I wasn’t sure what to expect walking into Side Effects, Steven Soderbergh’s supposed last feature film. I went due to a never-ending love of Soderbergh, and a desire to see Rooney Mara outside of her mostly-naked, seriously angry Girl With a Dragon Tattoo context. Until the clearly marked SPOILER WARNING, I will try to avoid […]

Warning.  Both this show and this review are heavily experiential.   I was just thinking the other day how much I miss those long gone days of university productions that were staged professionally, but with the much-needed energy and liveliness that fresh and ambitious minds can bring to live theatre.  I’ve been a bit bored […]

Let’s start with the good news- A Woman of No Importance sports one of the best casts I’ve seen at Alumnae Theatre. They’re not across the board great but there are enough highlights amongst the 13 of them to come out above average. Nicholas Porteous is a charming Gerald and James Graham makes for a […]

Tenth of December is Saunders’s fourth collection of short stories, and it is very very good. You may have heard about it. Some have (already) said that it’s the best book of 2013. That’s a lot of faith, or love, or something. And the book is, really, very good. Saunders’s Tenth of December appropriately holds […]

Warm Bodies is a movie simultaneously blessed and cursed by Twilight. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that the widescreen release of the Nicholas Hoult-starring zombie-romantic-comedy owes its budget, profile, and probably its very existence to the success of a certain sparkly set of vampires with romantic problems. But given the number of times […]

It’s a muggy summer night in Kentucky. The darkened farmhouse on the hill recedes into the blackness, and while hurrying down the gravel path to the road below, the sounds of singing frogs and hooting owls are slowly drowned out by a bluegrass band playing on the porch of a nearby farm. I stop for a moment […]

 

You could feel the hum of electricity in the theater, both in the metaphorical sense of the audience’s anticipation, and in the literal sense of thousands of light bulbs dangling brightly in front of your eyes. When the iconic ceiling of lights first came alive you could feel the electrical buzz, and there was a […]

 

First Act Productions is a young company full of energy, abandon, and a surprising number of strong voices, perfectly suited to a production of Hair with all of its go-for-broke exuberance and and ensemble focus. In fact, for a relatively small startup company featuring mostly students and recent grads, it’s actually remarkable how excellent an […]