Tag: Vol. 35 No. 10

Playing Shakespeare’s fairy tale in modern dress does its make-believe no favors. But the sincere storytelling in this Bohemian Theatre Ensemble staging, directed by Peter Robel, carries the day. Kyle Lemieux is powerfully persuasive as Leontes, the Sicilian king whose gratuitous jealousy sets off a chain reaction that only the Bard–and the play’s passage of […]

A playwright gets fed up with his mother’s homophobia and drama queens sniping at each other backstage. In despair, he wishes he’d never been born gay–and suddenly, a la It’s a Wonderful Life, an angel appears to grant his wish and show him the good he’s done as a gay man. David Sexton’s musical (Albert […]

G. Riley Mills and Ralph Covert’s updated, somewhat dark version of The Nutcracker owes more to E.T.A. Hoffmann than to Tchaikovsky. In fact they use almost none of Tchaikovsky’s music and jumble the story around, focusing not on the young girl, Clara, but on her brother Fritz. He’s an out-of-control video-game addict who accidentally unleashes […]

The best moment in GayCo Productions’ first holiday revue is tender, not funny: Andy Eninger plays a lonely gay man and Judy Fabjance the female prostitute he brings home just because he wants to be nice to someone. Other sketches blend zinging humor with amusing snapshots of complicated gay lives. Still, there’s less political material […]

In the Kingdom of Other we meet a poor girl from the projects who’s been abused by her foster family, a gentle prince with a street-savvy servant (who looks uncannily like Riley from The Boondocks), two would-be lovers wary of each other’s complexions, and a white girl from Kansas seeking citizenship. Add a Jamaican-accented “fairy […]

Romanian-born Matei Visniec is one of the world’s most popular absurdist playwrights, yet his work wasn’t produced in the States until last year, nearly 30 years after he wrote his first play. In July 2004 Gregory A. Fortner staged Old Clown Wanted, Visniec’s breakthrough 1992 script, for the New Jersey Repertory Company. Now Fortner’s staging […]

Goodman Theatre’s cash cow still gives good milk. Now in its 28th incarnation, the show seems to get a bit darker every year, Scrooge’s reclamation a tad more conditional. But the diminished laughter is far from failure; indeed, distracted by fewer sight gags, the audience is freed to listen harder and feel more. As always, […]

A show this silly is critic-proof. Lyricist Tim Rice and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber have their way with various musical genres and egregious anachronisms, representing Pharaoh as Elvis and Joseph’s brothers rejoicing over his “death” as a hoedown. Originally created in 1968 as a 15-minute cantata for schoolkids and expanded over the years, the show […]

Ken Raabe has stuffed his updated version of a traditional English panto about the Beanstalk Boy with puns, visual jokes, and music-hall antics, including the classic panto dame (think Mrs. Doubtfire with a puss full of pastry). At its best this Piccolo Theatre production, directed by Loraine Masterton, is breathtaking, but a few scenes tread […]