Theater/Film Reviews
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Blow, Winds
One of the great things about theatre is how it manages to amalgamate so many disciplines into a single experience – or as Ed Kleban wrote to Marvin Hamlisch’s music, “One singular sensation”. Blow, Winds is singular, but far more than a single sensation. This year’s Shakespeare in the Streets production is about St. Louis
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I Do! I Do!
Here's a challenge, theatre buffs: Take an old script and figure out how to give it some zip. I Do! I Do! returns to open the current season at Stages St. Louis. It was on offer in their first year, 1987. The musical is based on The Fourposter, a play that won the Tony in
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Luchadora!
There’s a great story in the Luchadora! program from the playwright, Alvaro Saar Rios. The play’s inspiration came from his grandmother, who was a big fan of lucha libre, Mexican wrestling. Why, he wondered as a child, was such a fan of it? He never asked, but later began to ponder it. I was immediately
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Romeo and Juliet
They're acting up in Forest Park again. Yes, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, now in its eighteenth year, offers as its flagship production Romeo and Juliet. It’s the first time SFSL has repeated a show; R&J was their initial offering in 2001. Shakespeare Glen, where the productions have their Park home, is diagonally across from the
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Life Sucks
Life Sucks – well, does it? The answer, of necessity, is, “Sometimes, yes.” The question is examined in depth in the show of that name, the last of the current season at New Jewish Theatre. Directed by Edward Coffield, who is taking over the role of artistic director from the retiring (well, from this job)
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La Traviata
Yes, La Traviata is a warhorse. But the old gray mare has had a fine makeover and appears wearing a metaphorical blanket of camellias as she crosses the finish line for Opera Theatre of St. Louis. For those who aren’t aware, Traviata is based on a novel by Alexandre Dumas the younger, La Dame aux
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An Evening with C.S. Lewis
The author C. S. Lewis seems, to me, a logical subject for a one-man show. But he’s a name that’s slipped from public view. Narnia-philes remember him, of course, but except for Shadowlands, the 1993 film with Anthony Hopkins as Lewis and Debra Winger as the American woman he married, he’s no longer in the
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Tennessee Rising
Tennessee Rising is indeed a one-person show, a piece that looks at Tennessee Williams’ creative life from his youth to his initial success with Glass Menagerie. Jacob Storms created and performs it this weekend at the .ZACK. Storms gives us vignettes that are snapshot-like, often short, with blackouts between to puncturate the ideas. The concept
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A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire kicks off this year’s Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis. Get thee hither. I’m not sure what scholars say about this work, but I think it’s probably Williams’ masterpiece. For those who don’t know the story, Blanche, a fading Southern belle comes to visit her married sister Stella in New Orleans. She’s
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Hamilton
Why beat around the bush? Hamilton is stunning. It’s fascinating, it’s beautiful, and, yes, it’s revolutionary. It requires attention, make no mistake about it. But somehow those revolutionary changes to music and casting seem the most natural thing in the world, once the lights go up. Alexander Hamilton, boy wonder, orphaned illegitimate child, immigrant and