Kudos to playwright Sophia Holder and composers Justin Kono, Aaron Kaplan and Michael Goldman for constructing an original “Adventure” that is sweet, tuneful and delightful entertainment for the entire family. Martha Shuford’s costume designs are amazing and whimsical, the props clever and well chosen, and Annie Snow’s choreography lively and well performed.
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The story of the demon barber of Fleet Street revolves around Sweeney Todd’s ( the baritone Paul-Jordan Jansen) obsessive desire to seek revenge on the man responsible for exiling him, destroying his wife, and stealing his child. While awaiting his opportunity for retribution, he and the entrepreneurial Mrs. Lovett (Bri Sudia), become partners in a horrific venture in which Sweeney Todd provides Mrs. Lovett with the pivotal ingredient for her meat pies after giving his customers the “closest shave they will ever get.”
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Blue Man Group is for everyone: kids, couples, visiting in-laws, clients, fun people, boring people, people with taste, people without taste. It’s an immersive, multi-media, comedy-rock-dance-party-show spectacle for all! If you haven’t seen it, you should; if you haven’t seen it recently, bring the kids, the new girlfriend, the family you have nothing to talk about with; if you have seen it recently, you might just as well wait a couple years, it’ll be around.
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The Scottsboro Boys – The Musical is presented in the style of the notorious “minstrel show.” By utilizing a strong Brechtian satire motif led by the razor-sharp commentary by Larry Yando (The Interlocutor), the only white man in the cast, the show becomes a theatrically thrilling telling of a sad history factual story of a group of nine teens taken off a train in 1931 Alabama and accused of raping two white women in the Jim Crow South. The woman were both prostitutes.
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This satire isn’t funny and there were only a few laughs on opening night. The twang Texas rural dialect quickly became tedious and the local references a strain on credulity begging the question” who is the audience for this unfunny satirical comedy?
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The History Boys covers the life of eight English boys prepping for their entrance exams designed to get them into Oxford or Cambridge. But playwright Alan Bennett has a much larger agenda than merely a coming of age story or a debate about the purpose and style of education. He tackles issues such as sexual identity, teen angst and the role of teachers as mentors to their students
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Death of a Salesman so permeates our American subconscious, it hardly needs any introduction. Willy Loman (Brain Parry) is a husk of a man who has staked his life of 30-plus years of traveling salesmanship in the fruitless soil of unrealistic hopes and impractical principles—the pedestrian virtues of being well-liked and wearing a charming smile—to which the world has responded with brutal indifference, literally bricking-out the sun from alighting on his small, urban domain.
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The Florida audience fulfills all these criteria and more as they respond
to versatile actor/director Jake (aka Yankel) Ehrenreich in his new play,
an update of an earlier, quite successful version, both based on his book:
“A Jew Grows in Brooklyn, The curious Reflections of a First Generation
American” (published in 2010).
Kudos to the creatives at Chicago Shakespeare theatre for commissioning and producing The Book of Joseph from Richard Holland’s publication of his father’s story and the collection of family letters: “Every Day Lasts A Year.” Karen Hartman was commissioned to adapt the Holland letters into a stage play with the help of Rick Boynton and directed by Barbara Gaines. The result is a most compelling and empathetic story
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As this fact-paced 85 minute courtroom drama plays out, we witness the parallel these two young woman as they are, in fact, fighting a similar battle to defend their morals, motives and religious freedoms. Playwright Selina Fillinger skillfully presents both side of the argument: should we aggressively prosecute Americans who try to aid terrorist or only after they actually materially and personally commit acts to aid ISIS?
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