Theater/Film Reviews
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This Wonderful Life
Alan Knoll plays 41 characters, himself and 40 from the pages of "This Wonderful Life," , and all of them come across stylishly in Knoll's one-man show, which is on stage at Dramatic License Productions' space in Chesterfield Mall through Dec. 19. Based on that turgid cinematic turkey, "It's a Wonderful Life," which exhausts each
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Black Swan
Ballet dancers usually show little or no emotion when they're on stage. They must be saving it up for later, and when it all gets going, they turn into quite a group. This certainly is proven in "Black Swan," which opens today. Natalie Portman, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder, Mila Kunis and others shed their tutus
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Wasteland
Garbage as art? In the right hands, like those of Vik Muniz, yes, and he then proves it in "Waste Land," a tale of the people who survive, and often thrive, living at the world's largest garbage dump and spending their working hours picking through tons of thrown-away stuff. They are looking for recyclable material
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The Sunshine Boys
Joneal Joplin and Whit Reichert have been entertaining St. Louis audiences for more years than they care to remember. I first wrote about Joplin when he performed in “Of Mice and Men,” at the Rep in 1972, and about Reichert not too many years later. They both have been consummate professionals in every possible type
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Slasher
It's all hangin' out at the Kranzberg Arts Center. Blood and bodies, screams and sobs, manic maniacs and violent virgins, repressive mothers and repressed children, religious zealots and frantic film directors. It's "Slasher," a new play by Allison Moore that had its premiere a year ago at the Humana Festival. Produced by Hot City Theatre,
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As Bees in Honey Drown
When they tell you something is too good to be true, don't count on it. It's a lie. Damon Runyon used to relate some of his father's advice: "Son, when a man comes up to you with a sealed deck of cards in his hand, and offers to bet you that he can make the
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Over The Tavern
Growing up Catholic in Buffalo is a lot like growing up Catholic in St. Louis. Writing a play about it offers the opportunity to take the usual cheap shots at the church; you know, fish on Friday, nuns using rulers as weapons and threats of eternal Hell to keep order. The large Polish population of
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Last of the Red Hot Mamas
Changes were more frequent than in a maternity ward nursery but with a dazzling display of costumery, lighting often simply refused to cooperate and many of the cast handled more roles than a Companion baker, but the New Jewish Theatre has a winner with "Last of the Red Hot Mamas," which opened last night at
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Barb Jungr
No Cole Porter. No Rodgers and Hammerstein. No Duke Ellington. No Steven Sondheim. At an evening billed as cabaret? Will you trade them for Bob Dylan? Or Paul Simon? Or Bruce Springsteen? Or Hank Williams? Barb Jungr did, editing "The Great American Songbook" into her latest album, "The Men I Love: The New American Songbook,"
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Steve Ross
Steve Ross exemplifies style and grace like few other people, and he displayed it before a full house last night at the Kranzberg Arts Center. He will repeat tonight (Saturday). The apparently ageless cabaret singer is in an "out-of-town" run with his new show, "Rhythm and Romance," which is scheduled to open at the Algonquin