Syracuse New Times - STAGE

Gimme an F -

Wed, 19 Jun 13 00:00:00 -0600

Back in 2003 the now-dead cable TV network Trio briefly aired episodes of Good Clean Porn, the creation of Time magazine satirist Joel Stein that featured condensed versions of XXX-rated fare, albeit without the scenes that got those flicks the XXX rating.

Redneck Rhapsody -

Wed, 19 Jun 13 00:00:00 -0600

Under its blue state skin, Central New York has a hidden yearning for country music. So when country tastes and styles become grist for red-hot satire, we know just how the gags break.

No Fooling -

Wed, 19 Jun 13 00:00:00 -0600

Simon has never been a neglected playwright. Then again, letting some of his shows go fallow as we rethink his strengths has clearly been a good idea. Now in his twilight years, almost age 86, Simon isn’t producing anymore, and we’ve begun to miss him.

Womb with a View -

Wed, 19 Jun 13 00:00:00 -0600

The new production at Ithaca’s Kitchen Theatre Company begins with a stark, off-white square, the size of a parlor, and one metal chair without arms. Nothing else. High above this spartan space, scenic designer Alexander Woodward has placed a square frame, the same dimensions as the one on the floor.

Sleuth or Consequences - An Agatha Christie puzzler starts the summer season at Cortland Repertory

Wed, 12 Jun 13 00:00:00 -0600

Stylish Agatha Christie mysteries have flourished at Cortland Repertory Theatre for several years now. The company really has the hang of them, beginning with dialect coach Dustin Charles, who commands British accents of different classes and, in the case of the season opener, The Unexpected Guest, two social classes in Welsh. Costumer Wendi R. Zea loves period costumes; this is a late Christie, 1958.

Drizzle Dazzler - Auburn's Merry-Go-Round starts its summer with the tap-happy musical Singin' in the Rain

Wed, 05 Jun 13 00:00:00 -0600

You know summertime has really arrived when Ed Sayles, producing director for Auburn’s Merry- Go-Round Playhouse, tosses a posey into the audience to start every show. Indeed, MGR’s ebullient season kickoff with Singin’ in the Rain will make audiences forget that they have endured yet another typically long Central New York winter.

School Dazed - Cliques collide in the interactive spoofery of The Awesome 80s Prom

Wed, 05 Jun 13 00:00:00 -0600

Synth pop, pom poms and Pop Rocks are among the cultural touchstones of The Awesome 80s Prom, the interactive stage spoof which marks the inaugural collaboration between the Covey Theatre Company and downtown’s Landmark Theatre.

Setting the Stage - Classics and newbies mix it up for Syracuse Stage's 2013-2014 slate

Wed, 29 May 13 00:00:00 -0600

Call it balance, if you will. The holiday show for Syracuse Stage’s 2013-2014 season will be the best-known stage work in the English language, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, albeit a new, non-musical version by innovative playwright Romulus Linney.

A Homer Run - A cast of one inhabits multiple roles for Syracuse Stage's An Iliad

Wed, 22 May 13 00:00:00 -0600

For several hundred years, the sprawling stories of western culture’s oldest epic, Homer’s The Iliad, were recited and acted out before they were written down. Even when seen on the page, certain pages seem to cry out to be spoken:stark verbal encounters and the hair-raising viciousness of battle.

Shakes It Up - Hamlet Cha Cha Cha kids the Bard in Central New York Playhouse's musical spoof

Wed, 22 May 13 00:00:00 -0600

As you can tell from the title, Hamlet Cha Cha Cha is not a tragedy about a melancholy Danish prince who can’t make up his mind. Strange to say, this Hamlet (Peter Dowling), sometimes called “Hammy,” speaks quite a few of the lines from Shakespeare. Like, “O! that this too solid flesh would melt,” only here it becomes a gag line.

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

Wed, 15 May 13 00:00:00 -0600

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.”

Back to Bataan - Nurses experience World War II up close and personal in Appleseed's Cry Havoc

Wed, 08 May 13 00:00:00 -0600

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.

Hook, Lines and Tinker - Peter Pan soars in a new Redhouse interpretation

Wed, 08 May 13 00:00:00 -0600

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.

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

Wed, 08 May 13 00:00:00 -0600

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.

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

Wed, 01 May 13 00:00:00 -0600

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.”

On the Road Again - A scarred young woman travels through the Deep South in 1964 in SU Drama's unusual musical Violet

Wed, 24 Apr 13 00:00:00 -0600

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.

Lingo Unchained - Kitchen Theatre's Motherf**cker with the Hat gains a shocking power from its profane dialogue

Wed, 17 Apr 13 00:00:00 -0600

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.

Not-So- Simple Simon - Brighton Beach Memoirs celebrates Neil Simon's Brooklyn childhood with poignant humor

Wed, 17 Apr 13 00:00:00 -0600

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.

Bubble Up - Top 40 hits from years gone by punctuate Suds' musical amble down memory lane

Wed, 17 Apr 13 00:00:00 -0600

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.

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

Wed, 10 Apr 13 00:00:00 -0600

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.