Archive for 2010

Alfred Uhry, the playwright of DRIVING MISS DAISY, drew on his memories of Atlanta and its German-Jewish families to write THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO.  He set his play in 1939 amid the unsettling news of Hitler’s advances and subtle anti-semitic rumblings in the US.   What he really reveals to [...]

The Philadelphia Theatre Company’s latest offering is the upbeat musical comedy, THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin. If you’ve not seen this show before, the title is about all you need to know about the plot. There is a group of “children” who [...]

Towson High School visited again by Sherlock Holmes! November 13th I had the treat to enjoy my school’s production of Sherlock Holmes. I was especially excited to see this play as our school had a new director and the student playing Professor Moriarty was a friend and completely new to [...]

STAGE Magazine’s News Reporter Jim Hilgen interviews Michelle Pauls, Managing Artistic Director of 2010 Barrymore Award-Winning B. Someday Productions at Walking Fish Theatre. B. Someday Productions garnered this year’s coveted award for Educational Excellence and Community Service. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlLxQvJBg_c Watch Jim Hilgen’s Interview with Michelle Pauls of B. Someday Productions

OLD WICKED SONGS is the newest offering from Bristol Riverside Theatre. This drama by Jon Marans pairs Keith Baker and David Kenner as a music professor and his student in 1986 Vienna. Stephen Hoffman (Kenner) is a piano prodigy who has come to Vienna to study with a piano teacher [...]

If you are at an age when your parents are becoming “the children” and you are becoming “the parents”, then this play hits home.  SOCIAL SECURITY at the Playmasters theatre in southern Bucks County presents author Andrew Bergman’s tale of a Mother coming to live with a well-to- do couple [...]

IN THE BLOOD, by playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama, is a poignantly portrayed tragedy about Hester La Negrita (portrayed by Tené Fletcher), an impoverished mother of five bastard children by five different fathers.Mother and children, whom she refers to as [...]

Tonight’s performance of Theatre Exile’s production of THAT PRETTY PRETTY; OR THE RAPE PLAY by Sheila Callaghan had the juice, chutzpah, guts, gall, audacity, and, forgive a chauvinistic term, “balls,” to make you squirm, gasp, giggle and laugh as it hammered its message home.   When two strippers, Agnes and Valerie, modeled [...]

The Philadelphia Theatre Workshop opened its new season with the world premiere of a comedy by local playwright Kathy Anderson, FRONT ROW SEAT. Taking place in Texas, November 1963, this is the tale of the Flannery family and their efforts to get to Dallas in time to see the President [...]

Irving Berlin’s ANNIE GET YOUR GUN opened on Broadway in 1946 and ran for 1,147 performances.  It is classic musical theater at its best with some of Berlin’s finest songs. For leading lady Ethel Merman it was the biggest Broadway hit of her career.  Loosely based on the life of Phoebe Ann [...]

During its twelve years, Act II has steadily established itself as a solid producer of small scale musicals and plays. So it piqued my interest when I heard they would be mounting their first production of a Shakespeare play—and THE TEMPEST no less. How would their lovely, intimate playing space [...]

STAGE Magazine News Reporter Jim Hilgen begins a new series that will chronicle actor Ron Bush’s move to the Big Apple to pursue his dream of being a professional actor. Segment one gives us a brief introduction to the actor and information on what led up to his decision to [...]

How fortunate we are to have the Walnut Street Theatre begin its 202nd season with the nostalgic holiday musical, WHITE CHRISTMAS. We give credit for this classic, based on the 1954 film of the same name, to Irving Berlin for the music and lyrics and to David Ives and Paul [...]

COMIC POTENTIAL, the title of the current offering from Chapel Street Players in Newark, DE, pretty well sums it up. The full-length comedy written by British playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn is a curiously interesting play with a seemingly absurd plot. Set in a future time when androids are common, it [...]

IOLANTHE is considered one of the classic Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.  The light-hearted story touches on themes of class, identity and art in society.  We never tire of these concepts, included in almost every G&S operetta: the potential for comedy is limitless. The Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Chester County’s [...]

Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, PA staged the dated, but eye pleasing, HELLO, DOLLY! to a receptive audience who appreciated the performances of a large cast of twenty-eight.  It had the old style big Broadway stage feel with nice backdrop, multi-layered sets, beautiful period piece costumes  and nicely staged [...]

The whimsical treatment of The Princess and the Pea called ONCE UPON A MATTRESS is on stage at Immaculata University.  Immaculata U. does not have a formal theater program.  This show is perfect for a small budget, extracurricular activity.  It’s especially fine if you find a leading lady to tackle [...]

Temple University’s Opera Theater opened their fall opera, Mozart’s COSI FAN TUTTE, on Friday November 19th. Directed by Marc Astafan and conducted by Andrew Altenbach, the opera was acted by both graduate and under-grad voice students. It is sung in Italian but subtitles were provided. The story takes place in [...]

All the world’s a stage and before Shakespeare there were the ancient Greek plays of Aeschulus, Sophocles and Euripedes; and there was the philosophy of Socrates. Quintessence Theatre Group is presenting PLATO’S APOLOGY: THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES at the physically condensed Sedgwick Theater on Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia’s Mt. Airy [...]

URINETOWN is one of the more wacky musical satires out there. If you love musical theater and have an off-beat sense of humor, this show will make you laugh until you . . . er, laugh your head off. The premise is as original as it is unpleasant – in [...]