Arts and Times

  Innocence is a piece that Opera fans will be well aware of, but laymen may have only heard about recently when it burst onto the Met stage. It's rare these days that a contemporary Opera catches the cultural zeitgeist in the way Innocence  has, but boy is it exciting when it does.  Innocence features a score by Kaija Saariaho (1952 - 2023), a Finnish composer she produced an impressive catalog across genres, receiving high profile commissions and having the distinction of being the first female composer to have an Opera presented by the Met in more than a century. The Finnish libretto is by Sofi Oksanen with the Multilingual libretto and dramaturgy by Aleksi Barriére. Indeed, the piece features nine languages including Finnish,  Czech, French, Romanian, Swedish, German, Spanish, English and Greek.  One of the principal roles, Markéta, was written for an indigenous Finno-Ugric folk singer. There is an off stage chorus and a full orchestra marked by a prepondera...

I saw the film of The Lost Boys once, long ago. I remembered enough of it to have a clear understanding of the story I was walking into when seeing the Broadway musical adaptation, but not enough to not be able to experience the musical as it's own entity. The shortest summary of my feelings, if you want a quick "yay" or "nay" is the heart of what makes folks love the story is intact and the performances are strong. But there are some inherent dramaturgical issues with the original that are only exacerbated by some additional poor choices on the part of the Broadway creative team. Go see the musical for the heart of the story, the performers, the spectacular special effects and aerial choreography. Don't get your hopes up too much for the score (namely the lyrics), or the power of adaptation to elevate the things that didn't work in the film. Indeed, there are cringe moments here that are unique to the musical alone.  The Lost Boys  is a film I always he...

This review is going to be shorter than my usual fare, namely because this piece was not my favorite. I returned to the Filigree Theatre after being so impressed with their final show of last season, The Illusionary Games of Edward Rye   . I was excited to discover a new company that seemed to have fantastic taste in new work, and executed that work well - especially in terms of the caliber of talent they employed.  Filigree does three shows a season: one is a classic, one (I believe) is a work by a TX native or resident, and the third is a brand new piece. This season that new piece is Take Care of My Friend , a new play by Kathleen Fletcher, directed (as all their plays seem to be) by Artistic Director Elizabeth V. Newman. Unlike Illusionary  last year which was deeply moving, and intelligent, with (generally) fantastic performances (that show went on to win BroadwayWorld Awards for Leading Performer in a Play (star and writer Ashley Griffin), Best Play, Best New P...

Ashley Griffin (Soul 1) and Ryan McCurdy (Soul 2). Photo by Micah Joel Photography How on earth is such exquisite writing being relegated to a small, off the beaten path theater? Seeing this play is like, and I don't say this lightly, going to see a show being put on in someone's living room and it turns out to be the world premiere of Hamlet .  Étude , a new play by Ashley Griffin,   directed by Jennie Hughes and produced by Caitlin McNeilage and Leading Lady Creative is poetry in the most beautiful sense of what that can mean in a play (no, I don't mean literal poetry.) The language is so deeply profound I found myself crying at the end.  The story is both incredibly simple and deeply complex. Griffin has woven together a stunning tapestry of characters, themes and ideas. And the script is TIGHT. This is officially a workshop production, but this is a piece that's ready to go. The basic plot is this: two souls wait to be born. They are soulmates (no, not necessarily r...

If you haven't heard of Merrily We Roll Along  before now, how on earth have you stumbled on this blog lol.  Merrily  has a complex and often troubled history. The brainchild of musical theater legends Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince, based on the play of the same name by Kaufman and Hart, the show originally opened in 1981 and closed after only 16 performances. The score has long been heralded by musical theater fans, but pretty much everyone agreed that the show itself just didn't work.  The piece moves backwards in time and explores how our lives can head down wildly different tracks (often with compromised, cynical results) than we ever imagined or intended. Specifically, the show follows three "Old Friends" - composer Frank, playwright Charlie, and novelist Mary. At the beginning of the play we see jaded, "sell out" Frank giving an incredibly depressing address to the graduating class of his alma mater. One of the students asks "How did you get to ...

  Photo by Matthew Murphy There are different lenses through which I could review the anniversary tour of Disney's Beauty and the Beast : As family entertainment, as a Broadway revival (especially valid since there is talk of having this tour stop on Broadway in the same way The Wiz  and Beetlejuice  did (or, in this case, possibly longer than those offerings)), or, simply from my personal point of view. As family entertainment it is fun and the kids will have a nice time. But I would feel remiss if that's all I focused on in this review, despite the fact that a family, and largely kid, audience is what the production is clearly aiming for. Compared with the wide array of family theater offerings it's obviously about as big a spectacle as you can get (though I sometimes prefer the more intimate pieces, as do many kids...), and it comes with an equivalent, if not outrageous, price tag. If you have kids who won't be scared by special effects and love the original animated...