Review by Kelly MacBlane With about 15 minutes left in a recent performance of Little Shop of Horrors at the Mercury Theater, I leaned over to my 10 year old son and whispered in a panicked voice “I don’t remember how this ends!” And as fans of the cult classic musical and film remember, it […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by. There is a true story at the core of BoHo Theatre’s new musical Bright Star. Or at least a legend. Just after WWII, a baby was tossed from a train in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Dubbed the Iron Mountain Baby, he was raised […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Rick Aguilar Studios. 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure, the classic tale of the doomed SS Poseidon and its New Year’s capsizing, was perhaps the premiere achievement in the era of disaster films, an era that included Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, Airport, and others and is […]
Review by Kelly MacBlane My four year old has been looking forward to seeing Corduroy by the Emerald City Theatre Company since I told him about the show in December. So expectations were high as we walked into the noisy Athenaeum Theatre. It was the perfect space for a children’s show- the look of a […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member. Every once in a while you run into a show that is presented most sincerely by a troupe of very good actors and even well-directed, but the bottom line is that it doesn’t work as well as their efforts demand. That is the case with Lured: […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Liz Lauren. I’m just going to come right out and say it: The Goodman Theatre’s production of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer-Prize winning Sweat is just about as good as theatre can get. Director Ron OJ Parson has taken Nottage’s play and found in it even […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Nick Roth. America was founded, despite current political rhetoric, by immigrants who capitalized on opportunities to uproot themselves and move across an ocean to a new land. We haven’t rested since. Part of what became the American Dream has always involved the freedom to […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Timothy M. Schmidt. Six women stand triumphantly on the stage of the UP Comedy Club. “Are you ready to change the world?” one asks the crowd, receiving an enthusiastic response. And that is precisely what is happening in Second City’s hilarious, amazing She the […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Joan Marcus. There are probably some movies less likely to be made into a musical than A Bronx Tale. (Heathers comes to mind, but that one is a musical as well.) Still, Chazz Palminteri’s one-man show turned Hollywood movie turned musical is unusually violent […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Cody Jolly Photography. What do we do when true love comes too late? This is the question that is faced by Francesca (Kelli Harrington) and Robert (Tommy Thurston) in Theo Ubique’s beautiful new production of Marsha Norman and Jason Robert Brown’s The Bridges of […]