The summer air has begun to cool down, but With Somebody Who Loves Me, an independent production by Manzo Entertainment, is heating up the Tarragon. A shortened version of the dance spectacle just completed a successful run at this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival, where the cast of eight dancers played to packed and enthusiastic houses […]
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in response to McCarthyism in the 1940s-50s, and it is appropriately infuriating. Responding to the communist witch hunt that was targeting writers like himself, Miller wrote a piece that would become one of the most widely produced American plays in history, about an actual witch hunt. He uses the 1692 […]
I haven’t seen the full season of Stratford Festival fare yet but The Pirates of Penzance is one of very few things so far that’s thrilled me. I loved it. I went in fond of but aware of the flaws in Gilbert & Sullivan’s work, and specifically the technical insanity of trying to stage Pirates. […]
When Leonard Bernstein’s one-act opera about a crumbling marriage in the 1950s suburbs premiered in 1952, I imagine it was pretty subversive and revealing. The idea of something so flawed yet so seemingly perfect is a fascinating, dark and specifically suburban concept that would have played as insightful and daring back when the suburbs were […]
I may have mentioned this a couple times, by I’ve never really been a Danial MacIvor fan. He’s a beautifully poetic playwright but I haven’t found his stories compelling enough to carry his poetry. That said, I loved The Best Brothers. It has a story simple enough to be told coherently and fully in one-act […]
I love Andrew Lloyd Webber; his shows are always big, colorful and dramatic. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat calls for a ton of small characters- eleven brothers, eleven wives, an entire children’s chorus. So, I was intrigued by the idea of a production of Joseph in a black box that advertised a small cast […]
Come Back, Little Sheba is a disjointed play. During the first act, it feels like a trivial tragedy not tragic enough to earn that description. The characters are fretting losers with problems so superficial that it’s remarkable how easy they would be to fix. Marie: date nicer boys (and try just one at a time); […]
“I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?” -Benedick to Beatrice (IV.i) The 2012 Stratford season isn’t very good. 80% of the reason I say that is Much Ado About Nothing. There are places to improve Henry V, Charlie Brown, The Matchmaker and so much else, but they […]