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Wednesday, May 15,2013
STAGE

Herstory Exam

Kitchen Theatre honcho Rachel Lampert mines autobiographical amusement with And, Lately. . .

By James MacKillop
It’s hard to tell where the curtain speech (comments about exit doors, cells phones and so on) ends and the action begins in And, Lately. . . . Actor-playwright Rachel Lampert, who is the producing artistic director at Ithaca’s Kitchen Theatre Company, asks for a show of hands, “There isn’t anybody here who doesn’t know me, is there?” One timid hand goes up. With a shrug of the shoulders, she then advises, “You will.”
Wednesday, May 8,2013
STAGE

Back to Bataan

Nurses experience World War II up close and personal in Appleseed’s Cry Havoc

By James MacKillop
In her program notes for Cry Havoc, fledgling director Lois Haas describes her campaign to get Appleseed Productions to mount the dramatic rarity as a “labor of love.” Haas, a stalwart at the company for many years, sees Allan R.
Wednesday, May 8,2013
STAGE

Hook, Lines and Tinker

Peter Pan soars in a new Redhouse interpretation

By James MacKillop
Newsflash: Peter Pan is actually a boy, or, rather, a strapping American adolescent with a certain amount of swagger. After a century of tinkering with the text, cartooning and musicalizing, Peter Pan has come to mean for many audiences a singing, 60-year-old retired female gymnast who flies around the stage on visible wires.
Wednesday, May 8,2013
STAGE

Breezy Does It

The SALT Awards hang 10 in a fast-paced ceremony studded with surprises

By James MacKillop
Starting just about on time at 7 p.m. on Sunday, May 5, at Eastwood’s Palace Theatre, the complete ceremony ended at exactly 8:34 p.m., more than an hour ahead of the usual pace. This somehow occurred even though there was live music on stage from retro-rock specialists The Coachmen and video clips of productions from last year’s season.
Wednesday, May 1,2013
STAGE

Southie Heads East

The South Boston-based comedy-drama Good People comes to Syracuse Stage

By James MacKillop
When asked if he considers himself “rich,” tall, graying Dr. Michael Dillon (David Andrew Macdonald) hesitates but admits he might be “comfortable.” This brings an immediate rejoinder from a scruffy visitor to his office, Margie Walsh (Kate Hodge): “That makes me uncomfortable.”
Wednesday, April 24,2013
STAGE

On the Road Again

A scarred young woman travels through the Deep South in 1964 in SU Drama’s unusual musical Violet

By James MacKillop
Gene Tierney’s eyes, Ingrid Bergman’s cheekbones and Ava Gardiner’s eyebrows. She asks her father if her cruel fate had befallen her because they don’t go to church. Making up for lost faith, she begins her trek in North Carolina’s Spruce Pine, crossing the South by bus to find deliverance in a Protestant Lourdes—with a televangelist in Tulsa, Okla.
Wednesday, April 17,2013
STAGE

Lingo Unchained

Kitchen Theatre’s Motherf**cker with the Hat gains a shocking power from its profane dialogue

By James MacKillop
There are more than 1.3 million Puerto Ricans in New York City, but their life on stage has been most visible as the Sharks and their girlfriends in West Side Story. That does not mean there’s no such thing as a Puerto Rican playwright. Miguel Pinero’s prison-based Short Eyes enjoyed a brilliant but brief career back in the 1970s.
Wednesday, April 17,2013
STAGE

Not-So- Simple Simon

Brighton Beach Memoirs celebrates Neil Simon’s Brooklyn childhood with poignant humor

By James MacKillop
Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, the first of the semiautobiographical, let’s-get-serious “BB” trilogy, has always been popular with audiences, but it is not often seen on local stages. That’s not because, unusual in the Simon canon, the laughter must make its way through layers of tears.
Wednesday, April 17,2013
STAGE

Bubble Up

Top 40 hits from years gone by punctuate Suds’ musical amble down memory lane

By James MacKillop
Nostalgic jukebox musicals celebrating and spoofing songs from our collective youth have long been catnip for local audiences. Forever Plaid, written in 1990, on pre-Beatles boy groups, has enjoyed plenty of local productions in the last two decades. Taffetas, from 1989, had an intense if short run.
Wednesday, April 10,2013
STAGE

Family Outing

Rarely Done hits the right notes for the AIDS-themed musical-drama Falsettoland

By James MacKillop
William Finn and James Lapine’s Falsettos might have won two Tony Awards at its premiere two decades ago, but portions reappear on local stages more often than they do in other regions of the country.
 
 
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