Silent Films with Live Music Make a Comeback
Sunset Boulevard (Review)
Tale of Hollywood desperation and dementia gets a big-time patina
Measure for Measure (Review)
Cincy Shakes presents strange brew of drama, comedy
Double Indemnity (Review)
Cincinnati Playhouse production is playful, thrilling
Sister Act (Review)
Talent of touring cast provides a night of fun
Anything Goes for Bawdy Comic Amy Schumer
0 Comments · Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Big things are happening for comedian Amy Schumer. The talented comic, most widely known for her run on Last Comic Standing and the roasts of both Charlie Sheen and Roseanne Barr, is about to debut her own sketch comedy show called Inside Amy Schumer
Million Dollar Quartet (Review)
Great balls of fire!
0 Comments · Wednesday, February 20, 2013
If you're a fan of the early days of Rock & Roll, you'll be in heaven if you go to see the touring production of Million Dollar Quartet. It's really more of a concert
with dead-on impersonations of Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny
Cash and Elvis Presley than a traditional Broadway show.
Epic Theater
CCM takes on Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's acclaimed dark comedy
0 Comments · Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Premiered in Berlin in 1928, The Threepenny Opera
is an iconic work, the creation of composer Kurt Weill and
poet/dramatist Bertolt Brecht, and opens a two-weekend run at CCM as
part of its Kurt Weill festival, sponsored by the Kurt Weill Foundation
for Music, Inc.
 - photo sandy underwood.t2.jpg)
Leveling Up (Review)
Boundaries between fantasy, reality blur in Deborah Laufer's modern script
0 Comments · Monday, February 18, 2013
Playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer has found a vein of universality in her new play, Leveling Up,
using the world of online gaming in which players vie for higher levels
of power and accomplishment, as a metaphor for growing up.
Dangerous Liaisons (Review)
Seductive drama triumphs with beautiful design and humor
2 Comments · Monday, February 18, 2013
In Hampton’s 1985 play, the Marquise de Merteuil and the
Vicomte de Valmont are manipulative aristocrats in 18th-century France
who spend their time seducing scores of people and plotting to destroy
anyone who embarrasses or rejects them.
 cast at table - photo deogracias lerma.t2.jpg)
When the Rain Stops Falling (Review)
Decline and fall
2 Comments · Monday, February 11, 2013
This dense, provocative script is a challenging work, but director
Brian Isaac Phillips has staged it beautifully with nine excellent actors who are
breathtakingly powerful in a complex tale that spans 80 years and four generations of two intricately interwoven families.
Rising To The Top
Deborah Laufer explores big questions with playwriting
0 Comments · Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Playwright Deborah Laufer loves to tell stories. “I think what theater does,” she told CityBeat
recently, “is bring people together to contemplate what it means to be
human at this point in time. It’s a place to ask all the big questions..."
Broadway Bound (Review)
Lumbering to the finish line
0 Comments · Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Broadway Bound is the third and final installment
in Neil Simon’s semi-autobiographical cycle of plays about growing up in
Brooklyn in the 1930s and ’40s.
, danielle knox (guinevere) and mark hardy (arthur) - photo mikki schaffner.t2.jpg)
Camelot (Review)
Strong acting redeems an unwieldy plot
0 Comments · Tuesday, January 29, 2013
In 1960, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe followed their 1956 megahit My Fair Lady with the musical Camelot.
Its arrival on Broadway coincided with the election of John Kennedy,
and many people extended the vision of a “magical kingdom” to his
ascendance as America’s charismatic 35th president.
Abigail/1702 (Review)
Spectral sequel premieres at Cincinnati Playhouse
0 Comments · Saturday, January 26, 2013
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s world premiere play, Abigail/1702, is the Mount Adams theater’s 66th premiere, and a
positive sign that new artistic director Blake Robison will continue the
company’s long tradition of fostering new theatrical works and emerging writers.
Freud's Last Session (Review)
A whole lotta talking
0 Comments · Thursday, January 24, 2013
It’s Sept. 3, 1939. The father of psychoanalysis, Dr.
Sigmund Freud, has invited to his London flat a young scholar of
literature and theology from Oxford, C. S. Lewis.
 bryan fenkart (huey) - paul kolnik.t2.jpg)
Memphis (Review)
Broadway production takes risks lyrically exploring '50s racial divide
0 Comments · Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Memphis, the 2010 Tony Award winner for best musical, is loosely based
on the story of a white disc jockey who crossed the color line and
played black music on the radio in the racially divided Tennessee city, and it’s a story worth witnessing.
High-Wire Act
Creator of 'Abigail/1702' grew up dreaming of being a playwright
0 Comments · Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa was in
Chicago early in 2008, rehearsing the world premiere of a new play he
had just written for Steppenwolf Theatre. The company was staging Arthur
Miller’s legendary 1953 Tony Award winner, The Crucible, on its mainstage.
Richard II (Review)
CSC portrays the fall of a king
0 Comments · Monday, January 14, 2013
Audiences seeing Richard II will wonder why it’s not presented more often because this production works so well. The common wisdom is that Richard II is
more about head than heart. Shakespeare’s other histories are full of
glory and combat, whereas this play focuses on a king whose weakness
leads to his downfall.
Stagestruck
Cincy theaters put good shows on every stage in town
0 Comments · Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Throughout the year I assign “Critic’s
Picks” to noteworthy theatrical productions. As 2012 draws to a close,
it seems like a good time to take a look back at some shows that made
the grade.
