Joey Stoshack has an amazing ability: he time-travels. Using an old baseball card, Joey whirls and twirls his way back into the past. In the case of Jackie And Me (playing at Children’s Theatre Company, through April 14), Joey visits Brooklyn in 1947, where the young, black, fiercely talented Jackie Robinson is being invited...
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Katie Adducci delivers a sweet and winning performance as the young rebel in CTC’s charming Pippi Longstocking (Children’s Theatre Company, through June 10). Whipping Pippi’s famous red braids perilously close to the other characters, leaping and prancing, cackling with laughter, back-flipping across the stage every time she pronounces her name, Adducci finds the pulse...
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In Harold And The Purple Crayon (at Children’s Theatre Co, through Feb 26) a company of first rate artists and performers collaborate on a deceptively simple, sweetly accessible and yet highly sophisticated… Well, what would you call Harold? A play? I suppose, but it’s really more a celebration of elegant design, tuneful music, astute...
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CTC’s The Wizard Of Oz (Childrens Theatre Company, through Jan. 8, 2012) imitates the 1939 MGM classic beat-by-beat: the structure is identical, the character conceits, the exquisite Arlen/Harburg songs. Much of the play’s dialogue comes directly from the movie. All the classic lines – “I’m not a witch at all!” “Who’d've thought a...
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Mercy Watson gets where she’s going in Act 1, Scene 1, page 1: “Toast!” she cries. “Toast and butter!” Mercy, a pig, says this, oh, seven or eight hundred times during CTC’s charming Mercy Watson To The Rescue (at the Childrens Theatre Co., through Oct 23). Mercy never sways from this desire. Indeed, she...
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Jumpin’ Jehosaphat, but those orphans are cute. Led by the inimitable Annie, belting out the uptempo “Maybe”, a niftily drawn 1930s NYC skyline looming in the background, the girls dance and mug winningly and by golly they steal our hearts. “Awwwwwwww”s and “Oooooooooh”s swept through the Children’s Theater auditorium on opening night. Never mind...
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I can try to paint you a picture of Babe the amazing sheep pig: blinking, clutching Farmer Hoggett with his piggy fists, pudgy around the middle, with too short pink pants, head bald save for a small wiry shock of white fur at the tip top, prancing around the stage with endearing little hops,...
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Director Greg Banks is the maestro of the small cast classic. His m.o.: keep the story-line as simple as possible, the characters one-dimensional, and the set filled with playable levels. Bring the audience as close to the action as possible (sometimes in the action, as he did with his astonishing Romeo And Juliet a...
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