Review: FOREVER PLAID at Florida Rep
A struggling quartet, The Plaids, is on their way to their big break when their car is hit by a bus and all four are killed instantly. By some cosmic mystery, however, they’re allowed to come back to earth to do that show just one time.
Interview: LJ Benet, Summer Greer of MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET at Fred Kavli Theatre
Million Dollar Quartet, the show inspired by a legendary Sun Records jam session in 1956, was an unlikely hit when it made its Broadway debut in 2010. Although it was based on an actual event, the musical takes liberties with what actually went on during that memorable day in order to create a more appealing show. If you take that into account, you can ignore the show’s numerous exaggerations, anachronisms, and falsehoods, because it is simply enormously entertaining. The show opens this Friday for a two-weekend run at the Fred Kavli Theatre in Thousand Oaks.
Review: MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET at SCR
South Coast Repertory presents the Broadway musical Million Dollar Quartet at the Mission San Juan Capistrano under the stars as part of its new Outside SCR program, and the quality production recalls the good, old days of Summer Stock. SCR has collected a talented cast and put on an enchanting evening.
Review: THE GREAT GATSBY Heralds a Triumphant Opening for The Star Theatre At HCC
THE GREAT GATSBY is one of my absolute favourite books – the characters, the landscape, the era are all so beautifully described by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This stage adaptation by Stephan Fourie and directed by Neil Leachman did not disappoint. It is a joyous spectacle up on stage that stayed beautifully true to the characters and the story.
BWW Review: THE MARVELOUS WONDERETTES: DREAM ON at The Winter Park Playhouse
What fun it is to take a stroll down memory lane and revisit the locations (and experiences) of our youth. Such journeys often include stops at familiar haunts, laughs at the fashions we thought were so hip at the time, and listening to the songs that served as the soundtrack to our formative years. Imagine, then, if you could roll all of those things into a musical, and you might get THE MARVELOUS WONDERETTES: DREAM ON – the current mainstage production at the Winter Park Playhouse. This fun, fabulous and fantastic time-machine of a show featuring four wonderfully talented women illustrates perfectly the kind of intimate, inviting and thoroughly entertaining production that The Winter Park Playhouse so often has to offer.
BWW Review: DISNEY IN CONCERT: A DREAM IS A WISH at PCEC
One ethos of MM Creative Productions is to make live performances accessible and exciting. Whilst Disney is a sure-fire crowd pleaser, there was plenty added in to DISNEY IN CONCERT: A DREAM IS A WISH to make it a dazzling and captivating show, and proved just why Disney had entrusted MM Creative with their classics.
BWW Review: All Hail the Met's “Wagnerians in Concert,” Live from Wiesbaden, Germany
With nary a “Ho-yo-to-ho” to be heard, the Met’s “Met Stars Live in Concert” series brought four eminent Wagnerians--sopranos Christine Goerke and Elza van den Heever, tenor Andreas Schager and baritone Michael Volle--together from the dazzlingly Baroque Hessisches Staatstheater in Wiesbaden, Germany, live on May 8. This “Wagnerians in Concert” will be available from the Met’s website until just before the witching hour on May 21.
BWW Review: FESTIVE TALES, Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Broadcasted mere hours after the change in Christmas COVID restrictions in the UK, the RSC’s Festive Tales brings some much-needed escapism. We are met with an empty theatre dotted with candles in lanterns and a lone voice singing a carol. It really magnifies the emptiness of our performance spaces at the moment.
Madison Opera's OPERA IN THE PARK Goes Online
Madison Opera's Opera in the Park isn't in a park this year, but it will be available for people to enjoy for free in their backyards, in their living rooms, in their kayaks, or anywhere else with an internet connection. The digital concert will be released on Saturday, July 25 at 8pm Central, and can be watched on Madison Opera's website.
BWW Review: SMORGASBORD! at Ridgefield Theater Barn
On Friday, January 31, 2020, I had the pleasure of seeing SMORGASBORD! at the Ridgefield Theater Barn in Ridgefield, CT. This musical revue has music and lyrics by Bradford Blake who is also directs the show. Under the excellent accompaniment of musical director Charles Smith on keyboard, Charles Casimiro on stand-up bass, and Robert Kogut on percussion, the talented singing cast of Anya Caravella, Robert Geils, Tracey Marble, and Zachery Theis provide a highly entertaining show comprised of song after song, each conveying its own story, without a central storyline, the songs linked only by the consistent pattern of comical food-themed lyrics.
Beethoven Vocal Concerts Set for Long Island And Manhattan
In 2020, the world will celebrate Beethoven's 250th birthday. In anticipation of his sestercentennial, this coming June 26 & 28, 2019, singers Deborah Carmichael, Kinga Cserjési, Berry Jones, and Peter Ludwig, joined by instrumentalists Nikita Morozov (violin), Valeriya Sholokhova (cello), and Doug Martin (piano), will perform some of Beethoven's little-known vocal works, as well as familiar favorites.
BWW Insight: Mezzo Joyce DiDonato Plays Fairy Godmother at Carnegie Hall Master Classes
Mezzo Joyce DiDonato knows quite a bit about being Cinderella--after all, she's played the title characters in Rossini's CENERENTOLA and Massenet's CENDRILLON at the Met and other major opera houses. But it also appears she's a first-rate “fairy godmother,” as she proved with a group of emerging artists in a series of Master Classes in Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Room of the Resnick Education Wing last week.