Many contemporary adaptations of Greek tragedies, such as Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, effectively use ancient myths to address modern problems. In fact, when it was first produced in 1944, the French dramatist’s modern-dress tale about a woman who defies her uncle’s edict outlawing the burial of her dead brother managed to…
“I may be eccentric,” Alma Winemiller tells the man she has always loved from afar, “but not so eccentric that I don’t have the ordinary human need for love.” A few moments later, John Buchanan Jr., who has known Alma since they were children in Glorious Hill, Mississippi, confesses that…
A black-and-white-striped uniform draping his stooped frame, a bespectacled prisoner wavers between capitulation and defiance as he impersonates Shylock in a production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice that’s being presented before a group of concentration-camp guards. Trembling yet strangely calm, the frail Jewish man turns toward his Nazi captors…
If, like the ancient Greeks who started the world’s first dramatic festivals, you’re a firm believer in the healing power of art, then the musical Blood Brothers might serve as something of a cathartic experience in the aftermath of last week’s calamity at Columbine High School. Still, chances are that…
Playwrights have been turning the tables on their critics ever since Athenian dramatists parodied one another’s efforts 2,500 years ago. Whether being skewered by eighteenth-century British wit Richard Brinsley Sheridan (The Critic), lampooned by contemporary dramatist–and former reviewer himself–Tom Stoppard (The Real Inspector Hound) or indirectly taken to task by…
When Bernard Slade’s Same Time, Next Year debuted on Broadway in 1975, the play about a man and a woman who rendezvous once a year at a California inn was praised for its “genuinely funny” look at how attitudes toward marriage had changed between the Donna Reed era and the…
Far from being just a dirty family secret, incest is the supreme betrayal of familial trust. The unspeakable offense–which often suffocates both victim and perpetrator in a cloak of silent shame and sworn secrecy–invariably rears its ugly head from one generation to another until someone finds the courage, the will…
The problem with producing My Fair Lady is that (a) most audience members harbor fond memories of the 1964 film starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn; (b) most of those same theatergoers have already seen umpteen different stage versions that pale in comparison to their memories of the venerated film;…
Near the end of Josefina Lopez’s Real Women Have Curves, an aspiring young writer tells us that as she grew up, she wanted to teach her Chicana elders how to live a better, more liberated life. “But in their own way,” Anna says in retrospect of her mother’s friends and…
To dismiss Cervantes’s epic novel about the quintessential dreamer Don Quixote as an insubstantial story about chivalry is like saying that King Lear is just a grumpy old man’s four-hour rant. Or that Chekhov’s four comic masterpieces are simply boring talky dramas in which nothing ever really happens. And even…
Despite an encouraging beginning, several refreshing portrayals and a few side-splitting moments, the Mirror Image’s evening of three one-act plays starts to run out of steam after the second offering. That’s understandable, given that two and a half hours is about as long as most people are willing to watch…
Can a performing artist, whether it be legendary opera diva Maria Callas or veteran New York actress Gordana Rashovich, subjugate herself to a writer’s intent while imbuing his work with her own unforgettable charisma? Is it possible to be at once transparent and luminous, reflecting a dramatic composer’s fleeting brilliance…
Infused with more theatricality–and more songs–than any other play in the Shakespearean canon, yet lacking a plot substantial enough to undergird the work’s inlaid histrionics, The Tempest has for centuries fascinated, confounded and inspired directors charged with making sense of the Bard’s valedictory. At times a philosophical discourse about reality…
Somewhere in the mad rush to ensure that our children will know more than we did at their age–even if they don’t yet have a clue what to do with all that knowledge–what often gets overlooked is an idea as old as humanity itself: The encouragement of a child’s creative…
You’d think that plays about dysfunctional families and “personal identity issues” would have run their course by now. Well, think again, Oprah fans. Just when it seemed as if America’s collective navel-picking and self-pity-partying were headed for the theatrical graveyard, along come a couple of local productions that resurrect our…
Like any good tragedy, the Broadway musical Titanic begins by introducing us to characters who yearn, Icarus-like, to “fabricate great works” that will confer a larger sense of meaning on their day-to-day lives. Citing such manmade marvels as the Parthenon, the Great Wall of China and the Egyptian pyramids, Thomas…
As the majestic strains of Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” play in the background prior to the start of The Complete History of America (Abridged), you can hear some devilish laughter as the audience anticipates a sharply satirical take on our nation’s checkered past. But when three grinning…
If it’s true that the supreme test of any classic play lies in its adaptability to a modern director’s radical vision, then it’s also true that the playwright’s unique insight into the human condition is what made the play a classic in the first place. In fact, contemporary adaptations of…
When the time comes to pay final respects to a loved one, we’re usually compelled to talk about our loss–which means that in order for the cathartic experience to be complete, someone must listen to what we say. That’s the essential concept underlying Jeffrey Hatcher’s Three Viewings, a collection of…
Infused with fantastical characters, references to Freemasonry and enchanting music, Mozart’s The Magic Flute lends itself to far-flung interpretation while embracing audiences of all tastes. You can set the two-act opera on the moon, against a blighted urban landscape or, as is the case with Opera Colorado’s enjoyable production, amid…
You can sense the anticipation building in the audience about fifteen minutes before the Country Dinner Playhouse’s production of Clue the Musical begins. Armed with tally sheets that list the suspects, weapons and rooms familiar to anyone who has played the board game of the musical’s title, most theatergoers seem…
Everything an artist produces is, to varying degrees, a manifestation of his or her own experience. In the case of playwright Henrik Ibsen, scholars have long speculated that The Master Builder was the great Norwegian’s attempt to channel a few of his personal demons through a series of fascinating characters…
