“Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.” Sigmund Freud, from “New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,” 1932 There are soliloquies. There are asides. These are two dramatic conventions that allow the audience to know what an actor is thinking and feeling without the other actors on stage knowing….
“That isn’t me. (at J. M. Barrie) That’s him. He’s Peter Pan. (Barrie – perhaps only realizing this for the first time, too) He just has my name. And it’s the best present any boy was ever given, anywhere in the world.” (Peter Llewelyn Davies in “Finding Neverland”) For those who have never grown up and still indulge in imaginative…
“Side Show’s” messages of self-acceptance, unconditional and non-judgmental love, and commitment bring audiences to their feet at the close of the re-imagined musical currently playing at the St. James Theatre and surprisingly scheduled to close on Sunday January 4, 2015. The musical opened to exceptionally positive reviews in November and nightly has elicited (rarely experienced from Broadway audiences) acclamations from…
[Sting has assumed the role of Jackie White played by Jimmy Nail for the December 7 performance attended by Theatre Reviews Limited. Mr. Nail will continue in the role at the conclusion of Sting’s run on January 24, 2015.] Everything is just right about “The Last Ship” currently running at the Neil Simon Theatre. With music and lyrics by Sting…
(A second review of “A Delicate Balance” by David Roberts will be posted next week.) There might come a day when Edward Albee is treated like Shakespeare. A familiar foreign language with rhythmic underpinnings, Albee’s angst over the unattainability of human connection could be tantamount to The Bard’s dread of the Great Chain of Being. Artists and academics of the…
By now you’ve discovered the horrible truth, that A.R. Gurney’s ‘Love Letters’ is essentially a staged reading with a $127 price tag, but veteran director Gregory Mosher couldn’t have made a more fitting decision. The play follows the written correspondence of Andrew Ladd and Melissa Gardner, two upper-crust kids growing up, starting careers, creating families, and eventually fading into old…
San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas had a long-standing professional and personal relationship with “West Side Story” composer Leonard Bernstein making the June 10, 2014 release of the live recording of the first-ever concert performance of Mr. Bernstein’s complete score for the iconic musical quite significant. Equally significant is the recording itself. Mr. Tilson Thomas and the San…
“A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” is a rollicking romp through the hilarious escapades of Monty Navarro (Bryce Pinkham) as he eagerly disposes of any relative who appears to be an obstacle in his desire to become the heir to the Earl of Highhurst and the D’Ysquith family fortune. It is a sumptuous theatrical feast that serves up seven…
As parodies go, Seth Rudetsky’s “Disaster!” is among the best. Eschewing lampooning just one disaster-genre movie, Mr. Rudetsky and Mr. Plotnick successfully spoof several of the catalog of doomsday films of the 1970s that feature the disfigurement, death, and discord that results from some combination of electrical or natural gas disturbances; earthquakes; floods; tsunami; sinking ships; plagues; or infestations. There…
Anyone with fears that there is a dearth of new musicals on the horizon can stop worrying: the National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) has been hard at work since 1989 introducing writers and their new musicals to significant theatre industry leaders. The nine new musicals introduced at this year’s Festival garnered overwhelming support from those leaders who packed Stages…