There’s a lot of resonance in John Belluso’s title, Pyretown. The community he looks at is full of combustible elements that fuel not only personal dramas but also hot issues. Geva Theatre Center commissioned and developed this thoughtful, affecting play, and is now presenting its world premiere production with considerable fire. Belluso set his […]
Herbert M. Simpson
Posted inArts & Entertainment
A Danish physic
In his prize-winning play, Copenhagen, England’s popular comic playwright Michael Frayn (author of Noises Off) turned to physics to examine more literally earth-shaking matter and perhaps provide a cathartic examination of the most horrific human conflict. In fact, Frayn turned to history, and his “science-play” struggles mightily to arrive at a humanistic conclusion. Wordier than […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Learning to speak Southern
When I taught a hilarious play, The Nerd, in a comedy course, several people told me that Larry Shue, who wrote only a few plays before dying young, wrote an even funnier farce called The Foreigner. Blackfriars Theatre is producing a rollicking version of The Foreigner that proves their point. Not as polished and […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Almost squeaky clean
Because it won prizes at Canadian fringe festivals, I expected Clean Irene and Dirty Maxineto be an edgy example of experimental, counterculture theater. In fact, it’s a cute, family entertainment. Anna Chatterton and Evalyn Parry, the talented two young women who created and play it, are likable and frisky. Except for their occasional, seemingly unmotivated […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
A nostalgia revived
Geva seems committed to producing Neil Simon’s “BB” trilogy of autobiographical plays, starting this year with a splendid January production of Brighton Beach Memoirs and now topping that with a flawless Biloxi Bluesto open the fall season. Both cast Dennis Staroselsky as Simon’s alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome. I hope to see him next year […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Garth Fagan is building a mecca
Maybe you can come home again. In 1991, three acknowledged masters — choreographer Garth Fagan, musician Wynton Marsalis, and sculptor Martin Puryear — collaborated on an evening-long work, Griot New York. The premiere at Brooklyn Academy received rave reviews, as did the international performances. The artists’ schedules didn’t permit Fagan to bring the work […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
In love and war, from Ontario to ancient Greece
The Stratford Festival brought out big guns for its last salvo. I’d only heard about Anne Chislett’s Quiet in the Land.In1981 it was commissioned by, and premiered at, the Blyth Summer Festival, whose plays typically deal with rural Canadian settings and history. Quiet in the Land is about the pacifist Amish in southwestern Ontario. […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Finishing strong with the elaborate and the offbeat
The Shaw Festival’s productions have been getting progressively better all summer. The two final openings this season, an offbeat musical and an elaborate comedy, were greeted with wildly enthusiastic applause, and rightly so. Both works are demanding enough to warrant a “Not For Amateurs” warning label, but Shaw’s superb artistic ensemble triumphs in them. […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Feeling bewildered at Stratford
Canada’s great Stratford Festival continues its 51st season’s bewildering variety with six productions of classic plays, all well-known but not previously performed at Stratford. Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exitteases intriguing variations out of the cliché that “Hell is other people.” Its perfect dramatic structure counterbalances three opposed new arrivals in hell who are trapped in […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Shaw adds three winners
After five previous shows this season at Shaw and twelve at Stratford — all of surprisingly mixed quality — it was reassuring to see this great company hit its stride with three winning productions in a row.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘Dracula’ amuses
Just after I started writing about the beautiful drive down to Naples, New York, where the Bristol Valley Theater presents light summer fare in a charming theater, I looked at my review from last summer and found that I said all that. I was kindly trying not to emphasize that show’s amateurism. In the show […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘Forever Plaid’ again
Since its world premiere in Rochester at the old Downstairs Cabaret in the 1980s, Stuart Ross’ Forever Plaid played across the country and around the world, and is still playing. An endearing new production is now at Downstairs Cabaret Theatre Center, one of four venues where our busiest little professional theater currently operates. It’s really […]
