Theater/Film Reviews
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Exit, Pursued by a Bear
Woman in pursuit of a goal. Stand back; author Lauren Gunderson is going to tell you all about it. In Exit, Pursued by a Bear she offers a tale of a young blue-collar couple in an exurb of Atlanta one Fourth of July. Gunderson’s the one who gave us Christmas at Pemberley Manor, the Jane
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Milk Like Sugar
Milk Like Sugar is the disquieting story of three young women, high school students who decide, when one announces she’s pregnant, they should all have babies together. “You can dress them up, and they’ll love you,” explains one. Also, people have to buy you what you want, like Coach diaper bags and tiny Air Jordans.
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Oslo
Most of us seldom think any more of the Oslo Peace Accords, even if we’re the sort of people who really keep up with world events. The results of those talks have been…well, modest compared to what many people had hoped for. Nevertheless, it was a momentous thing for the government of Israel and the
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The Crucible
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, a play about the Salem witch trials of the late 1600’s, as a sort of allegory about the McCarthy hearings. Miller himself had been subpoenaed, testified and was held in contempt of Congress for refusing to identify other people at meetings he attended. Seeing it in the current production by
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The Hundred Dresses
A fast tip of the hat – and a swoosh of the petticoats as well – in the direction of Metro Theater Company, St. Louis’ long-lived children’s theatre group. Their current offering, The Hundred Dresses, gives audiences the eternal question of dealing with The Other – a person or persons who are different from those
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Avenue Q
Does the whole world know by now that Avenue Q is a puppet show that definitely isn’t for kids? One would hope so, but just in case…. The version that’s currently at the Playhouse @ Westport Plaza seems even rowdier than the first version I saw. I didn’t find it offensive, and neither, apparently, did
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Classic Mystery Game
Classic Mystery Game is, as often happens with SATE Ensemble Theatre, rather a romp. Written and directed by Katy Keating, it’s a take on the board game Clue. It’s an Agatha Christie-ish murder in an English country house bringing together a bunch of strangers – strange strangers, in this case – to address some rather
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Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof has become one of the standard American musicals. It’s popular with all kinds of groups, from schools to monster-sized professional theaters like the Muny. The show’s been seen in tiny 50-seat black boxes, school gymnasiums, under canvas. Residents of Anatevka, the village where it’s set, have been portrayed by actors from
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L’Italiana in Algeri
Winter Opera St. Louis staged L’Italiana in Algeri this past weekend. Not so well known as some other Rossini operas, it nevertheless proved to be mostly quite delightful despite the plot’s distasteful number “Viva, viva, il flagel delle donne”, or, more or less, “Hooray for striking the women”. The bey of Algiers, Mustafa (Alec Soare)
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Wittenberg
Upstream Theater is pretty much a sure bet for theater-goers who want something different. Their current offering, Wittenberg, described as “a tragical-comical-historical play”, is full of the high-verbal work that often graces their shows. It would have to be high verbal, given that the main characters are Martin Luther, Faustus and Hamlet, all converging on