Meet the People 1940 - Articles Page 3.4

Some of the most intensely dedicated theater students at Black Box Studios / Black Box Performing Arts Center are the many young women of the Ma'ayanot Yeshiva HS Drama Society, now in it's 8th and - of course - most unique season.

BWW Reviewer Peter Nason chooses the best musical theatre characters from 1940-2020; see if your favorites are on our list of the best characters from Broadway musicals.

BWW Reviewer Peter Nason chooses the greatest theatrical works (non-musical) from 1920-2020; see if your favorites made the list!

BWW Reviewer Peter Nason chooses the best film musicals since the sound era began; see if your favorites made the list!

CMS'sa??50th anniversarya??seasona??will welcome spring with programs that look back and look forward.  On April 3, Mozart's groundbreakinga??Piano Quartet in G minor, composed by the genius who invented the piano-violin-viola-cello quartet, shows how this new combination of instruments gave an opportunity for expressiveness that would become more pronounced in the Romantic age.  The piece is combined with a piano quartet and a quintet that follow in the next hundred years a?" one by Mendelssohn and one by Strauss. 

The family at the epicenter of John Steinbeck's groundbreaking novel The Grapes of Wrath forever captured the nation's heart in 1940 with a celebrated film version starring Henry Fonda. Now, Arena Stage is continuing the Joad family story with Mother Road, a play in which actor Tony Sancho finds himself carrying on the legacy of these beloved characters whose story has suddenly found renewed relevance eight decades later.

The cast, the music, the history all under the adept direction of Russ made extra beautiful by the music from Kinosian's fingers made THE GORGEOUS NOTHINGS: IN CONCERT one of the finest nightclub outings so far this year and, because Bobby CANNOT wait to see this flower bloom, we give this Work In Progress a full 5 Out Of 5 Rainbows and encourage all out there who love Lavender tales from the past to support Life Jacket Theatre Company.

a?oeRight This Waya?? to the Times Union Center for the Performing Arts to see Bandstand. Audiences were so moved by the musical on February 18. Bandstand follows the story of veterans' home from World War II as they try to qualify for a music competition. The group becomes the Donny Nova band and intends to win the competition and dedicate it to the veterans that defended the United States. It is very appropriate for the show to come to Jacksonville, FL as we have not one, but two naval bases. You could feel the theater become heavy with an array of emotions as audience members were transported to this time period and watched these characters portray very real post-war circumstances.

Essential Theatre is proud to announce the winners of the 2020 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award: The Outrage Machine by Daniel Carter Brown and The Wishing Place by Beverly Trader Austin. The Outrage Machine and The Wishing Place will each receive a full production in the 2020 Essential Theatre Festival this summer as well as a cash prize. Now in its twentieth year, the Essential Theatre Playwriting Competition is the only competition of its kind. The 2020 Award is sponsored in part by Corbin Real Estate Team.

Though SCR's admirable new production of the 1963 Broadway musical SHE LOVES ME, for the most part, still has many charming, beautifully-staged, and well-sung moments, it also somehow feels like it is slightly reigned in, as if there was a purposeful attempt to downscale some of its built-in whimsy and spirited vivaciousness---particularly in the first act where emotional expressions all seem to sit in the same middle areaa?? never tipping over to too angry or too sad or too happy or too, well, anything. Now on stage in Costa Mesa through February 22, 2020, the production---directed by the theater's own artistic director David Ivers---is genuinely entertaining, but still needs a huge shot of joy, romance, and pep to make it feel complete.

In their 98th season, The Chatham Community Players presents Neil Simon's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, a?oeLost in Yonkers,a?? directed by Wanda Maragni from West Orange.

San Francisco's 42nd Street Moon (Daren A.C. Carollo and Daniel Thomas, Co-Executive Directors) has announced the titles for the Company's upcoming 2020-2021 season. The 2020-2021 season will include A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (September 24 - October 11, 2020), MAME (December 3 - 20, 2020), THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS (February 11 - 29, 2021), A GRAND NIGHT FOR SINGING (April 15 - May 2, 2021), WONDERFUL TOWN (May 13 - June 13, 2021) and MY SISTER EILEEN (May 20 - June 13, 2021).

San Francisco's 42nd Street Moon (Daren A.C. Carollo and Daniel Thomas, Co-Executive Directors) has announced the titles for the Company's upcoming 2020-2021 season. The 2020-2021 season will include A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (September 24 - October 11, 2020), MAME (December 3 - 20, 2020), THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS (February 11 - 29, 2021), A GRAND NIGHT FOR SINGING (April 15 - May 2, 2021), WONDERFUL TOWN (May 13 - June 13, 2021) and MY SISTER EILEEN (May 20 - June 13, 2021).

After enchanting Broadway sophisticates with his fizzy entertainments of the 1920s and 30s, Cole Porter went decidedly middle-brow at the start of the next decade with a trio of musicals about average Janes and Joes, all including some swell comical characters serving in the U.S, military.

Celebrating Broadway's legendary Cole Porter, The York Theatre Company (James Morgan, Producing Artistic Director; Evans Haile, Executive Director), dedicated to the development of new musicals and rediscovery of musical gems from the past, continues their 50th Anniversary Season with its acclaimed Musicals in Mufti series celebrating the legendary Broadway composer. The series honors the illustrious songwriter behind such classics as Anything Goes, Kiss Me, Kate, Gay Divorce, Silk Stockings, Red, Hot and Blue, and Can-Can. 

Gingold Theatrical Group continues the 14th Season of Project Shaw, Art as Activism: A Theatrical Survival Guide, a special series of evenings of plays that embrace human rights and free speech. All of GTG's programming, inspired by the works of George Bernard Shaw, are designed to provoke peaceful discussion and activism.

This weekend, to celebrate the final weekend of the month-long Sydney Fringe Festival and their 10th birthday, Fringe presents a trio of dance events around the CBD.

The 23rd edition of the Istanbul Theatre Festival, organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and sponsored by Koç Holding Energy Group Companies Aygaz, Opet and Tüpraş, will take place between 13 November and 1 December 2019.

Nosotros, the first Latinx arts advocacy organization in Hollywood, announced the recipients of the 2019 Golden Eagle Awards.  The honorees include a wide array of Hollywood talent in front and behind the camera. The awards will take place on Thursday, September 19, 2019 at the historic Montalban Theatre 1615 Vine Street in Hollywood.  www.nosotrosorg.com

BWW catches up with Doodlebugs Productions to chat about bringing Paradise Lodge to the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

In Tahiti in 1940, a penniless Tennessee Williams lay in a hammock beside another writer also despairing of ever finding success, both binge-drinking rum-cocos and welcoming the dramatic storms that temporarily eclipsed their melancholy. To make matters worse, a party of German Nazis was bragging about their success in the war, and Williams' friend pitched 'the long swim to China'.

Family dynamics never really change, and Brighton Beach Memoirs is a wonderfully classic example of this. The play, written by Neil Simon, is the first of a semi-autobiographical trilogy written about Eugene Morris Jerome and his family. In this particular story, Eugene is almost 15 years old and has just reached puberty...

Profiles in History is proud to announce a historic and rare collection of nineteen Alcoholics Anonymous books will be going up for auction on July 11th in Los Angeles. All nineteen books are first edition printings and are signed by the founding members of the AA Fellowship.

Janis Stevens gives the performance of the year in a show that you won't be able to shake for a long time.

The Happenstance quintet delves into Ancient Greek Mythology with guest artist Craig Jaster generating a live musical score. In a pared-down 1940's aesthetic a chorus of workers assembles lightning bolts and mines the Underworld. Like Sisyphus they must endlessly repeat their tasks.