The 2014, multi-Tony-Award-winning musical with its music-hall-sounding score and oft-rhyming-and-rapid-firing lyrics receives a fast-moving, laugh-out-loud rendering under the jocular direction of Daren A. C. Carollo. His directorial tongue never leaves his cheeks as he has conceived innumerable, over-the-top ways to tickle our innards while watching the demises of the … [Read more...] about A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder
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Macbeth
Woodwinds creep together in soft, low measures before intertwining in higher registers and giving way to announcing brass that awaken spirits from the underworld. Those dark figures manipulate wood puppets to tell the agonized history of a royal, childless marriage. From foggy mists, faceless sisters of the night emerge in every sort of torn and draped rag, roving about while … [Read more...] about Macbeth
The SpongeBob Musical
Goofy but cute? Check. Nutty-and-fruity but timely in theme? Check. Sappy but good-hearted? Check. For kids and adults alike? Check. Ignore the title and just go see it? Check. For anyone like myself that somehow – in my case, even with six kids – never tuned in even once to Stephen Hillenburg’s award-winning, Nickelodeon hit, SpongeBob … [Read more...] about The SpongeBob Musical
Wakey, Wakey
A half-dressed man lying flat on the stage seems surprised when the stage lights suddenly come up and he turns to see hundreds of audience eyes looking at him. “Is it now? I thought I had more time,” he says with some regret, anxiety, but also excitement of what is to come next. An immediate black-out and a few moments later, he appears now in pajama bottoms, slippers, and … [Read more...] about Wakey, Wakey
How to Transcend a Happy Marriage
Somewhere in the suburbs of New Jersey, the lives are about to be upended of two married couples who are also long-term best friends in ways none of them could have ever predicted – all because of a woman named Pip who hunts to kill all the meat she eats and who happens also to live with and love two men. Somehow as they sip their Malbec, the topic comes up in the conversation … [Read more...] about How to Transcend a Happy Marriage
Noura
“I don’t want to forget. I’m trying desperately to remember who the hell I am.” Forced by a life-threatening siege to leave her home in Mosul as a member of the Iraqi Christian community, immigrant and now American citizen Noura wants this Christmas Eve to be perfect in every respect, recalling the foods and family times of those Christmases spent in her homeland – a … [Read more...] about Noura
Vinegar Tom
A day cannot go by without hearing the accusation of “it’s a witch hunt” by the likes of Trump (i.e., his impeachment) and Netanyahu (i.e., his indictment). How ironic that two male, ultra-conservatives should be crying victim using a term that beckons to a period in seventeenth-century, European and American history when tens of thousands of truly innocents – mostly women – … [Read more...] about Vinegar Tom
Cloud Nine
1880, South Africa: The Queen’s flag flies high and proudly; Victorian roles of men and women are clearly defined; classes are correctly divided; whites rule and those of color serve; social norms are clear, and proper manners are strictly followed. Well, that is at least true until Caryl Churchill paints a bit different picture of what that supposedly blissful life is … [Read more...] about Cloud Nine
Gypsy: A Musical Fable
The show that New York Times revered and feared theatre critic Ben Brantley has referred to as “what may be the greatest of all American musicals” and Times essayist/columnist Frank Hart Rich Jr. once called “Broadway’s own brassy, unlikely answer to King Lear, Gypsy: A Musical Fable in the end is nothing without a Rose who can join a long line of divas of a certain age to try … [Read more...] about Gypsy: A Musical Fable
Amaluna
With seventy per cent of the forty-eight-member cast and all of the musicians and singers being women, Cirque du Soleil’s nineteenth and latest show touring the world – Amaluna – is a tour de force of female power and prowess. In an evening where the reverberating voices, the gasp-producing athleticism, and the eye-popping pageantry of women reigns supreme, no better segment … [Read more...] about Amaluna
The Rocky Horror Show
Hot men and women in sensuous, black corsets of torn lace and slicked leather who are raised on high by heeled boots, all singing and dancing in rock numbers that are precursors of later musicals like Grease or Hairspray can mean only one thing: The Rocky Horror Show is yet once again in revival. Generations of costumed, crazed audiences around the world have sustained … [Read more...] about The Rocky Horror Show
Nine the Musical
Guido Contini is turning fifty. His last three films were flops. His producer expects a new film script in four days that he has not started. His leading star and oft-lover is refusing to do another film with him. His wife is telling him she wants a divorce, and his young mistress is threatening to divorce her husband so she and Guido can marry – something he definitely … [Read more...] about Nine the Musical
This Side of Crazy
They were once known as “the little superstars for Jesus.” Now the grown Blaylock Sisters are an atheist former stripper, a mental institution patient who once strangled her ex-lover, and a Vlogger who gives scripture-based advice on her “Good Christian Women” show after making love to her comatose husband upstairs. How they each got from Point A to Point B has much to do … [Read more...] about This Side of Crazy
