Theater/Film Reviews
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Top Dog/Underdog
Are you familiar with three-card monte? If you've seen the "hat dance" at Busch Stadium, that's the basic premise of how it works, but unlike the sliding batting helmets, three-card monte is a scam. The most common place to see it is on the streets of New York, where a dealer sets up on
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Entertaining Mr. Sloan
The mysterious visitor has long been stock-in-trade for theater. So have dysfunctional families. They intersect in "Entertaining Mr. Sloan", currently playing at HotCity Theatre, and the result may well be the occasional gasp. But then one expects nothing less from the work of Joe Orton. The cadre of Angry Young Men of British arts were
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Parade
“Parade”, which opened this weekend at the Ivory Theatre, isn’t for folks who need cheering up. But nevertheless, it’s a worthwhile experience for those who understand we must remember history, even with artistic liberties, to avoid re-living it. The musical, whose book is by Alfred Uhry, who wrote “Driving Miss Daisy”, tells the story of
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Mrs. Mannerly
Ettiquette classes seem to have returned from the near dead. These days they're seen as yet another weapon in the battle to get ahead in the kill-or-be-killed job market. But manners have never flagged as a subject in theater; they've been a standard for centuries, probably millenia. "Mrs. Mannerly", from Max & Louie Productions and
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Shlemiel the First
"Schlemiel the First" would be worth seeing for some of us if only for hearing Joanna Elkanna-Hale sing "Yenta's Blintzes". Elkanna-Hale, playing the rabbi's wife in this tale of the mystical town of Chelm, can be appreciated by both the Opera Theatre crowd and the James Beard Award crowd for firmly letting her husband know
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Million Dollar Quartet
Do you remember DIG Magazine? The first go-round of ponytails and DAs (the haircuts, not the attorneys), Teen Towns and guys who wanted to look like James Dean? Did you ever hear records referred to as "platters"? Then you need to quickly get yourself to the Fox Theatre to see "Million Dollar Quartet". Based on
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Gypsy
Stray Dog opened "Gypsy" this past weekend, and for a stray, it's clearly a purebred. Once upon a time, probably 90% of the American population had heard one or another of the songs from its wonderful score, whether or not they knew just where the song came from, so popular were they. And the score,
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The Whipping Man
The Whipping Man is ugly and hard and absolutely stunning. Currently playing at the St. Louis Black Repertory, it's about slavery. Slavery, that is, over many millenia. It's April of 1865, the Civil War has just ended, of course, and it's Richmond, Virginia. There's the slavery Americans tend to think about, over, at least legally,
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Next To Normal
"Next to Normal" played at the Fox several years ago. If you liked it then, return to the former CBC's black box theater to see what New Line Theatre has done with it. This is a play that almost desperately needs a small venue, the better to catch the behavioral details of a story that's mostly about