On a dark set, only minimally embellished with Art Deco flair, men in tuxes and tails, and women in slinky gowns with trains sip from martini glasses while a jolly entertainer croons a jazz standard. So begins our experience as we find our seats and settle in for the dimming of the lights. This...
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John Logan‘s Red (at Park Square Theatre, through Oct 7) suffers from a problem often afflicting two character plays: sameness. Indeed, in Red, the same basic scene gets played and replayed. Mark Rothko paces his NYC atelier, contemplating the large murals he’s preparing The Four Seasons, a swanky restaurant in architect Philip Johnson’s new...
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Sheena Janson plays the Baker’s Wife in the wonderful Mu Performing Arts production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into The Woods (Mu, performing at Park Square Theatre, through Aug 5). Ms. Janson is quite the best actor in the show, no mean feat given the super-high standard of performance set by the rest...
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Stephen Sondheim‘s Into The Woods (Mu Performing Arts performing at Park Square, through Aug 5) can be, like many late Sondheim works, difficult. The songs, it goes without saying, thrill: Into The Woods contains the moving “No One Is Alone,” the show-stopping “Agony,” the otherworldly “Stay With Me.” Has a better song than “Children...
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Neil Simon is often – unjustly, I believe – accused of being a mere jokester, a creator of le gag juste, the ka-ching king. Okay, yes, it must be admitted, Simon’s plays do brim with jokes. But the reason they are so widely performed – and indeed, as you read this, there is at...
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Park Square Theatre, in association with Carlyle Brown & Company, has premiered a new play by Carlyle Brown, taking Park Square down an adventurous path. A commissioned piece by the theater, American Family explores the idea of a mixed-race marriage in 1960’s Alabama. Laura Collins (Noël Raymond) is determined to overcome the societal taboo...
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E. L. Doctorow was the author of two respected but not widely read novels when in 1975 he thundered onto the literary scene with Ragtime. Set 1902-17, the novel blends history and fantasy, private characters with oversized historical figures (J.P. Morgan, Booker T. Washington, Henry Ford, et al), all rendered in sharp but refined...
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For the holiday season, Park Square Theatre has chosen to revive the warmly received show about George Gershwin that premiered there in 1999. The Soul of Gershwin: The Musical Journey of an American Klezmer is a delightful musical offering: a well-researched and interesting story backed by wonderful music – with not one single holiday...
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St. Paul’s Park Square Theatre has included a Victorian era piece in recent seasons and continues this season with an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist by Neil Barlett. Joel Sass, the Jungle Theater’s associate artistic director was coaxed across the river to design and direct this one. It was a good call for...
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In Panic (at Park Square Theatre, through July 10), playwright Joseph Goodrich creates a “cozy” mystery: characters are powerful, wealthy, self-assured. They live postcard-perfect lives. Henry Lockwood, famous film-director, prepares to open his latest film (a grand success, of course) and is starting work on his newest (a mystery, naturally). His semi-invalid wife, Emma,...
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