Theater/Film Reviews
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Fireflies
There’s a hurricane happening in the Hotchner Studio Theatre at Washington University. In only 90 minutes, the storm forms, erupts and passes, but The Black Rep gives Donja R. Love’s play Fireflies every possible bit of energy necessary for the full-blast script to leave an audience barely holding on. It’s late summer 1963. We’re at
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Good People
To pull oneself up by the bootstraps, one must first have boots. That’s one of the themes of Good People, the David Lindsay-Abaire play brought to us by Stray Dog Theatre. Margie Walsh, an about-to-be-middle-aged woman in south Boston, is the struggling single mother of a disabled adult daughter. Played by Lavonne Byers, she’s just
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Stick Fly
Is there anything quite so stinging as rejection from a parent? It brands the soul of a person. No matter how well, over time, it seems to heal, there are permanent gashes. Those who pay attention know that perfectly normal-seeming people can have these internal wounds, people perfectly functional until something makes them surface. Then,
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Iphigenia in Splott
It’s hard not to be intrigued just by the title of Iphigenia in Splott. The smooth, romantic-sounding name, even for someone who never heard of the princess in Greek myth, set upon the thudding single syllable that means – what? Is this a wisp of silk floating above a muddy street? Actually, that’s batting .500.
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The Prom
The PTA is upset because the school is going against “community standards”. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before – but don’t, because you probably haven’t. The Prom, currently at the Fox, probably wasn’t intended as quite such a contemporary protest against They’re-Not-Like-Us thinkers. But it turns out to be. It’s not a perfect
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A Christmas Carol
How satisfying is it when a classic you knew and went to see merely out of a sense of duty turns out to be almost thrilling? Stand back: Here comes A Christmas Carol. Of course the original is wonderful – the book, I mean. Just the scene of the Cratchit’s Christmas dinner alone is enough
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A Piece of My Heart
Full disclosure: It’s hard for me to be completely neutral about A Piece of My Heart. It’s a story about nurses and other women who served in Vietnam during that war. That was my generation of nurses. Several of my original classmates enlisted. I don’t know their stories. The stories I did hear – I
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Comfort
Comfort really isn’t a comfortable play. Coming from the pen of Neil LaBute, that shouldn’t surprise us. LaBute always looks at the uncomfortable parts of human nature, and his newest play falls right into line. This, written before COVID and having its world premiere at St. Louis Actors’ Studio’s home base, the Gaslight Theater, is
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Tinseltown
One of the great unheralded pleasures of small theatre is small venues. The Midnight Company’s new show Tinseltown is working at the .ZACK. There are times when the black box there isn’t a good fit for a show, the sort of thing that happens with many venues due to many things. But here we have
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Who’s Holiday
Cindy Lou who? Don’t give me that blank look. You know perfectly well the little girl who tried to steal our hearts in The Grinch…. Yes, the now-classic children’s Christmas book/television special/Jim Carey movie/animatedmovie. That one. Whatever happened to Cindy Lou? Surely you’ve asked yourself that question practically every holiday season. Or not. Our girl