Theater Camp Is Too Sweet to Take Issue With

 Posted on June 10, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  878 words  |  Elina Uphoff

This celebration of dorks, divas, and devotion to one’s art would feel sweet at any time, but as actors join writers on the picket line, it ends up being a little spicy as well. Immediacy is the last thing on the mind of Theater Camp, a cheerfully nostalgic movie filled with children who worship Liza Minnelli and adults who love the performing-arts sanctuary of their youth so much they came back as teachers. [Read More]

Theater Review: Aaron Sorkins To Kill a Mockingbird Adaptation Walks the Walk

 Posted on June 10, 2024  |  14 minutes  |  2835 words  |  Elina Uphoff

From To Kill a Mockingbird, at the Shubert. “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.” You won’t hear Atticus Finch say those words to his son Jem in the To Kill a Mockingbird now alighting on Broadway. [Read More]

Theater Review: At the Armory, a Mesmerizingly Japanese Antigone

 Posted on June 10, 2024  |  6 minutes  |  1195 words  |  Sherie Connelly

From Antigone, at the Armory. Satoshi Miyagi’s grand, mesmerizing Antigone is not a tragedy. It seems like it might have been more of one when the director first tackled the 2,500-year-old play back in 2004. But by the time Miyagi brought a new version, reenvisioned with the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center, to the Avignon Festival in 2017, the ancient Greek drama had become a Buddhist ritual, an expansive tribute to the spirits of the dead, visually and musically gorgeous and released from any Western notions of the dramatic power of emotional angst. [Read More]

Theater Review: Bad Food and Worse Family Dynamics in Pocatello

 Posted on June 10, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  1061 words  |  Elina Uphoff

A famous agent used to instruct clients never to set a scene in a bus: Americans don’t mind stories that are sad, he said, but they draw the line at downmarket depressing. Apparently Samuel D. Hunter, who is only 33, has smarter representation. In his plays, which collectively earned him a MacArthur “genius” grant this year, downmarket depressing is usually the high point. The Whale, for instance, concerns a 600-pound man eating himself to death. [Read More]

Theater Review: Silly Tolstoy? Yes, at Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812

 Posted on June 10, 2024  |  6 minutes  |  1146 words  |  Aldo Pusey

That’s a comet? How can it be that a show based on the most serious novel of all time is both the most gorgeous new musical in town and, for much of its length, the silliest? That may be a self-answering question. Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, which opens on Broadway tonight, is so unlikely a mainstream entertainment that its creative team apparently felt compelled, while adapting it to ever larger venues since its 2012 Ars Nova debut, to conceal its essential nature in ever more effective disguises. [Read More]

Theater Review: The Glittery Pleasures of Summer: The Donna Summer Musical

 Posted on June 10, 2024  |  8 minutes  |  1573 words  |  Zora Stowers

Hot stuff. “It was a great party,” reminisces one of Summer: The Donna Summer Musical’s three avatars for its central singer, near the end of its speedy 100 minutes. “And I wasn’t just at the party” — here, a number of my fellow audience members anticipated the sassy punch line and shouted along — “I was the party.” No matter how much of an onstage bash is advertised, I’m inherently skeptical of jukebox musicals. [Read More]

Theater Review: The Unexpected Charms of Bring It On: The Musical

 Posted on June 10, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  871 words  |  Sherie Connelly

Bring It On: The Musical. After ghosts and vampires, there are few things seasoned Broadwaygoers fear more than “cheer-face.” We’re all still smarting from the dumbassery of last winter’s cheerleader spoofsical Lysistrata Jones, a perfectly flimsy little summer diversion dragged from its natural Off Broadway habitat kicking and screaming, hauled uptown, and dunked in the abyss of the Walter Kerr — where it quickly and predictably perished. Now up steps Bring It On: The Musical, based (very, very loosely) on the good-natured pom-pom procedural and Kirsten Dunst teen comedy from 2000. [Read More]

Theater Review: Trying to Breathe Life Into Little Me

 Posted on June 10, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  746 words  |  Zora Stowers

Rachel York and Christian Borle in Little Me. Almost since the series began in 1994, Encores! has sparked arguments about what kinds of old musicals it should be reviving. If they’re still commercially viable, as Chicago clearly was, do they deserve the reconstructive effort? If they’re artistically minor but historically important, will they interest enough people to fill City Center? And if they’re in between, aren’t they too in-between? Myself, I haven’t cared what shows Encores! [Read More]

Theres Only One Way Mont X Change Would Return to Drag Race

 Posted on June 10, 2024  |  6 minutes  |  1122 words  |  Janel Helmers

It’s been three days since the Drag Race All Stars 7 finale, but the memory of runner-up Monét X Change’s final performance has not faded one bit. Her showdown with eventual winner Jinkx Monsoon to Katy Perry’s “Swish Swish” was the culmination of a string of thrilling moments created by Monét this season, including a campy Ella Fitzgerald lip sync, a viral dance challenge, and a live classical aria. But it’s not even the first “break the internet” moment for the Brooklyn queen. [Read More]

This Is CNN: Why Youll Be Seeing More High-Profile Documentaries Like Blackfish Between World Cri

 Posted on June 10, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  1009 words  |  Sherie Connelly

CNN sometimes seems to exist solely as a punching bag for the rest of the media. Trade reporters revel in the network’s slumping ratings, conservatives whine about Piers Morgan on Twitter, Jon Stewart is forever finding a new way to mock it for some perceived gaffe. What hasn’t drawn as much attention is the all-news channel’s aggressive efforts to bulk up its long-form programming — content that’s not tied to breaking news. [Read More]