Lightweight musical revues generally have short lives, but “Pump Boys and Dinettes” has proved surprisingly hardy. First produced in the early 1980’s as the off-est of Off Broadway shows, it eventually moved to the Big Street and ran for a year and a half. Thirty years later it is still going strong. Geva put on […]
Theater Review
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“Family Secrets”
In the one-woman show “Family Secrets,” currently on stage at the Downstairs Cabaret at Winton Place, actress Carolyn Michel portrays five different members of one conventionally unconventional family as they struggle to relate to one another and find happiness within their own lives. Originally performed by actress Sherry Glaser and co-written by Glaser with her […]
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THEATER REVIEW: 2013 Shaw Festival
In the four plays I just saw at the Shaw Festival, accident and unpredictability are constant, as are contradiction and reluctant confession. Some are triumphs, others anything but, but the liquid nature of identity is everywhere. Even the reliability of time is up for grabs. That’s the case in Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” (Studio Theatre, through […]
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THEATER: 2013 Shaw Festival
So far, I’ve seen only half the plays at this year’s Shaw Festival, so it wouldn’t be fair to draw final conclusions. But at this point the word for this season is — with exceptions — mediocre. Only director Jackie Maxwell’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara” in the small Royal George Theatre transformed […]
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THEATER: ‘MoM: A Rock Concert Musical’
“MoM: A Rock Concert Musical” is the second and final show in Geva’s summer 2013 season. Along with the previous show, “Big Pants & Botox,” it’s fairly light, female-leaning fare. (Geva did have a more serious piece, a Robert Forster-starring Ronald Reagan play, initially on the summer schedule, but it was cancelled.) The thing about […]
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“Rent”
As I imagine everybody knows by now, in the early 1990’s the composer-lyricist Jonathan Larson had the inspiration of reimagining Puccini’s “La Bohème” among the boho set in New York’s Alphabet City. The show, titled “Rent,” was a smash hit on Broadway, won every award imaginable (including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama), made a ton […]
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“Twelfth Night”
The combination of Shakespeare, a warm summer night, a lovely green space, fireflies, and a bottle of wine (well, not if you’re reviewing, of course) has been a popular one in Rochester for 17 years, thanks to the Rochester Community Players. The group’s Shakespeare Players shingle presents the Bard’s works throughout the year, but it’s […]
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THEATER REVIEW: “The Lesson” & “The Bald Soprano”
Thank goodness for MuCCC. The Neighborhood of the Arts-based theater has been around almost five years and continues to stage the kinds of works that most local theater groups wouldn’t dream of touching. Take, for instance, “The Bald Soprano” and “The Lesson,” the Eugene Ionesco double-bill currently being staged at MuCCC by John W. Borek […]
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THEATER REVIEW: “A Chorus Line”
If you were around for the original incarnation of “A Chorus Line” in the 1970’s, you may remember the ads touting it as “The Best Musical. Ever.” Its award-laden 15-year run on Broadway seemed to bear that out; the show even survived a terrible movie adaptation. Whether or not “A Chorus Line” is the best […]
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THEATER REVIEW: “Steel Magnolias”
Robert Harling’s “Steel Magnolias” has remained consistently popular since making its stage debut in 1987. Bolstered by a successful, star-studded film adaptation a few years later, the play continues to be staged at numerous theaters across the country and just last year was adapted again for a made-for-TV movie featuring an all-African-American cast. The play’s […]
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THEATER REVIEW: “Venus in Fur”
“Venus in Furs” is not pornography. We are told this several times by Thomas, the playwright appearing in the play “Venus in Fur” (note the singular), now playing on the Geva Theatre Nextstage. In Geva’s “Venus,” Thomas is the writer and director of a theatrical adaptation of the controversial 1870 novel “Venus in Furs” by […]
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THEATER: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
For a director, William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is always threatening to become “A Midsummer Night’s Nightmare.” The wide-ranging play, currently at Geva Theatre Center, dives headlong into comedy at the same time that it sidles more subtly toward tragedy. The challenge is to give full expression to its contradictory nature yet come away […]
