By Lauren Van Hemert Last month, the Tony Award-winning musical Jersey Boys kicked off its 13th touring season. Next month the show stops at The Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts as part of North Carolina Theatre’s season. The jukebox juggernaut is the story of Franki Valli and The Four Seasons, the doo wop […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by Rob Riddle of Ghost Light Photo. It’s been such a long time since the height of the AIDS crisis in America that people might be forgiven for failing to realize that the problem is still with us. To be sure it is not as […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Michael Brosilow. In our society, there is probably no class of citizens more reviled than pedophiles. Despite (or maybe because of) the fact that we understand that this abhorrent predilection is not something they can actually control, we punish them not only with the […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by Lara Goetsch. Is it possible to teach greatness? Can a master instructor work the miracle of bringing technical virtuosity into the realm of brilliance? Can you teach art? These are questions I found myself pondering after witnessing Timeline Theatre’s new production of Terrence McNally’s […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by Ghostlight Ensemble At the start of his career as a comedian, Steve Martin was known for silly visual gags like an arrow through the head and his novelty tune “King Tut.” But as a playwright, his taste has been more to the absurdist and […]
Review by Kelly Romack MacBlane; photo by Suzanne Plunkett. As the mother of three boys, ages 4, 7 and 9, I have been exposed to a wide variety of children’s entertainment. Over the years, I have learned to appreciate the shows, movies, and performances that are able to both capture my children’s attention while also […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by Paul Goyette “I don’t know what people want in a play anymore,” says a character in the hilarious comedy It’s Only a Play, now playing at Pride Films and Plays. (Boy that’s was a lot of “plays” in one sentence. The fact that she’s […]
Review by Joe DeRosa; photo by Cheryl Mann At a time when words in our cultural lexicon like “masterpiece,” “brilliant,” and “genius” have been used so often, and with such impunity, that they‘ve lost their meaning, what happens when a true “masterpiece” comes along? What do we say when we experience the work of an […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by Tyler Core. Like Frankenstein, there are several shows playing right now that take Edgar Allan Poe stories and/or poems and present them along with original material. The latest opened Saturday night at an unassuming little black box theatre on Jarvis Ave which Theatre Above […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by. In this year, the 200th anniversary of the novel Frankenstein, Chicago is blessed to have multiple theatre companies taking on the iconic work from many different perspectives. This week marks the opening of Remy Bumppo’s take on the Mary Shelley masterwork. Using a script […]