Aaron Wallace - Page 2

WICKED is a wily piece of pop. It turns 20 this year, but you'd never know that sitting in Dr. Phillips Center for the show's third tour stop in Orlando. Its shrewd indictment of society's worst instincts and most seductive assumptions still tear through a room like a twister...

Both the movie and the musical stand out because, while the rock legend ascends from rags to riches by the end, the story is less interested in Turner's journey to stardom than in her liberation from years of violent physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband and musical partner, Ike Turner...

The Disney Princesses were only five songs into their set when the iconic Jodi Benson made a surprise appearance on stage. The original voice behind Ariel in 1989's The Little Mermaid, Benson may be best known on screen as a princess, but to a crowd of theatre aficionados and adoring Disney fans, she's a queen...

An evening with 'Weird Al' on stage is always a blend of concert, comedy, and community. The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour feels like an opportunity to give back — letting Al show us everything else he can do while indulging our own inner geeks at the same time. When you think about it, being into something really specific and relatively unpopular is really what nerdom is all about, which makes a parody-free “Weird Al” show surprisingly the “Weird Al”-iest show of all.

What did our critic think of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR at Dr. Phillips Center? The show remains fundamentally a relic of the precise moment in time that Short summed up so well, when the convergence of counterculture and rock & roll meant that an irreverent but ultimately thin concept like this one — “the Bible but make it a concert” — seemed utterly avant-garde...

On the cusp of her AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, we talk with Julie Andrews for an update on The Princess Diaries 3, her next installment in her series of memoirs, the potential of her returning to the Broadway stage and the upcoming Minions movie.

But BEAUTIFUL is structured differently than most 'backstage biomusicals.' It's not a rags to riches story, exactly, nor the routine tale of one woman's ascent to superstardom. Mercifully, we are spared the obligatory plot points of that particular formula. King never learns her contract is unconscionable nor fires a manager in dramatic fashion. There is no descent into addiction, fall from grace, dramatic career slump, or climatic comeback...

Director Roberta Emerson has devised an intriguing way to approach the story's outer framework without altering the libretto. The story opens not with an unseen narrator recounting the enchantress's spell on a prideful prince and his servants but instead with a young Black girl (played sweetly by Gabriella Milchman) who opens a storybook in a modern-day bedroom and reads those words aloud from it, soon seeing herself in the story - just in time for the glorious opening notes of 'Belle'...

The biggest draw to an evening with Alan Cumming may be just that: it’s an evening with Alan Cumming, a playful and energetic personality you like right away. His easy wit and effortless charm create an atmosphere that feels distinctly personal and intimate, even a thousand miles south of Club Cumming...

Now I would never wish harm on cats, of course. It's just that they ought not wish it on me either. But as I sat there bored nearly to felicide Tuesday night and praying for a cat-pocalypse on stage, I couldn't help but wonder why there's not a PETA for theatregoers - and if there were whether they'd douse the producers of CATS with cola or whatever liquid might represent the precious gasoline we wasted to reach the theatre.

Frankie Valli introduced his ninth song at Dr. Phillips Center on Sunday night as one of his all-time favorites: a 1964 B-side called 'Silence Is Golden.' He might have taken the title a little too much to heart. It's a golden oldie for sure, and Valli sounded great... impossibly great for an 87-year-old on a live concert stage...

Powerful as that theme may be, DOGFIGHT as written isn't fully the righteous proposition it hopes to be. At its core are some deeply troublesome male figures who engage in truly horrendous behavior, and while theatre is always welcome to put unseemly or complicated characters on the stage, DOGFIGHT never entirely deals with their deeds, which include among other things attempted rape. Playwright Peter Duchan clearly understands his character to be problematic, but their brisk redemption by way of jaunty music and degrees of forgiveness from the women on stage can at times feel like unearned absolution...

An OG, indeed. She is voulez-vous coucher's iconic 'moi,' the phenom who gave us 'New Attitude' but is every bit as famous for her own attitude - the diva who in 2019 famously lamented all of Top 40's 'little heifers who can't sing' and here tonight in Orlando was calling her own high heels 'heifers that got to go.' Ladies and gentlemen, that is rock and roll...

As news of Nazi rallies throughout Orlando and a white nationalist conference just outside of Walt Disney World rock Central Florida, Garden Theatre opens a musical this week that meets the moment: PARADE...

Caroline Bowman approaches Elsa with a studied understanding of this show's central themes: the inner confusion of outward identity, the struggle between family ties and the daggers of life that threaten to slice them, and the feeling of danger inherent in any quest for self-acceptance - especially on the part of those marginalized by the masses. It's a story of coming (out?) into one's own. It is a love letter to the fairy tale form and the Disney classics of yore, but also a challenge to their conventions and ideals. Bowman's dynamic performance contains all that turmoil and triumph within it, the totality of it exploding in Act One's 'Let It Go' (reworked here for even greater musical might than the movie) and Act Two's brand-new 'Monster' (which has more oomph in the studio cast recording than on the tour stage, but it's still a powerful identity statement and an indisputable jam.)

Those who haven't encountered INTO THE WOODS before won't miss anything at Theater West End. It's still the story of Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Jack the giant chaser, and a baker and his wife and the witch that cursed them all heading into the same woods at the same time for very different reasons. Their journeys intersect in song and scandal as Sondheim spins the yarn of didactic fantasy into the gold of complex moral quandry. The result is a work as nuanced and astute in its reflection on the human condition as any that music theatre has ever had to offer...

It's not every day that Audra McDonald stands twenty feet in front of you and says, 'Tonight, we are all a part of history.' Then again, it's not every day that music history gets made in Orlando - real-deal, textbook-worthy history - so when it does happen, I reckon Audra McDonald is as eager to be a part of it as anyone else...

But even if AIN’T TOO PROUD commits a few sins on its way to Motown glory, it is at least absolved to some extent by the sheer quality of that songbook. And, in the current touring production at Dr. Phillips Center, it gets some extra absolution from its incredibly talented cast...

THE MOUNTAINTOP is a daring and compelling piece of theatre, powerfully staged this month at The Garden Theatre in downtown Winter Garden, FL. It wastes no time in restoring King from the marble statues and speckled newsreels of history to beating heart and flesh and blood...

When Jennifer Hudson sang 'I Will Always Love You' at Dr. Phillips Center on Saturday night, harkening back to her legendary performance of the same at the 54th Grammys, she braced for the 'And I' but, overwhelmed, went with a 'SIR! The way you played that HORN!' instead...