Connecticut Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 19

BWW Review: A CHORUS LINE at Playhouse On Park
by Joseph Harrison - June 19, 2016

There's a reason A CHORUS LINE, the hit musical about seventeen dancers auditioning for a Broadway show played for 6,137 performances in its original run. Audiences simply connected with these people and their experiences - with the universal feeling of wanting something so bad you can taste it, and...

BWW Review: New Musical ANASTASIA in World Premiere at Hartford Stage Company
by Karen Bovard - June 06, 2016

A distinguished creative team has hit it big with a rousing, new, heart-warming version of ANASTASIA, premiering currently at the Hartford Stage Company. This show has appeal for romantics and history buffs and musical comedy fans and dance aficionados and features no fewer than four strong female f...

BWW Review: THE CALL at TheaterWorks
by Karen Bovard - May 31, 2016

Though it opens with a burst of convivial laughter at a dinner party for two couples who are long-time friends in an upscale New York apartment, Tanya Barfield's THE CALL takes up thorny topical issues around international and cross-racial adoption that are no laughing matter....

BWW Review: DIRTY DANCING - A Musical with the Right Moves
by Carissa Chesanek - May 25, 2016

With its impressive onstage dancing and vocals, this is a musical you won't want to miss...

BWW Review: MY PARIS at Long Warf Theatre
by Melinda Zupaniotis - May 18, 2016

There's a bone disease called 'pycnodysostosis', but it's more commonly known as Toulouse-Lautrec Syndrome. It means that the density of one's bones is irregular, and usually results in an abnormal growth of digits or appendages. In the case of the actual Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, it meant that his...

BWW Review: MOTHER HOOD OUT LOUD at Square One Theater Company
by Corre Minkoff - May 16, 2016

Mother Hood Out Loud is a tale of short scenes and monologues that are broken up into five chapters.  Each scene talks about the horror and joyfulness that comes with Motherhood in a different stage of life...

BWW Review: ANYTHING GOES at Goodspeed Opera House
by Joseph Harrison - May 02, 2016

Some musicals make you think, some make you cry, while others just give you a permanent smile on your face for the duration of the show. The latter was the state of this reviewer as we set sail on the S.S. American for a rollicking "Bon Voyage" in Goodspeed Musicals' opening show of the 2016 season,...

BWW Review: HAVING OUR SAY at Hartford Stage Company
by Karen Bovard - April 12, 2016

HAVING OUR SAY is the theatrical adaptation by Emily Mann of the joint memoir of the same title published in 1993 by Dr. Bessie Delany and Miss Sadie Delany, who were then both over 100 years old. The evening is a delight as well as a fine history lesson. This co-production (with Long Wharf Theate...

BWW Review: THE LAST FIVE YEARS at Music Theatre Of Connecticut
by Melinda Zupaniotis - April 11, 2016

If you want to know the 'cut to the chase' review, it's: Go. See. This. Show. You can skip to the end to find the details about dates, times and ticket acquisition....

BWW Review: SEX WITH STRANGERS at TheaterWorks
by Karen Bovard - March 28, 2016

Laura Eason's contemporary play is more than just an economical choice for small theaters (just two actors) about a hot topic. It asks provocative questions, too: How far to bend toward commercialism, as an ambitious artist with high aspirations? Can two people from different sides of a digital divi...

BWW Review: ROMEO AND JULIET at Hartford Stage Company
by Karen Bovard - March 03, 2016

Director Darko Tresnjak directed 24 other Shakespeare productions before mounting his first ROMEO AND JULIET, currently on the boards at Hartford Stage where he is Artistic Director.  His hesitation arose from his belief that, despite the play's popularity, it is a problematic piece by a young playw...

BWW Review: I HATE HAMLET at Playhouse On Park
by Joseph Harrison - February 29, 2016

If you ask the average theater-goer their opinion of Shakespeare, you are bound to get a variety of answers. Some will immediately begin gushing about which of the bard's plays they have seen, which they like the best, or which they don't care for. Others will pretend to be fans, but make excuses an...

BWW Review: BUYER & CELLAR at TheaterWorks
by Karen Bovard - February 10, 2016

Let's admit it:  Theater is sanctioned voyeurism, offering us a glimpse into lives we might not otherwise see.  Often the payoff is in empathy, all bound up with the guilty pleasure of sitting in the dark watching other people in conflict.   In BUYER & CELLAR at TheaterWorks in Hartford, empathy tak...

BWW Review: ROCK OF AGES at the Warner Theatre
by Joseph Harrison - February 09, 2016

When considering musical theatre, one often immediately thinks of the classics - those shows that tell an age old story with soaring and lyrical songs peppered with engaging dance numbers and beautiful costumes. Those plays certainly have their place in the world, but in the past decade or so, a new...

BWW Review: ONCE Enchants New Haven
by Lindsey Sullivan - January 29, 2016

Guy meets girl. They make some music. And they either end up together or apart, delighting or devastating their respective audiences. It's just as typical a story as the romance of the Broadway musical (and usually has a similar effect). Well, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's Once is hailed for da...

BWW Review: THE BODY OF AN AMERICAN at Hartford Stage Company
by Karen Bovard - January 25, 2016

Dan O'Brien's play THE BODY OF AMERICAN turns on a friendship built on a bond of differing traumas.   It's a true story, and an on-going one. We watch two edgy, damaged, highly verbal men trying to understand themselves through the other and forge a friendship without pretense. ...

BWW Review: PASSING STRANGE at Playhouse On Park
by Joseph Harrison - December 07, 2015

How does one find "the real"? That is the question that "Youth" the protagonist in PASSING STRANGE asks himself as he takes the audience along on his long journey of self-discovery. In this the second production of their seventh season, Playhouse on Park in West Hartford has taken a chance on a less...

BWW Review: TWELFTH NIGHT at Connecticut Repertory Theater
by Karen Bovard - December 07, 2015

Fast-paced and funny is what the production of TWELFTH NIGHT at UConn's Connecticut Repertory Theater is going for, it seems. The text has been significantly cut so that running time is just barely two hours, and the antic clowning in the show works well. What's missing is the heart, and since thi...

BWW Review: CHRISTMAS ON THE ROCKS at TheaterWorks
by Karen Bovard - December 07, 2015

What is Clara of NUTCRACKER fame like as a grownup? Or Tiny Tim, or Charlie Brown, or Cindy Lou Who from HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS? Answers await in Hartford's TheaterWorks basement space, transformed into a cozy but dated local bar on Christmas Eve, in a lonely corner of the cosmos with a st...

BWW Review: MAN OF LA MANCHA at the Broad Brook Opera House
by Joseph Harrison - November 16, 2015

It's always a thrill to make your first visit to see a new theatre company. A lack of context creates a blank slate with limitless possibilities. That was my experience when I attend my first production by the Opera House Players at the lovely Broad Brook Opera House in Broad Brook, CT. Situated a b...

BWW Reviews: MASS APPEAL at Square One Theatre
by Cindy Cardozo - November 12, 2015

Square One Theatre opens season with MASS APPEAL...

BWW Review: NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT
by Carissa Chesanek - November 13, 2015

Between the dancing, singing and joking, this fun-hearted musical is a pleasant surprised and one to be seen....

BWW Review: A New REAR WINDOW Premieres at Hartford Stage Company
by Karen Bovard - November 01, 2015

Hartford Stage's new adaptation of REAR WINDOW is an exercise in style as well as being a significant reworking of a famous story for our time. And it offers a celebrity sighting: Kevin Bacon in the role made famous by Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock's thriller, based on the same source material. So the ...

BWW Review: DISGRACED at Long Wharf Theatre
by Karen Bovard - November 02, 2015

How do we costume ourselves for public representation?  For friends and lovers?  What's essential to identity and what can be shed?   Can we take on aspects of cultural heritages other than our own without exploitation? DISGRACED, which won the Pulitzer in 2013, takes up the dynamics of cultural ap...

BWW Review: EVITA is a Feast for the Eyes in Music Theatre of Connecticut's Snug Space
by Lindsey Sullivan - October 20, 2015

What a time for Music Theatre of Connecticut to revive this musical, bringing the 'circus' that is how we the people view seemingly larger-than-life characters into its snug Norwalk space....