Theater/Film Reviews
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The St. Louis Rooming House Plays – and breaking news
The St. Louis Rooming House Plays has four more performance left, and as I write this, there are a few tickets left before it disappears into the air. At 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., an old house in Grand Center holds a remarkable group of performances, part of the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis It’s
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Yentl
It’s a mark of, well, something that when the average person hears the title Yentl, they think of the Barbra Streisand movie. What’s being staged at The New Jewish Theatre isn’t that Yentl. Both of them are based on an I.B. Singer short story, but this one began as a 1975 play from Leah Napolin
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The Two-Character Play
“The Two-Character Play”, one of the first offerings from Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis, was written in 1973. It’s not one his more well-known works, coming later in his career as he was complaining that critics didn’t appreciate his style as he evolved. It is, in some ways, rather reminiscent of absurdist theater, things like
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The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie may be the most frequently staged of any of Tennessee Williams' plays. The St. Louis references and setting are accurate and evocative. It's a play many theater-goers are familiar with. So how does a company go about staging it without seeming merely to put the play on life support, pounding on its
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The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music has just opened at the Fox. The return of the old warhorse surely drew sighs from frequent theater-goers, but they needn't have worried. To the surprise of even the most cynical, this new national touring company production is a charmer, and not unbearably saccharine. At least it's as un-sweet as something
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Bosnian/American: The Dance of Life
It's been a long time since St. Louis had a large group of immigrants arrive in a relatively short period of time. We've certainly had them before, the Germans, for instance, and the Italians. But that was several generations back, and for most of the area, the arrival of Bosnians has been a new experience.
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Cookies from DOUGH
Another food movie is opening April 29 at the Plaza Frontenac. DOUGH is about a failing kosher bakery in London and the search for an apprentice. I haven't seen it – yet – but in the meantime, here's something to whet our appetites. There's a local promotion being done in several markets where the movie
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Ivanov
In Girl Crazy, Ira Gershwin wrote, "With love to lead the way, I've found more skies of gray than any Russian play could guarantee." St. Louis Actors' Studio's current offering, Anton Chekhov's Ivanov isn't depressing. It feels more like it's about boredom, at least for most of the play, when it's a frequent complaint among
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BRIEFS
BRIEFS: A Festival of Short LGBTQ Plays opened last night, Friday, at the Centene Center. This is their fifth year, and they continue to evolve. There are a lot of laughs in this year's collection, even when the subject is a serious one – after all, just because you're in the middle of a mess
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Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Tower Grove Abbey has been turned into a cabaret-cum-dive-bar for Stray Dog Theatre's version of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch". That includes a little rearranging of the theater itself. Not the seats – the former pews are, shall we say, set in their ways. But the bar has been moved to just in front of