The first thing the annual holiday show at Syracuse Stage has to do is knock your eyes out. Thus, for Elf: The Musical (running through Jan. 6), Jessica Ford supplies 130 costumes, including some with shoe-like knee slip-ons suitable for elfish dancing. Scenic designer Czerton Lim comes in with constantly changing sets so that — whoosh! — we zoom from the North Pole to midtown Manhattan, the Empire State Building, Macy’s and the Rockefeller Center ice rink. And with the iconic gold statue of Prometheus looming above, members of the chorus are skating on the pond. Then, whoosh again, and…
Author: James MacKillop
It’s 17 feet wide, and a precise 100 feet from the front door to the back wall. That makes for 1,700 square feet, about the capacity of a suburban tract house. Into that space the management of the Manlius Art Cinema has squeezed a ticket booth, a concession stand, two toilets and 200 seats, usually eight per row, two on the left side of the aisle, five or six to the right. This unlikely parcel has survived a century, defying changes in technology, economics and public taste to become the oldest continuing movie house in the area. And not just…
Julian Wiles produced Nevermore in 1994. Professional companies ignored it, but director Christopher Lupia successfully grabs another little-known paths.
Brighter, faster, classier but still as upbeat and raucous as ever. This year’s Syracuse New Times Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) Awards roared into the new Austin and Allyn Auditorium of the Redhouse Arts Center on Salina Street. Every seat was filled, and those seats were kind to the tush for more than three hours. Josh Mele, this year’s show producer, had streamlined the presentations and disciplined the loquacious. The early awards for sound, lighting, sets and costumes went especially quickly. Even if the evening did not end until nearly 10 p.m., it did not feel that long. Laughter and…
Foster was nominated for his first Tony Award in 2003 for his role in “Little Shop of Horrors.” He’s also been in “Urintown,” “The Producers” and more.
Truth, salvation, the afterlife and facing the prospect of death are just a few of the themes explored in “Next Fall,” on stage through Nov. 17.
Dark comedy “The Boys in the Band,” performed by Rarely Done Productions, explores the old prevalences of guilt and self-accusation in the gay community.
The Baldwinsville Theatre Guild’s showing of “Dracula” runs until Nov. 3.
Follow Agnes down a new-age rabbit hole as she falls into a world of Dungeons & Dragons, trying to reconnect with the memories of her younger sister.
Psychological horror stage show, The Piano Teacher, is running through Sunday, Nov. 4 at Ithaca’s Kitchen Theatre Company.
In the program notes for Syracuse Stage’s world premiere of Possessing Harriet (running through Nov. 4), playwright Kyle Bass admits that if the four historical persons from 1839 depicted in his play were to come and see it, they would not recognize themselves in his dialogue. The best-documented of the four, 24-year-old feminist Elizabeth Cady, (later Elizabeth Cady Stanton), does repeat a line oft-cited in her oratory, that her father told her he wished she had been a boy. But the best lines and strongest speeches belong to the character about whom Bass knew the least. And it’s not the…
With SU Drama staging its unusual take on Into the Woods, another unconventional show running through Oct. 27 on the Central New York Playhouse stage is John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Kiss of the Spider Woman. The show, which features a book by Terence McNally, won a Tony Award for Best Musical in 1993 and ran for 904 performances. Somehow, though, it is making its debut on local boards only 25 years later. Whatever the reluctance to stage, it has nothing to do with the score, which contains several compelling discoveries. This Spider Woman should not be confused with the non-musical…
Director Lowenstein blows up the typical lyrical and whimsical show right before your eyes, creating an inventive and audacious new take.
Steel Magnolias, implying Southern women who are both delicate and indestructible, takes us back to “Tears through laughter” country.
The 1960s never died. That accounts for the complete absence of nostalgia and instead supplies the through-the-roof energy of Beehive.