BWW Review: Opera Theatre of Saint Louis' I DREAM A WORLDJune 17, 2021Juneteenth celebrations in Saint Louis got off to an early start on Tuesday, June 15. Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, in collaboration with the Missouri Historical Society, presented a gorgeous cornucopia of music—and a bit of slam poetry—in an early-evening performance on the steps of our History Museum in Forest Park. It was called 'I Dream a World'.
BWW Review: New Works, Bold Voices at Opera Theatre of Saint LouisJune 15, 2021The glorious Opera Theatre of Saint Louis has opened its New Works, Bold Voices Lab. This is its continuation of a program exploring where the world of opera might go in days ahead. This season’s offerings are three quite different short pieces, together lasting some hour and a quarter.
BWW Review: LA VOIX HUMAINE Opens At Saint Louis Opera TheatreJune 7, 2021Alone on stage. Alone, alone and desperate. Alone forever. Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and that courageous soprano Patricia Racette bring us Francis Poulenc’s one-act opera LA VOIX HUMAINE. It’s a solo piece, a true tour de force for the singer. And Ms. Racette carries it off magnificently.
BWW Review: KING LEAR at Saint Louis Shakespeare FestivalJune 7, 2021Yes, André de Shields is playing Lear! His long career in musical theater stretches from the original Hair to The Wiz to Hadestown, and it is bespangled with awards (Emmy, Grammy and others). He’s an icon. Now, at seventy-five, he takes on the most demanding role in all of Shakespeare.
BWW Review: LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST at Winter Opera St. LouisMarch 9, 2020St. Louis's wonderful Winter Opera closes it's thirteenth season with a fine production of a rarely-seen work by Puccini--La fanciulla del West, or The Girl of the Golden West. Now Puccini was fond of choosing exotic settings for his operas--look at Madama Butterfly and Turandot. Well, to a European, Fanciulla is equally exotic. It's set in a mining camp in the Sierra Nevadas during the California Gold Rush of 1848.
BWW Review: MADAM at .ZACKJanuary 13, 20201870: Eliza Haycraft, the reigning Madam of St. Louis brothels fights the powers that be in a bright new musical.
BWW Review: THE AGITATORS at Upstream TheaterOctober 2, 2019For going on fifteen years now Philip Boehm's Upstream Theater has been giving us some of the finest, most thought-provoking theater in town. Now they have opened a play about two iconic American agitators in the struggle for equal rights: Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony. It's by playwright Mat Smart, and it's called simply a?oeThe Agitatorsa??.
BWW Review: WHAMMY! at The Young LiarsSeptember 29, 2019Some Things that All People Should Know About the Nature and Function of the Self,
Its Place in the Economy of Life, its Proper Training and its Righteous Exercise
BWW Review: LA BOHEME at Union Avenue OperaJuly 29, 2019Union Avenue Opera is on a roll! Two homers in a row! First their sublime Candide, and now an equally fine production of Puccini's La bohème. Union Avenue knocked them both right into the bleachers, and those of us who were lucky enough to catch one of those prize performances now own a true treasure. I caught La bohème last night and I think I'll have that experience bronzed.