Theater/Film Reviews
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I’ll Be Back Before Midnight
Only the other day, I said to a friend, "Whatever happened to negligees?" I can now report that at least one survives. It's currently on view at Stray Dog Theatre. "I'll Be Back Before Midnight" is a murder mystery taking place in that classic setting, a creepy country house. This one is far from baronial,
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Underneath the Lintel
There will come a time, I fear, when a librarian will not be a familiar character in the lives of much of an audience. But for now, "Underneath the Lintel", a one-woman show about a librarian, will ring familiar for most of us. At least at first, that is. Opening this week at The New
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Newsies
It's hard for me to be totally unbiased about "Newsies". The Disney musical tells the tale, with lots of literary license, of a union being organized at Joseph Pulitzer's New York World newspaper in 1899. It's a story of the little guys, in this case, newspaper street vendors, against the establishment and trying to give
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Above all, trust no one. It shouldn't take you long to figure that out after the beginning of "The Lion In Winter", James Goldman's play on which the film of the same name is based. Henry II and his estranged wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, are together at a castle in France to celebrate Christmas. Estranged
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Gin Game
Dramas – stories – are all around us. Lives there a soul so dead that they've never sat waiting for their car to be serviced or waiting for a bus, looked around and thought Hmmm…interesting looking person. I wonder what his story is? There was once a television series about New York City whose tag
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Sublime Intimacy
Ken Page's "Sublime Intimacies" opened this past weekend at the Kranzberg Black Box Theatre. It's Max & Louie Productions' first original show, described as a play with dance. Not about dance, understand you, but perhaps about loving the beauty that dance can epitomize, and definitely about the intimacies that love of all kinds can engender.
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Peter and the Starcatcher
In a variation of the old conflict of interest stuff, let me announce right now that no one who knows me would think I could resist anyone, even a character in a play, who writes poems about pies. There is indeed such a one in "Peter and the Starcatcher", which is at The Repertory Theatre
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Devil Boys From Beyond
No mistletoe. No bells. No dancing reindeer. If you're cynical about the holidays, or even if you're just already sick of the earlier-than-ever advance of commercial holiday "cheer", has Stray Dog Theatre got a show for you. "Devil Boys From Beyond" (a title certain to inspire satisfaction among such folks and a grin from most
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Irving Berlin’s White Christmas
Jerome Kern, the noted lyricist, once said, "Irving Berlin is American music." With all respect to both Kern and Berlin, I'm not sure I'd go that far – Porter or Gershwin, anyone? – but for a time in the middle of the Twentieth Century, he seemed to eclipse them both. Popular, prolific and profitable, his