In David Lindsay-Abaire’s "Good People,” you’re always kept guessing about who the good people really are. As the play opens, Margie (Constance Macy) is being fired from her job at a dollar store in South Boston by the manager (Nick Abeel) for her excessive lateness. Margie is the single mother of a handicapped daughter, cared […]
David Raymond
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THEATER | “I’m Not Rappaport”
For its first show of the season, Blackfriars Theatre made do with a single performer: Susan Hopkins in “Shirley Valentine.” The next Blackfriars production ups the ante to two outstanding actors in Herb Gardner’s “I’m Not Rappaport.” This Tony Award-winning play features Rochester theater stalwarts Fred Nuremberg as Nat Moyer, and Reuben Tapp as Midge […]
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THEATER | Festival of New Theatre 2014
What’s new in local theater? Geva Theatre Center has several answers to that question in its annual Festival of New Theatre, or FONT, currently running at the Nextstage. The festival began Monday with a work-in-progress reading of Nora Cole’s “Katherine’s Colored Lieutenant,” which will be performed at Geva in February 2015. You’ll also have the […]
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CLASSICAL | “Handel & Haydn in England”
George Frideric Handel was born in Germany, and Joseph Haydn was born in Austria-Hungary, but they were both idolized in London — Handel for his operas and choral works, Haydn for his great series of symphonies written for London audiences. The Rochester Oratorio Society, under director Eric Townell, presents two imposing works by these celebrated […]
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Theater Review: “Bad Jews” at JCC CenterStage
You don’t have to be Jewish, or even particularly bad, to love Joshua Harmon’s corrosive comedy “Bad Jews.” An Off-Broadway hit last year, it is receiving its first regional theater production at the JCC CenterStage. Artistic Director Ralph Meranto was eager to get the rights for this play, and with good reason: as the title […]
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THEATER | “Triquetra”
“Triquetra” is the Gaelic word for a Trinity knot, so it is an appropriate name for the Irish Players’ next offering, a program of three one-act plays in three different styles by three important figures in the Irish theatrical renaissance of the 20th century. John Millington Synge’s “In the Shadow of the Glen” is poetic […]
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THEATER | “Curtains”
“Curtains” is that rarest of theater rarities: a musical whodunit, created by a quartet of blue-chip Broadway names: book by Peter Stone (“1776”) and Rupert Holmes (“The Mystery of Edwin Drood”), and score by John Kander and Fred Ebb (“Cabaret,” “Chicago,” Zorbá”, and many, many more). This 2007 show is actually half whodunit and half […]
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Concert Review: Rochester Chamber Orchestra’s “Jan DeGaetani: A Musical Legacy”
The mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani, who taught at the Eastman School of Music and lived in Rochester for many years, died a quarter-century ago. Her influence as a teacher, a proponent of new music, and simply as a great vocal artist, is still strongly felt — or should be. The Rochester Chamber Orchestra’s first concert of […]
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CLASSICAL | “Io Vidi in Terra”
Love’s torments and delicious pleasures expressed in florid and passionate songs: “Io Vidi in Terra,” the 2014-15 season opening concert for Pegasus Early Music sounds, to use a carefully chosen adjective, ravishing. The composers are, unsurprisingly, Italian: 16th and 17th century geniuses like Claudio Monteverdi and Benedetto Ferrari, whose canzonettas, or solo vocal works, are […]
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Theater Review: “Diversions and Delights” at MuCCC
John Gay’s "Diversions and Delights" begins with Oscar Wilde on the skids, and ends with the writer triumphant. This one-man play presents Wilde giving a lecture on his life and work to a Parisian audience; banned from England after his release from prison, he is living on the Continent without any visible means of support […]
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THEATRE | “The Book of Mormon”
Hello! “The Book of Mormon” is back, and if you’re one of the 15 people in Rochester who didn’t see it last year, here’s your chance to see the tuneful, potty-mouthed, utterly satirical, multi-Tony Award-winning show at the Auditorium Theatre. As everybody must know by now, “The Book of Mormon” was written by the creators […]
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THEATER | “Diversions and Delights”
“The only thing worse than being talked about,” said Oscar Wilde, “is not being talked about.” Oscar gets to do all the talking in “Diversions and Delights,” a solo play in the form of a lecture that Wilde gives after his release from jail on indecency charges and his exile in France. The play is […]
