.