The Salvagers At Yale Rep – A Review
The Salvagers At Yale Rep The Salvagers by Harrison David Rivers, having its world premiere at Yale Rep, is the latest in a long line of semi-successful plays to indulge in kitchen sink realism. There is an angry young man at the center of the working class Salvage family – a Black angry young man […]
Dreamgirls At Goodspeed Musicals – A Review
Dreamgirls At Goodspeed Musicals In 1981, when Dreamgirls debuted at the Imperial Theatre, it electrified Broadway – and me – thanks to a star-making turn by Jennifer Holliday and an eye-popping production orchestrated by director Michael Bennett with the aid of theatre design legends like Robin Wagner (sets), Theoni Aldredge (costumes), and especially lighting designer […]
Jaja’s African Hair Braiding at Manhattan Theatre Club – A Review
Jaja’s African Hair Braiding At Manhattan Theatre Club These days White people get lectured a fair amount about the dos and don’ts of how they should approach Black women’s hair. Thanks to Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, Jocelyn Bioh’s hit comedy at Manhattan Theatre Company, curious White folk have an opportunity to indulge their curiosity at […]
Private Jones At Goodspeed Musicals – A Review
Private Jones At Goodspeed Musicals Private Jones, Marshall Pailet’s ambitious new musical at Goodspeed Musicals, aims high and hits a few targets but ultimately misses the mark. Based on a supposedly true story, Private Jones tells the story of a deaf kid from Breconshire, Wales, who lies about his age to do his bit in […]
The 12 At Goodspeed Musicals – A Review
The 12 At Goodspeed Musicals The 12, the new musical at Goodspeed Musicals by Robert Schenkkan and Neil Berg, about the twelve apostles minus Judas (yes, those guys) looks terrific. The set designer John Doyle, who also directs, has created a surprisingly attractive dump of an abandoned industrial site. It’s an empty box, all corrugated […]
Wish You Were Here At The Yale Rep – A Review
Wish You Were Here At Yale Rep Sanaz Toossi’s Wish You Were Here, now playing at New Haven’s Yale Rep, is a well-intentioned disappointment. Wish You Were Here charts the gradually unravelling relationships among a tight-knit group of five female friends in Karaj, Iran, during a tumultuous period. The decade or so between 1978 and […]
Summer Stock At Goodspeed Musicals – A Review
Summer Stock At Goodspeed Musicals Summer Stock, the horribly dated 1950 film starring Gene Kelly and a fading Judy Garland, has been transformed into a “new musical comedy” at Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam, CT. The big question for anyone who remembers the film is “Why bother?” There are two answers to that question: Cheri […]
Gypsy At Goodspeed Musicals – A Review
Gypsy at Goodspeed Musicals Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam, Connecticut, known to us old-timers as the Goodspeed Opera House, is mounting a workmanlike production of the Arthur Laurents/Jule Styne/Stephen Sondheim classic, Gypsy, directed by Jenn Thompson. The production tries mightily to do justice to what many critics and historians of the genre consider the greatest […]
The Ripple The Wave At Yale Rep – A Review
The Ripple, The Wave At Yale Rep Playwright Christina Anderson’s earnest The Ripple, The Wave That Carried Me Home makes great use of water as metaphor. The 90-minute play, performed without intermission at the Yale Rep, strives for poetry as it tells the tale of segregated swimming pools in the fictional town of Beacon, Kansas, […]
Ain’t Misbehavin’ At Westport Country Playhouse – A Review
Ain’t Misbehavin’ at Westport Country Playhouse The Westport Country Playhouse is presenting a middling revival of Ain’t Misbehavin’: The Fats Waller Musical Show. Conceived by Richard Maltby, Jr. and Murray Horwitz, it wowed Broadway (and me) back in 1978. For this outing, a co-production with Barrington Stage and Geva Theatre Center, director Jeffrey L. Page […]