Theater/Film Reviews
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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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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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All Shook Up
It’s amusing to ponder what the Twenty-somethings are thinking if they see All Shook Up!. It opened Thursday at the Muny. Certainly the story, which is very, very loosely based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, talking about love among the young (and even the not-so-young) might appeal to them. But how does the music of five
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On Golden Pond
On Golden Pond is rather more disconcerting than its general reputation implies. The play, by a 28-year-old Ernest Thompson, shows us a long-term marriage between a retired English professor and his patient wife. There’s a certain aww, cute aura about it that the play’s script frequently knocks off-kilter, if not intermittently obliterates altogether. Insight Theatre
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
It’s true that no one walks out of a theater humming the scenery. But on leaving the Muny’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, there were a couple of people merrily singing “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid.” It’s that kind of a show, and it was that kind of a
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Disney’s The Little Mermaid
It’s all swimming, all dancing this week at the Muny. When it comes to musical theatre, selling the sizzle is just as important as selling the steak. Or, in this case, perhaps the salmon. The Muny is giving us Disney’s The Little Mermaid, and that’s the sort of fishy joke that abounds in the production.
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The Sweet Smell of Success
The musical version of The Sweet Smell of Success opened big on Broadway. The story of the powerful New York gossip columnist syndicated all over the country had music from Marvin Hamlisch and a book by John Guare. It starred John Lithgow as the columnist JJ Hunsecker, with Lithgow winning a Tony for his work.
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Monsters
St. Louis has far more theatre than many people realize, and we – happily – have the audiences to support it, for the most part. (Financial support, I realize, is a whole different question.) Regular theatre-goers can get to the point of counting how many times they’ve seen a certain play, whether it’s their favorite
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Title and Deed
As I write this, it’s Bloomsday, the tribute to James Joyce and his novel Ulysses. In that lineage, but closer to the style of his younger friend Samuel Beckett is the work of contemporary playwright Will Eno. Eno’s work Title and Deed is on the boards currently, brought to us by The Midnight Company. Eno’s