Alarming as the re-emergence of Seventies clothing and musical styles might be, one of that period’s most influential musicals, Chicago, resonates well with modern audiences. That’s because society has finally fulfilled late director/choreographer/auteur Bob Fosse’s prescient observation that Americans, egged on by an unscrupulous media, deify certain classes of criminals–especially…

Like the mid-life crisis that its central character frequently describes but rarely experiences, local dramatist Coleen Hubbard’s play A Ritual for Returning has all the makings of a cathartic event but never actually becomes one. But though it has yet to realize its dramatic potential, this freewheeling romp through the…

Though contemporary theatergoers have long favored the narrowly focused view of dramatists such as Arthur Miller (who’s still writing plays that reflect mostly American concerns), a growing number of contemporary directors are gravitating toward old hands such as Spanish playwright Pedro Calderon de la Barca, who crafted dramas that capture…

Long before professional baseball became an event played between teams of ill-mannered millionaires, America’s pastime served as a metaphor for life’s ups and downs. Of course, that’s when the contests were regularly attended by white-shirted, fedora-wearing spectators with a boyish devotion to the game. And it’s that kind of unbridled…

Love is pain, pain produces suffering, and suffering is the state of being that leads one to God. But not before one has made the straight and narrow trip to hell, where, according to British playwright Ronald Duncan, no one really suffers anymore–including a handful of romantic writers whose collective…

Television’s mutant family of talk shows has effectively bastardized the theater’s long-sacred belief that one person’s emotional odyssey is appropriate subject matter for an audience’s shared catharsis. But not even Jerry Springer’s warped view of the human condition can compare with the shock-value tactics of Canadian playwright Brad Fraser. In…

In 1963, Robert Redford made his Broadway debut in, of all plays, Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park. On the heels of that triumph, the sandy-haired heartthrob launched a successful movie career and used a portion of his Tinseltown megabucks to jump-start the Sundance Institute, a Utah artists’ colony dedicated…

There’s no one more qualified to examine the pretensions of theater professionals and their critics than England’s greatest living playwright, Tom Stoppard, who began his illustrious career as an itinerant drama reviewer. The surreal sense of humor Stoppard displays in The Real Inspector Hound is perfect for taking the air…

Contemporary dramatists don’t typically direct their own plays, mostly because of the notion that at some point, all writers lose a sense of objectivity concerning their own ideas. Lately, though, more playwrights have chosen to direct their own transparent confessions. And in the Denver Center Theatre Company’s world premiere of…

Near the end of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll House, Nora is compelled to choose between living with her patronizing husband or leaving him (and her adoring children) in order to pursue an independent life of self-realization. After a gut-wrenching, twenty-minute battle of wills with her befuddled mate, Nora…

The conducting style of Richard Strauss stood in marked contrast to the flamboyant antics of other twentieth-century maestros. In fact, violinist Yehudi Menuhin once noted, when Strauss took to the podium, there was very little evidence that the great German musician was actually conducting. Nevertheless, a close look at vintage…

In the days when radio was king, Americans seemed as united in spirit as at any point in their history. True, much of what was broadcast was merely sweet-sounding, thinly veiled propaganda (FDR’s Fireside Chats, for instance, weren’t much more than feel-good campaign messages). But the big-band music that came…

Before you declare once and for all your utter disinterest in the private lives (not to mention the private parts) of public figures, take a gander at British playwright Alan Bennett’s intellectual farce, Kafka’s Dick. Far more than an underhanded jab at a deified writer’s supposed anatomical shortcomings, Bennett’s play…

By virtually every account, the Broadway musical is booming. At last tally, a score of productions were playing to near-record crowds on the Great White Way. Of course, this spate of musical entertainment contains its share of theme-park shtick meant to attract starry-eyed out-of-towners and a fringe group of slumming…

At first glance, the Shop’s tiny stage seems a poor choice to house a production of Irish playwright Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa. In fact, the cramped confines of the storefront theater appear especially ill-suited to the emotional climax of Friel’s masterpiece, which calls for five unmarried Irish sisters to…

A quick inventory of the Shakespearean actor’s stock-in-trade includes qualities such as an expressive voice and body, a fertile imagination, and a devotion to spiritual truth tempered by a carnival barker’s sense of showmanship. But when it comes to portraying any of the four major Shakespearean tragic roles (Hamlet, Lear,…

No single event stamps its imprint more indelibly on the body politic than the taking of a hostage. In fact, hostage situations involving American soldiers, journalists and businessmen have each proved the point that nothing–not internal racial discord, impending economic disaster or even a presidential sex scandal–strikes a more resonant…

Crying at the top of her lungs, “I’m sick of Negro dreams–all they ever do is break your heart!” a middle-aged woman flails away with her fists at the one man who promises he’ll rescue her from her dead-end existence. For one brief, glorious moment, it appears that Angel will…

Playwright August Wilson was at Dartmouth College the other day, spouting off once again about why America needs a separate theater dedicated to the interests of African-Americans. White artists, Wilson has repeatedly argued, are simply ill-equipped to understand and interpret his Pulitzer- and Tony-award-winning plays about black life. It takes…

Apart from angst-ridden playwrights, hostile audiences and long periods of unemployment, the greatest challenge faced by a professional actor is the tricky business of sharing the stage with children and small animals. W.C. Fields made hating kids downright stylish, despite the fact that he began his own career by running…

President Clinton’s 1993 appointment of actress Jane Alexander to head the National Endowment for the Arts was seen by many as a healthy sign for the embattled agency. After all, Alexander had enjoyed a distinguished career in the theater and was the first actual artist to hold the post. But…

William Shakespeare was, above all else, a practical man. The sheer majesty of his verse notwithstanding, the Bard of Avon became the world’s greatest playwright because he told his versions of borrowed (some would say stolen) stories better than anyone else. Which is why those who would improve upon Shakespeare’s…