[Trigger warning: sexual abuse, rape] by Rebecca Halat The Illusion Theater’s production of Lee Blessing’s For the Loyal explores truth, consequences, and obligations. The narrative is based on the real-life events of the Penn State-Jerry Sandusky child rape scandal, but avoids falling into the trap of simply re-telling that narrative. The play begins by exploring…
Have you ever done something without knowing why? –so asks a character in If You Don’t Weaken, and it comes at a very timely moment, for the audience may just be asking themselves why this woman is making such inexplicable, illogical decisions in her life. So is the character’s friend, for that matter. After all, why…
by Adam M. Schenck Have you ever been sitting there in the audience, Live Theatre Goer, and wondered, “Why are there so few people here and so many people at home watching television?” Well, this critic has had that thought, and let me say that I can’t recall having a solid belly laugh at a…
At one point during The Illusionists: Witness the Impossible, one of the titular performers asked an audience member if he had ever wanted to be a magician. “Yes,” the man answered, and when asked why he never pursued this, he explained, “Well, I was 8.” The implications were obvious — being a magician is not…
by Rebecca Halat As a youth, Beauty and the Beast was one of my favorite movies, so the child in me was very excited to be able to see the Orpheum’s production, bringing my old memories to the stage. This performance certainly matched my expectations, and I was reminded of what a pleasure it is…
By Rebecca Halat and Adam Schenck Even before the film Selma, and before President Obama’s return to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in that Alabama town, we all knew the story of Martin Luther King, Jr. Many of us even know that the heroic orator’s persona has been sanitized to quell our worries about race and…
by CHRISTINE SARKES SASSEVILLE Stephen Schwartz of Wicked and Godspell fame and Director Diane Paulus have created a wildly entertaining and exhilarating revival of Broadway’s original 1972 Bob Fosse iconic version of Pippin, now at the Orpheum Theatre through Sunday. With soaring vocals, jaw-dropping acrobatics, charming and relatable characters and a cute kid and a dog, Pippin offers…
BY TAMAR NEUMANN: “I like Colgate [the toothpaste]” may not be the most romantic line you’ve ever heard, but it sums up the quirky type of romance typical in Mixed Blood Theatre’s Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World. This play is the first of four plays in the 55454 Series put on by Mixed Blood…
By LIZ BYRON. I was sitting in a German class a couple of years ago when my teacher, demonstrating a new grammar concept, used the example character “Frau Blücher”. Without thinking, I neighed like a horse, much to the alarm of my classmates — most of whom were a good ten years younger than me…
BY TAMAR NEUMANN: The Children’s Theatre Company is known for commissioning new works for younger audiences. They have commissioned over 200 plays in their long history and they continue to add to that number every season. This season they have chosen to adapt Paul Fleishman’s book Seedfolks into a short (a little over an hour) one-woman…
