Theater/Film Reviews
-
Little Shop of Horrors
"Little Shop of Horrors" takes the entire concept of vegetarianism and stands it on its head. It’s Michael Pollan’s worst nightmare. Instead of people eating plants, plants eat people. The heroine, hardly a Green Goddess, precedes today’s thinking by several decades when she sings of her dream, a house — even in New Jersey —
-
Rent
With "La Boheme" having opened the Opera Theatre season a couple of weeks ago, it’s only proper that its 20th-century descendant visit St. Louis for a different audience. And so, "Rent" showed up Tuesday night and the Fox, grand dame of St. Louis theaters, was filled with the shrieks of an audience far younger than
-
Salome
The emotion is palpable, and the Loretto-Hilton Center almost trembles as Kelly Kaduce drives to the climax of "Salome," in fiery style, blazing with youthful passion amid the rumbling thunder of a hormonal storm. The Opera Theatre of St. Louis production of the Richard Straus work opened Saturday night and will blaze across the stage
-
Blues In The Night
The rowdy, raunchy, rhythmic, real-life sound of blues music fills the Grandel Theatre these days, with the St. Louis Black Repertory Company offering a sparkling production of "Blues in the Night." It opened over the weekend and will run through June 28. The revue, conceived by Sheldon Epps, includes classic blues numbers like "Kitchen Man,"
-
The Last Five Years
Having grown up in Brooklyn, one of my first sentences was: "Wait ‘til next year!" And that’s about the best that can be said for a disappointing New Jewish Theatre production of "The Last Five Years," which opened last night as the final show of the 2008-09 season, to run through June 21. But take
-
Little Ashes
Turning real people into characters for stage or screen is a difficult task, far more tricky than merely writing a biography, and the risk shows again in "Little Ashes," opening today. Philippa Goslett’s screenplay gives us poet-playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, artist Salvador Dali and filmmaker Luis Bunuel as 20-somethings, still very wet behind the ears,
-
La Boheme
Not many grand operas have second lives on a Broadway stage. But then, not many operas are like "La Boheme," the Giacomo Puccini classic that kicked off Opera Theatre of St. Louis’s 34th season on Saturday night at the Loretto-Hilton Center. The tragedy about the "Bohemians" of Paris’s Latin Quarter, young artists and romantics who drink,
-
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Shakespeare’s comedies are light and breezy, filled with word plays, bad puns, slapstick and unlikely love affairs, often carried out in disguise or under a pseudonym, kind of a nom d’amour. They are perfect for a spring night with an occasional breeze, a blanket to sit on, a glass of wine at hand. And so
-
The Girlfriend Experience
Chelsea is a hooker. Not a Hollywood hooker with a heart of gold, but a New York hooker who charges $2000 an hour, frequents extremely stylish boutiques and lives with a man who does not seem to mind how she brings money to the family checking account, as long as she keeps it full. That’s
-
Gigantic
Remember Paul Dano, the boy evangelist from "There Will Be Blood"? He’s back as Brian, a mattress salesman, in "Gigantic," in which he rides an aura of confusion and bewilderment through an interesting, mostly enjoyable movie that displays bad manners and worse taste by men – John Goodman and Ed Asner – who are old