Theater/Film Reviews

  • And More Hot Tix: Burrow

    The strange and mesmerizing piece of theater from YoungLiars, Burrow, has been extended.(You can read the review here.) If it intrigues you, move quickly; seating capacity in its subterranean setting is very limited. Here’s the basic info. It’s a remarkable event, and an opportunity you probably won’t get again.   Burrow through October 29 YoungLiars Centene

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  • Hot Tix: The Rocky Horror Show

    Stray Dog Theatre’s The Rocky Horror Show remaining performances are all sold out. Good news for them, of course, but bad news for procrastinators. (You can read my review here.) Still, there’s hope on the horizon. They’re setting up waiting lists for the show. Just like, oh, Hamilton, would-be attendees can show up at the box

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  • Burrow

    There’s an old line about no one ever walked out of a play whistling the scenery. But in the YoungLiars production of Burrow, an adaptation of a Franz Kafka short story that probably was left unfinished before he died of tuberculosis, the set is a grabber, before the lights dim and an actor appears. It’s

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  • Golda’s Balcony

    Random clusters occur in theater, just like they do everywhere else. September turned out to be one of those periods when we got great theater after great theater here in town. We seem to have another one going on now: Political theater. Golda’s Balcony, now at the New Jewish Theatre, is such a play, this

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  • Until the Flood

    It isn’t just our area that needs to have a dialogue about race. I suspect most of the world does, but we have to start where we are, particularly in America. The Repertory Theatre St. Louis, after the events in Ferguson in 2014, decided to commission a piece on what artistic director Steven Woolf terms

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  • Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show

    Once more: Let’s do the time warp again. Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show is on the boards at Stray Dog Theatre. To my knowledge, this is the first time a theater program in St. Louis has admonished audience members not to squirt anything. Artistic director Gary Bell, in his pre-show announcements, also asks the

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  • Suspended

    Unless you’ve been living in a bubble the last few years, you know that immigration and immigrants are a hot – and hot-button – topic. Upstream Theater’s first offering of this season is Suspended, by Maya Arad Yasur. It looks at two immigrants who have fled their nameless homeland as it descended into terror. Benjamin

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  • Three Tall Women

    Every few years, St. Louis has a period where remarkable theater performances pop up on multiple stages simultaneously or nearly so. We may be having one right now. In another anniversary season, St. Louis Actors’ Studio, celebrating its 10th, has opened with Three Tall Women. Playwright Edward Albee, who died recently, is in a class

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  • Sister Act

    It takes a lot of work to make a decent show out of a weak script. That was the task Stages assigned itself when it chose to close their 30th season with “Sister Act”. They’ve managed pretty well, but nothing can help the script enough, not even the occasional really funny lines that are scattered

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  • Follies

    Let’s cut to the chase here. The Rep has hit another one out of the park with Follies. In their fiftieth season – yes, and where, indeed, did the time go? – they’ve opened with the demanding, much-loved but less-commonly-seen Sondheim show from 1971. And they’ve brought in Rob Ruggiero, who’s partnered up with the

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