Ann Lemons Pollack
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9 to 5 The Musical
What fun it is to go to a show about which you’re hesitant – and come out grinning from ear to ear. Stages St. Louis’ current show is 9 to 5 The Musical, and for those of us who delighted in the movie, it was holding-our-breath time to see what surgery had been done. Hooray,
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Newsies the Musical
The 21st century did not invent “fake news”. (As the widow, mother, mother-in-law, and stepmother of journalists, and in the interest of full disclosure, I will say the phrase makes my skin crawl.) It was going on in the United States even before the 20th century. Late in the 1890’s newspaper wars, particularly in New
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Is He Dead?
Is He Dead? could well be described as a melodrama of manners. St. Louis Shakespeare has brought in director Ed Coffield, a guy possessed of a fine hand with comedy, to handle this Mark Twain story, found only a few years ago and turned into a play by David Ives. Let me tell you, it’s
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Ragtime The Musical
Could someone please figure out how to hook up Stray Dog Theatre’s new production of Ragtime The Musical to an energy cell? They’re generating enough voltage to keep the lights burning all over south St. Louis with this show. The musical, based on E. L. Doctorow’s best-selling novel of the same name (and a strong
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Goody Goody Diner.
The first time I went to Goody Goody Diner must have been – oh, well, never mind, I guess I am that old. But the cops from Mobile Reserve, a bunch of guys very serious indeed about law enforcement, hung out there. (The unit was absorbed into the SWAT team years ago.) Three years ago, the
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‘ZZA
Even more than fried chicken, there are probably never enough pizza places in St. Louis. One of the newest is ‘ZZA Pizza + Salad, the new baby of the Pi Pizzeria family. Located northeast of Washington University at the corner of Skinker and Pershing, it’s a long, well-windowed room with very spare, modern décor. (That
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Flashback: Tony Faust’s
Nary a man is still alive who remembers Tony Faust's Oyster House & Restaurant. But it's referred to from time to time, and newcomers and young ones need to learn the history of this elegant eatery. A little more about it here, from St. Louis Magazine.
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LaBute New Theater Festival 2017, part 2
The second half of 2017’s LaBute New Theater Festival is on the boards, and they’re very close to three for three with this collection. Instead of four short plays, this group is three short ones, beginning with Hate Crimes, the LaBute play he’s written to lead this year’s fest (which I wrote about here). I continue to
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The Unsinkable Molly Brown
If the last time you saw The Unsinkable Molly Brown was in, oh, the Eighties, don’t think the current production at the Muny is the same old same old. It was frequently done there from the Sixties through the Eighties, but here, with the permission of the estate of Meredith Willson (Music Man), Broadway writer
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Nixta
After Italian food, Mexican is probably America’s most familiar foreign cuisine. Pasta and pizza really don’t seem foreign any more, and tacos and nachos aren’t far behind. It’s always fun to explore Mexican beyond the guilty pleasures of drive-thru burritos and the insider feeling of mom-n-pop shops’ street-style tacos. For that, there’s Nixta. Please don’t