In 2019, the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art was celebrating its 50th anniversary. It also had been nearly 11 years without a home. The floods of 2008, which wreaked havoc across Iowa, hit Cedar Rapids and Iowa City the hardest. The Cedar and Iowa Rivers crested at 31.12 ft and 31.5 ft, respectively, […]
Riverside Theatre
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Eastern Iowa
The mystifying charms of ‘The Complete Works of Jane Austen, Abridged’ at Riverside Theatre
I’ve never really liked Jane Austen. To be fair, I never read any of her books. I opted to allow the dominant medium of my era — film — to tell me her stories. Maybe I would have felt differently if I’d bit the bullet and read the prose directly, but I get a little […]
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The once and future king: Riverside Theatre’s Katy Hahn on embodying Henry V and gender-bending Shakespeare
In Riverside Theatre’s upcoming return to Lower City Park (June 17-July 3, free), I will revisit a role I played first in 2019: Henry Plantagenet, who will have graduated from Prince of Wales (Henry IV Part 1) to King of England (Henry V), a position he held from 1413-1422. Unlike last time, this summer I […]
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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, Eastern Iowa
In a state of self-policing and hypervigilance, ‘The Niceties’ shows who actually holds the power: disenfranchised students
Not five minutes into The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess, running in the lush new home of Riverside Theatre, I laugh-snort at something Crystal Marie Stewart says — something I’ll continue to do all night. It is then that I write a note that I will circle several times throughout the rest of the evening when […]
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Riverside Theatre’s haunting production adds new ghosts to their adopted historical theater home
Eden Prairie, 1971 is not only Riverside Theatre’s first show in their newly renovated space on the Ped Mall, but — as a part of the National New Play Network’s Rolling World Premiere — Riverside is the first theater to fully produce the newest work from playwright Mat Smart (who also wrote the final play […]
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Riverside welcomes the community to its new space
The Little Village February Editors’ Event Pick in Theater: Eden Prairie, 1971, at Riverside Theatre, Iowa City Riverside Theatre is christening its brand-spankin’-new space just off the Ped Mall (119 E College St) with Eden Prairie, 1971, a brand-spankin’-new play having its world premiere in Iowa City. Riverside Producing Artistic Director Adam Knight directs this […]
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Riverside Theatre offers peek into their future space, launches new capital campaign
In late summer 2017, a building on the Ped Mall owned by the Swisher Trust, home to Union Bar and Revival, went up for auction. Little Village got access to the top floor of the building, derelict and covered in haunting graffiti: demons, clowns, skeletons, and even a bit of apocalyptic street poetry. “No ghosts […]
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‘We were meant to suffer together’: Iowa City to celebrate Dostoevsky’s 200th through his last, epic novel
On March 13, 2020, five days after the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in Iowa, Anna Barker texted UNESCO City of Literature director John Kenyon, with her trademark triple-exclamatory enthusiasm: “Call me call me call me!!! I have an AMAZING quarantine book idea!!!” Barker, a professor of Russian literature at the University of Iowa with a […]
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Is there anything this cast can’t do? Riverside’s ‘The Comedy of Errors’ full of unsuppressed energy
Angie Toomsen, director of Riverside Theatre’s production of The Comedy of Errors, brilliantly brought together two things that theater historians might compare to orange juice and toothpaste: 1970s country and Shakespeare. Southern drawls mixed with Shakespearean monologues made the show memorable and even more hilarious, as if the bard himself had written the show with […]
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Riverside Theatre restores something much missed to the community with ‘The Winter’s Tale’
Adam Knight’s smile was as bright as the sunny evening sky while we chatted for a few moments ahead of the opening night (July 15) performance of Riverside Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale on the Festival Stage in Iowa City’s Lower City Park. Knight, Riverside’s producing director and director of The Winter’s Tale, […]
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Riverside dives deep and resurfaces with ‘Sonnets for an Old Century’
The last time we spoke, Riverside Theatre producing artistic director Adam Knight impressed upon me his desire to re-imagine the face of professional theater in Iowa. For years, Riverside has been producing intimate, small cast shows with many of the same heavy-hitters: stellar productions, to be sure, but familiar. It would be easy to doubt […]
