The story originating from Puccini’s much-beloved opera Madame Butterfly is well enough known that most audience members arrive – as they might for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – anticipating the tragic ending to its ill-fated love story. Decade-long runs both in London and New York in the 1990s as well as continual, packed-house tours worldwide these past twenty years also … [Read more...] about Miss Saigon
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Testmatch
Cricket – a sport created by England and played today mostly by the mother country and countries of her former Empire – becomes the backdrop for Kate Attwell’s Testmatch, now in its time-traveling, gender-bending, hard-reality-and-parody-prolific world premiere at American Conservatory Theater. A Pandora’s Box of issues bursts open in the course of the ninety-minutes, including … [Read more...] about Testmatch
The Chinese Lady
“What is happening is a performance. For my entire life is a performance. These words that you hear are not my own. These clothes I wear are not my own. This body that I occupy is not my own.” In 1834, two traders of Far East Oriental imports to New York arranged for a Chinese girl of fourteen and of the wealthy class to come to the United States for two years in order to … [Read more...] about The Chinese Lady
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
If there is anyone who is curious why President Trump has a picture of Andrew Jackson watching over him in the Oval Office, that person need only sit through a production of Alex Timbers’ (book) and Michael Friedman’s (music and lyrics) Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, now playing at Custom Made Theatre Company. Lyrics like the following make that pretty clear, as Jackson at one … [Read more...] about Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
