Not everyone sits at home dreaming of attending an opera. But it might just be time to start. The Machine Opera Company is bringing an exciting new modern opera to the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts. The Machine Stops will be staged for just two performances later this month. Librettist Cecile Goding has always […]
Laura Johnson
Posted inEastern Iowa
Crackling connections take center stage in Mirrorbox Theatre’s ‘Private’
Mirrorbox Theatre presents: Private Through May 22, Theatre Cedar Rapids — Grandon, $20 Do you ever stop to consider the connections between personal life, social media, employment and the world at-large? Mirrobox Theatre takes on these connections and more in the Iowa premiere of Private by Mona Pirnot, which opened last Thursday night and runs […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Natasha, Pierre and Riverside’s sold-out return to musicals
Who needs Bridgerton when you have fantastic live theater just around the corner? Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, (Dave Malloy, 2012) is a high-energy musical based loosely on an excerpt from Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace. It offers an engaging storyline, top-tier vocals and show-stopping choreography. And Riverside Theatre’s run […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Mirrorbox leads audiences to consider their own friendships more deeply in ‘Cycle Play’
The quote “Art disturbs the comfortable and comforts the disturbed” has been attributed to various people in a variety of situations, but it is nowhere more applicable than to Cycle Play, currently running in the downstairs Grandon Theatre space at Theatre Cedar Rapids. Mirrorbox Theatre invites the audience into this two woman show, directed by […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Audiences waited two years, but 2022 is the perfect timing for TCR’s ‘Kinky Boots’
After waiting nearly two years to open, Theatre Cedar Rapids began its run of Kinky Boots (score by Cyndi Lauper, book by Harvey Fierstein) to a house of appreciative audience members, some of whom had held on to their tickets through the pandemic. And what show could be better at the beginning of 2022 than […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Successful fundraising campaign brings Mirrorbox home
With 32 plays presented in 2020 and 19 staged in 2021, Mirrorbox Theatre may be one of the area’s most prolific theaters — and all of those plays were virtual. Audience members joined the show via Zoom from the safety and comfort of their own homes. This year is no less exciting for Mirrorbox because […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Step into another world with City Circle’s ‘Matilda’
The saying goes that a final dress rehearsal needs to be riddled with dropped lines, missed cues and costume snafus in order for opening night to shine. City Circle Theater Company’s final dress of Matilda: the Musical may not need to accept conventional wisdom in order for their show to be a success. The show, […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
With stage magic, a newer text, TCR’s is not your mama’s ‘Cinderella’ (but she’ll still enjoy it!)
This past Friday, Theatre Cedar Rapids reopened its main stage for the first time since COVID-19 hit with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Director Angie Toomsen brings the adapted stage play to life through the brilliant actors throughout every scene. The new libretto, written for the 2013 Broadway production by Douglas Carter Beane, brings the differences […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
ICCT’s ‘Doctor Faustus’ offers a chance to pause and think
Not every theater company would undertake a play written in blank verse in the 16th century, a play that is fabled for having driven early audience members into fits of insanity. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (Christopher Marlowe) is that play, and Iowa City Community Theatre (ICCT) is not just any theater company. The […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Masterful storytelling explores the core of communication in Riverside’s ‘Midnight Your Time’
As both a mother and a daughter, I found Midnight Your Time resonant and meaningful. Riverside Theatre’s current streaming production, Midnight Your Time by Adam Brace, is a one-woman show featuring Riverside co-founder Jody Hovland. Directed by Adam Knight, this is the story of a mother learning a new role as her adult children have […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Joy Vandervort-Cobb animates a whole ensemble of characters in Riverside Theatre and PURE Theatre’s ‘No Child …’
Over the past seven months, theater companies in eastern Iowa and elsewhere have reinvented themselves, branching out from traditional spaces onto streaming platforms to keep performance and themselves alive. Starting Thursday, Riverside Theatre — in conjunction with PURE Theatre in Charleston, South Carolina — offered another to their audiences: a recorded play that audiences can […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Delicate Rain’ by Deneishia Jacobpito
Deneishia Jacobpito’s story Delicate Rain, released in April of this year, follows the short journey to healing of the main character, Francesca DeLouise (Frank). Frank has spent her life in New York City, but finally, much to the dismay of her best friend, Lynn, she decides to head west. The opening of the story is […]
