Agnes Under The Big Top (Mixed Blood Theater, through March 6) is like the New York City subway on which much of it is set: dark, scary, echoey, pulsing, with sudden flashes of bright and harsh illumination. Playwright/director Aditi Kapil calls her piece “a tall tale” and that Agnes most certainly is, a fragmented...
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Does anyone doubt Father Flynn’s innocence? John Patrick Shanley‘s masterful Doubt, A Parable (Ten Thousand Things Theater, through March 6) is often portrayed as a mystery. Did Flynn, as Sister Aloysius so stridently claims, really commit “an indiscretion” with the young and troubled altarboy Donald Muller? Did he feed Muller holy wine, and then,...
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On rare occasions in theater, all the critical elements seem to converge in one glorious experience. The script is brilliant, the actors are perfectly suited to their roles, and the director, with great respect for both, seems to simply open up the story and let it live and breathe among us. This is the...
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Dracula burns with sexuality: the oily count, dressed in smooth leather and crisp shirts, his creepy yet compelling accent, so obsequiously polite. And of course his gleamingly sharp teeth as he wraps the swooning maidens in his cape and drinks, ever so slowly, their sweet warm blood. Ooh. This erotic charge is the main...
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Cheryl Willis is blessed with an easy-going, laid-back charisma. She quickly takes and holds the stage in Willy Russell‘s solo show Shirley Valentine (at the Jungle Theater, through March 20). Willis is tall, down to earth, wiry black hair, her frumpy wool shirt nicely counter-balanced by sparkling eyes and an impish grin. A thick-as-oat-porridge...
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At the very end of William Shakespeare‘s The Winter’s Tale (on the Guthrie‘s Wurtele Stage, through March 27) the statue comes alive. Hermione lives! She embraces, and forgives, Leontes. Wow. It’s one of the most thrilling moments in the canon, but it immediately creates an issue: did the intensity of Leontes’s grief and longing...
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It’s entirely appropriate that WTF – excellent title – by Katie Ka Vang (Mu Performing Arts, at Mixed Blood Theatre, through Feb 6) is being produced in the midst of our nastiest winter in years. WTF is bleak, hallucinatory and intense, sprawling and long (nearly 3 hours), a hip-hip inflected piece that alternately thrills...
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