Performance Arts Latest Topics

Yellowface

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 22:33:48 +0000

Perhaps not the best choice of play to see today. Some of the themes hit a little too close to home.

Oh, Mary!

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 14:00:20 +0000

Get there before it closes. One of the funniest shows I've ever seen, and Cole Escola is a marvel (the rest of the cast is great, too).

Wicked

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 03:20:05 +0000

We took the kid to see Wicked tonight. In light of the movie coming in November we wanted him to see the source material (yeah, I know - he can read the book). This was the third time seeing the show for the spouse and me. We saw it with the original cast about a month after opening night and then again in '06 with Meghan Hilty and Shoshana Bean.

It's often said that the sign of a good work is that you see new things in it every time you see it, and there is a lot in the show that reflects the times we're living in (I'm going to violate a guideline if I go further). I found myself surprised because I didn't think much of the show the first time I saw it.

Never Let Go

Sun, 19 May 2024 20:18:23 +0000

If anyone remembers me raving about this one-man Titanic adaptation (and that my rave here somehow made it into the program of the show), it is BACK! I'm going 5/29, so if you a) want to see a really funny show and/or b) want to hear me sing "My Heart Will Go On" at the top of my lungs during the curtain call, like a common Celine Dion...

https://www.bricktheater.com/event/never-let-go-an-unauthorized-retelling-of-james-camerons-titanic/2024-05-22/

Kayla Farrish

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 05:09:23 +0000

(I must have posted about her on the old MF: https://www.kaylafarrish.com)

I had never been to the theater in the basement of the Guggenheim (and it has creepy sloping floors). There tonight for Kayla workshopping her “Put the Fire Away, dear” show with excerpts and a panel discussion.

I saw a version of the show at La Mama last year and it seemed polished and finished, but her process involves, I guess, tinkering while seeking funding. And the cast has changed. A final (?) version debuts in San Francisco in March. Wrong coast.

I would go and see her anywhere doing anything. What a dancer. The panel was the first time I’ve heard her answer questions at length, and sitting in a chair she spontaneously can’t resist half dancing her answers. You have to see it. She’s very special.

Okay, I should go to SF for my birthday, right?

The Look of Love

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 19:46:43 +0000

at BAM. What's better than a dance piece that you know all the words to? Nothing. Spirited and upbeat and perfect for spring. And Marcy Harriell was absolutely amazing.

https://markmorrisdancegroup.org/work/the-look-of-love/

Here Lies Love

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 03:19:09 +0000

I had pretty high hopes for a musical by David Byrne (I liked American Utopia when I saw it on the tv) and Fatboy Slim, even if it did sound a bit like Evita performed at the Limelight. Well, I wasn't bored, partly because it was only 90:00, partly because the stage kept being reconfigured like a set of Legos, and partly because performers kept popping up near me up in the cheap seats, and I kept being surprised by this. Also, the on-stage deejay - "stage" being something of a loose term, since there were stages all over the theater - periodically exhorted the audience to get up and dance. Which it did. The audience was very happy to be there, in the way it was when I saw Mamma Mia many years ago. It's nice to see an audience so engaged. It's also a little lonely to not feel engaged along with them.

None of the songs was successful all the way through. The opener, the title song, had a great hook that wasn't repeated often enough, and the song didn't have enough else going on to make it an actual great song. Its hook was very similar to the hook from some other song, possibly by Roxy Music, I can't think of it right now. Now that I'm obsessing over it, I think it might actually be Sweet Caroline. The lyrics to nearly all the songs were straight up bad, not like lyrics at all. I may have read that they were mostly taken from actual people's actual words describing the events of the plot, which explains a lot, since most actual people cannot write decent song lyrics.

The story was the story of Imelda Marcus, only without any mention of her shoes, which seems an odd choice, to say the least. She's treated very sympathetically, which I guess she has to be in order for a musical to be written around her. But not addressing how she bled her country dry - save for a very brief aside about an expensive cultural center - seems like even more of an oversight than ignoring the shoe thing.