Theater/Film Reviews
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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Many of the small theater companies in the city look for a niche in which they can define themselves, get some distance from their rivals and partners in the theater community. Muddy Waters, which lives in the Kranzberg Arts Center at Grand and Olive, for decades the Times Square corner of St. Louis, does
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Five Minutes of Heaven
Alistair Little, a Protestant, was 17 years old in 1975 when he stood on a street in Lurgan, Northern Ireland, and fired a pistol through a flat window, killing 19-year-old Jim Griffin, a Catholic. Joe Griffin, his younger brother, watched Little. That's how "Five Minutes of Heaven," a taut, gripping film, based on the
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Coco Before Chanel
Audrey Tatou is perfect as the gamin who was Gabrielle Chanel before she became Coco, perhaps the ultimate French designer-heroine, the woman who made the Little Black Dress as the perfect and necessary garment for every woman's closet. "Coco Before Chanel" is Anne Fontaine's homage to Chanel, a look at her early years, from
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Men Who Stare at Goats
The military mind lends itself perfectly to satire. Actually, it's not a loan but an outright gift to writers. Think "Wag the Dog," or "Catch-22," or the all-time best, "Dr. Strangelove." Now it's "Men Who Stare at Goats," a funny, highly entertaining movie about the wacky goings-on among a group of soldiers being trained
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Steve Ross
When Steve Ross, who epitomizes meticulous, sits at a piano with the collar of his dinner jacket folded improperly, it's a moment of real shock. Ross, who has been a cabaret star more than 40 years, is a pianist and singer who calls forth Noel Coward and Cole Porter, glittering martini glasses and glamorous
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Fiddler on the Roof
The cast is only 11 strong. The orchestra is a single piano, with a violin for occasional poignant moments. The Russian village of Anatevka is represented by a table, an antique steamer trunk and a few chairs. And as Motel the Tailor sings, "Out of a simple lump of clay, God has made a
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Secret Order
The plot is not quite ripped from the headlines because the play is more than seven years old, but with a Washington University physician and professor fired recently because of some similar ethical lapses, "Secret Order," which opened last night at the Rep Studio, shines a light on some shadows that have dimmed many
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Chelsea on the Rocks
The Chelsea Hotel, on West 23rd Street in Manhattan, has been a haven for artists and writers, actors and ne'er-do-wells, for more than a century. Built in 1883 as an apartment house, it became a hotel in 1905 and remains so. But things began to chance a couple of years ago when a real
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Earth Day
While a few Congressmen, who probably still believe the Earth is flat, continue to insist that there is no such thing as a danger out there involving global warming, greenhouse gases, rising oceans and the like, others out there are extremely worried about the fate of our planet, and still others think that we're
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Still Walking
Unless the story includes a gun fight, serious movies about family life are quiet stories, their rise and fall as gentle as the ripples in a Forest Park lagoon. So it is in "Still Walking," a Japanese import. But there's a current hidden below the surface, and it affects everyone in Hirokazu Kore-Eda's lovely