While the plot seems relatively uninspired, the music keeps your attention with a diversity of styles and textures. Britten’s interest in atonality comes through during more conversational moments when the vocal lines can seem almost awkward and unmusical, but these passages are balanced by a couple beautiful more diatonic arias.
The cast manically works the material and the audience to get everyone to have a good time. This is a nice date show. The cast is getting valuable experience trying to make tough material funny.
Tom Williams discusses the following stage plays with Carl Amari: Busman’s Honeymoon at Lifeline Theatre; Crazy for You at the Theatre at the Center and Once on this Island at the Theatre Building Chicago. May 16, 2009 [audio:https://chicagocritic.com/newsite/audio/TOM0516.mp3]
Once On This Island is a classic fairy tale about Ti Moune (Melanie Brezill), a poor peasant girl who falls in love with an upper-class gentleman named Daniel (Sean Walton).
Crazy for You–it has one of the finest scores of all-time and it contains an outstanding book by Ken Ludwig that has cute situations, witty one-liners and colorful winning characters caught up in a classic romantic fable. The show ran for four years on Broadway and it has become a staple of regional theatre due to its funny book and great music.
It is valid that Broadway musicals can be pure escapist fluff—as long as the show’s production elements contain a bouncy score, cute characters and smart lyrics and creative choreography. Unfortunately, none of these elements are present in Legally Blonde.
Therefore, the selection of music Stoppard choose was bewildering and distracted from the play’s focus. I simply couldn’t make the connection from rock music to the political dissent in Cambridge and Czechoslovakia. This play supposes as true the intersection of rock music and politics.
By Tom Stoppard Directed by Charles Newell At the Goodman Theatre Dissonance and Dissidents Like most Tom Stoppard plays, Rock ‘N’ Roll recounts an engaging story that invites the audience to contemplate complex subject matter. In the case of this, his latest work, the tale is one of love, family, and friendship and the subject … Read more
Frances Limoncelli’s funny and whimsical adaptation of Busman’s Honeymoon contains the marriage of Wimsey and Vance. The early scenes take us into their world that memory reminds me that Lord Wimsey proposed marriage to Harriet Vance many time before she accepted.
This spoof is a pop/rock parody of groups like “New Kids on the Block” and “Backstreet Boys,” Altar Boyz works hard to please audiences and it sure does with charm and panache.