Theater
When this version of Pippin hits New York, it will be a welcome alternative to the trend among many of the current Broadway musicals to demote dance elements to the background.
Nervous mainstream audiences could breathe easy, the messy cultural ruckus of the ’60s was over: it was ok to find yourself in the suburbs.
Director Guy Ben-Aharon is on a roll. Working through Israeli Stage and German Stage, he has brought together another smart, compelling foreign play (an American premiere) and a first-rate cast.
Bare bones, determinedly unhokey, and intimate, director David Cromer’s matter-of-fact approach does away with the irritatingly self-conscious fussiness that afflicts so many productions.
In Memphis, the risqué exhilaration of early rhythm and blues is airbrushed away, to the point that the show appears to argue that from its inception black music sold out to mainstream tastes.
Moonbox Productions, one of the small theater troupes that bubbles with new talent from the Boston area, has mounted an affecting production of “Of Mice and Men.”
Larry Coen directs “Chinglish”’s awkwardly written romance with a savory earnestness, but he can’t put the pieces of the fragmented script (you laugh/you cry) together.
This version of “La Belle et la Bête” never commits to a through-line about how its metaphors and rich visual imagery are supposed to operate.
Despite being a staged reading with scripts still in hand, the members of the Israeli Stage ensemble were already comfortably inhabiting their roles, striking just the right balance between the tragic and comic dimensions of their characters.
Cut out of translucent and colored ox or donkey hide (sorry, PETA), they are foot and a half tall, two-dimensional figures operated by rods set up behind a slightly canted screen.
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