Keith Waits - Page 8

The idea of two companies in one community doing the same show within a few months of each other poses many questions. Sometimes the rights to a popular musical become available and there is something of a feeding frenzy - a dedicated theatergoer could have availed themselves of no less than four productions of Mamma Mia! in this area in the last year. Perhaps they were all stellar productions. I certainly didn't hear any complaints about poor attendance, which indicates either an insatiable appetite for an ABBA jukebox musical or the payoff of careful cultivation of core audience support by each company. In any case, nobody appeared to suffer any ill effects from the repetition.

HELLO! The Book of Mormon is in Louisville for the third time since the production started touring. The 2011 Broadway Tony Award-winning smash stands up well, and Thursday night's audience was ready to roar with delight at all the outrageous humor that skewers many religions, Western stereotypes of Africa - and the reverse - and many cultural touchstones.

A young man is raised with the expectation that he will follow in his father's footsteps, working in the trade and carrying on an important tradition, but instead, he wants to follow his own path and become an artist. It is a classic coming-of-age narrative of a generational and cultural shift that is common enough in Western literature. By finding the same conflict in an Iraqi family, Sinan Antoon's The Corpse Washer shows just how universal fundamental storytelling forms can be.

I keep finding that theatre, even revivals of classic plays, is more often than not, about the moment. Whatever side of the aisle you find yourself, we all seem to agree that America is as divided as it has ever been, and each side has taken to viewing the other with collective disbelief. 'How can they THINK that?' has become a daily reaction.

On February 25, in a ceremony held at Spalding University's Columbia Theatre Ballroom, Arts-Louisville Managing Editor Keith Waits presided over an awards presentation for excellence in theatre in Louisville and the surrounding area. Categories for student, professional, and locally produced productions were chosen by participants voting through Broadway World.com's online awards portal.

There are many thoughts about life after death, most tied to one organized religion or another, but there is one less denominational fantasy afterlife...let's call it the Hollywood version, in which flights of literary fancy that violate most of the rules of Heaven are always possible.

Class conflict, the value of beauty, and the ties that bind us are just a few of the themes running through Theatre [502]'s moving new production Sergio's Museum. Set in the last days of Mexico's aristocracy, the play, the latest collaboration from playwright Steve Moulds and director Diana Grisanti, follows the plight of Sergio, a recently orphaned eleven-year-old boy

No, it's not the movie. Nor is it the basis of the movie. But if the movie prompts you to check out this play, then everybody wins.

It is difficult to fully appreciate the volume and quality of songs written by Irving Berlin in your head at one moment. Most of us over a certain age know several, but we might not always connect each one to Berlin. We always know he was responsible for 'White Christmas', of course, and 'God Bless America', but you might only know that 'I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm' was written by one of those names...Cole Porter perhaps, or Jerome Kern.

In his program notes for this production, director Charlie Sexton states, 'Sometimes we need a night of theatre where pretense, deep subtext and the desire to change the world is stripped away...' While I can understand how John Cariani's play fits the bill, I think there is still a few moments that speak to the darker complications of human relationships, even if it is charm that carries the day.

Something Rotten! roared into town this week. And judging from the high-energy opening night, audiences won't be lifting their noses at this hybrid Shakespeare/Musical production. The title itself is a quotation from one of Shakespeare's best-known plays and includes the ubiquitous use of exclamation points in titles of musicals. Additionally, this particular quote points to some of the plot points in the storyline.

Marriages fail for many reasons, or perhaps, more often than not, it boils down to the fear that you have sacrificed something for that commitment, and you want another chance to get it back. And if you have children, the weight is much greater.

If Actors Theatre were to make an annual tradition of producing the latest Dominique Morisseau play every January, it would be a reason to rejoice. One year after the indelible Skeleton Crew, director Steve H. Broadnax III, and actor Patrese D. McClain have returned with Pipeline, an even stronger play that implodes the narrative cliches that have weighed down African American stories for generations.

This week's Broadway Series production ushers in the holiday season with the stage adaptation of the 1983 movie, A Christmas Story. It took almost three decades for the musical to come into being, hitting Broadway November 2012. The perennial television favorite is a nostalgic stroll through small-town northern Indiana circa 1940. And a new tradition is developing with recent years' seasonal tours of A Christmas Story The Musical.

If you have been even remotely close to a mall and/or department store during the Holiday season, you know well the Scene. Often found within the center of the shopping hub-bub and cleverly placed near the toys, an onslaught of seasonal scenery is in sight: adorable gingerbread houses, cotton-candy like 'snow' drifts that are replete with gumdrops and woodland creatures and candy canes that are 4-8 feet tall that line a snow-covered road where you are assisted by happy helpers that support and guide your way. And we all know to whom that road leads...Santa Claus!!! Oh, the excitement builds just thinking about visiting with Ol' St. Nick, or is that anxiety and nausea?

As a kid, I remember watching White Christmas (1954) every year with my family. When I got a little older I came across Holiday Inn, the 1941 precursor that also starred Bing Crosby, but paired with Fred Astaire, and introducing the song 'White Christmas'. There was a widely held opinion among some of my friends that it was the superior movie, an attitude that remained as long as we were only watching the edited version on commercial television. Because you see, they always cut the Blackface number. Once you see it, all innocence about this movie is lost. It forever tarnishes a film that contains two of Fred Astaire's most innovative numbers: the firecracker dance, and the drunken New Year's Eve tango that is a masterpiece of comic movement. Even for the time this number, egregiously inserted for the Lincoln's Birthday sequence (yes, it was once a holiday), seems shocking and offensive.

This review includes a longer than usual list of credits in the header, and that may point to a deficiency in the posting of other reviews, but the exception made here is to indicate the particularly balanced collaboration among the team members.

Poets have been seeking the truth about love for centuries. As elusive as the breeze and as prolific as the butterfly.

I'm not sure how many have read Mary Shelley's classic novel, so familiar is the creature from countless generations of the story that have moved further and further from the source. It seems likely that there might be a good number of people who have never read or seen any of these, and only know the Frankenstein 'monster' as a cartoonish icon. But it is in the theatre that we tend to find iterations that hew closer to the original tale.

Walking to my car after seeing Bunbury Theatre's current show at The Henry Clay, I had to return a phone call to my sister.