Le Moyne’s Boot and Buskin theater club restores the edge “The Visit” once had during its 1956 premiere as a dark satire.
Author: James MacKillop
The excellence of performances in ‘The Wild Party,’ running through April 7, implies the SU Drama Department is currently glutted with talent.
Some Janeites may find this “Pride and Prejudice” more than they wanted. But as Liberace once observed, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.”
If your idea of a boxing drama is “Rocky” and “Raging Bull,” you’ve come to the wrong place. “The Royale” overturns every expectation and stomps on clichés.
Herb Gardner’s I’m Not Rappaport won a surprise Tony Award at its New York City opening in 1985 and was once a staple on local floorboards but has been absent for nearly 20 years. The failure of the 1996 film version with the formidable Walter Matthau and Ossie Davis reminded audiences that the dialogue can only be done live. Candidly, the Redhouse Arts Center’s current revival (running through Sunday, March 24) is to reunite actor pals Fred Grandy and Ted Lange, who have not been seen together since the cancellation of TV’s The Love Boat decades ago. Nothing wrong with that. The venture is considerably more impressive than last year’s On Golden Pond because Grandy…
Toto, we’re not in Paris anymore. Choderlos de Laclos’ frequently banned novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782) was set among debauched, intriguing aristocrats in pre-Revolutionary France. His name, however, does not appear anywhere in the program for this Central New York Playhouse production, running through Saturday, March 23. Now considered darkly comic rather than dirty, and also in public domain, Liaisons has been adapted dozens of times and inspired the 1999 teen movie Cruel Intentions. British playwright Christopher Hampton produced the most admired stage version in 1985, changing the ending, but winning many plaudits. Hampton’s version also served as the basis of the 1988 movie Dangerous Liaisons with Glenn Close and John Malkovich. Then esteemed scenarist Jean-Claude Carriere adapted the novel for Milos Foreman’s…
The emotional heavy-lifting in “The Diviners,” on stage through March 16, is carried by Derek Powell as the ex-preacher and Isaac Betters as Buddy.
The acting students at Le Moyne College tackle a rare challenge: a musical, which hasn’t been the standard fare at the college’s Coyne Center for the Performing Arts. Dolly Parton’s bouncy 9 to 5: The Musical runs through Saturday, March 2. Under artistic director Matt Chiorini, the drama department was once characterized more by modernist masterworks like Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding. But given the ubiquitousness of the musical, training students in that vibrant form seems like a prudent academic idea, plus it’s also fun. To take everybody in a new direction Le Moyne has imported a New York City-based rising…
From a distance, Jackie Sibblies Drury’s 2012 play with the 27-word title, a Syracuse University Drama Department production running through Sunday, March 3, appears to be a drama about the horrors of imperialism. White colonial invaders slaughtered up to 80 percent of the Hereros tribe — thousands of people, more or less for the hell of it — as the first genocide of the 20th century. The playwright examines some artistic and philosophical questions: What are the ethics of making theater out of the most vicious cruelty? And can metatheater, or more broadly post-modernism, break out its distancing irony and…
More than in most productions, Shoko Kambara’s articulate set design contributes mightily to the action in Native Gardens, running through March 3 at Syracuse Stage. Playwright Karen Zacarías anticipated that many theaters no longer raise curtains to begin the show, and that audiences would be sizing up the set while looking for a seat and zipping through the program. Kambara has us see on the left a brightly restored façade behind an obsessively manicured garden filled with flowering plants in full bloom. Maybe a little conservative for Martha Stewart, but she would approve. As our eyes go right we see…
“Mamma Mia!” could be one of Central New York Playhouse’s biggest stage hits of the last seven years.
In a rural, nowhere town in Maine, love tries to flourish. Your heart goes out to them, thanks to veteran and newbie players alike.
Of composer William Finn’s several shows, two have been continuously popular on local floorboards. Falsettos, the two-part family drama of divorce and reconciliation, touches hearts by being done pretty much the same way every time, even with casting changes. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, on the other hand, invites improvisation and elaborations of character. iFor the Baldwinsville Theatre Guild’s production of Spelling Bee, running through Feb. 2, musician-director Colin Keating draws on veteran players who really know the roles. They help generate more madness and hilarity not seen in previous productions. In the first decade of this century, a batch of people noticed simultaneously that the middle school spelling bee is a perfect live-action drama, not…
The new Redhouse venue dominated local stage news stories all year. The kickoff was the move to new quarters in the 400 block of South Salina Street, now called City Center, and possibly shifting the center of the Armory Square subculture. Working at breakneck speed, the company opened its first production, On Golden Pond, starring TV veteran Fred Grandy, on March 8, in the Austin-Allyn Theater. The first name commemorates Laura Austin, a driving force and benefactor of the Redhouse for 15 years. In a private email to friends June 25, she announced that the board had asked her to step down over “our difference in vision regarding the mission and management…
CNY Playhouse and Syracuse Stage are ringing in a thespian’s holiday with two seasonal stage shows.