Reviews

Area Stage’s [title of show] Is Musical Theater Geek Heaven

If you know who Alice Ripley is, if you recognize the name of the musical Brooklyn, then [title of show] at Area Stage Co. was written for you. While its scruffy charm should amuse a general audience, this musical satire is theater geek heaven crammed t with humor rooted in Broadway inside baseball lore.

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Estrogen-Infused Cougar The Musical at The Plaza Theatre Goes Limp Due To Cliched Script

There’s fun to be had at Cougar The Musical at The Plaza Theatre because of the cast, but don’t expect a lion’s roar — this Cougar hungers for better material.

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Island City Stage’s The Pride Joins Worlds Apart Eras With Skillful Perfection

Island City Stage’s production of the thought-provoking The Pride understands the beauty and depth of this remarkable play —and, done right here, makes us question our history, both individually and collectively.

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Outre Kills It With Bleak, Minimalist True-Crime Musical

Thrill Me, a stunning musical about the child murderers Leopold and Loeb, closes out Outre Theatre Company’s season with a two-man, one-act piece noteable for offbeat immediacy and barebones potency of a feverish fringe festival favorite.

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A Fresh New Argentina, Of Sorts, For Evita At The Arsht

This national tour of the 2012 Broadway revival of Evita is a strong fresh edition that gives the raw material a thorough makeover but does not deconstruct the piece. The experience is helped immeasurably by the clarion voices of the lead actors. The only facets missing most of the time are the electric sizzle and raging passions that marked earlier productions.

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Naked Stage Unleashes Mercurial Emotions In Miss Julie

For a century, August Strindberg’s tragedy Miss Julie has been interpreted as a seesaw of power exercised through class and sexual politics. But in Naked Stage’s operatic production, as lives lie in ruins, everyone ultimately is revealed a slave, never a master, when they toy with those three elements.

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New Theatre Neatly Untangles A Gordian Knot In Gidion’s Knot

This is why we go to theater. New Theatre’s Gidion’s Knot – wrenching, thought-provoking, shocking, visceral in ways no film can be– exemplifies why we spend time in dark rooms watching live people pretend to be people they’re not.

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Memory Is the Real Villain In Zoetic’s The Great God Pan

The unreliability of memory — and the resulting doubt and guilt — swirl through Zoetic Stage’s finely crafted production of The Great God Pan.

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Loopy Durang Comedy Vanya And Masha And Sonia And Spike Is Insightful And Flat Out Funny

Under the vanities and inanities, the witty literary allusions and the silly sight gags, “Vanya and Sonia and Marsha and Spike” gently pokes fun at people who have wasted their lives. But don’t fret, mostly director Joseph Adler and his cast deliver a good old-fashioned, absurdist character comedy at GableStage.

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So Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Zelda, Picasso, Tallulah And Gertrude Stein Walk Into A Bar….

Scott and Hem, an imagined reunion of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, is half comprised of deadly accurate insights into the angst of creative souls; the other half is just deadly dumps of name-dropping and exposition. A talented cast and director struggle to make the play at Actors Playhouse land solidly, and sometimes they succeed, but not always.

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