These Gilded Souls, the Great Gatsby adaptation/continuation by playwright Aly Kantor, is currently playing at Mirrorbox Theatre in Cedar Rapids, starring Seth Hoffman as Nick Carraway. Nick has returned to West Egg to scatter the ashes of the wife whom he married and lost in the years following the events of the novel.
theater reviews
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Review: Dreamwell’s ‘Design for Living’ is a tangled comedic tale
Noël Coward’s Design for Living is a play that demands a deft balance of wit, tension and vulnerability — qualities that are central to an exploration of love, freedom and emotional tangles. Dreamwell’s recent production, directed by Will Asmus, certainly attempts to bring Coward’s dark comedy to life, but the results are, at times, uneven, leaving the audience to question whether the fault lies with the production or the material itself.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Review: There are no men in the Playhouse’s ‘Men on Boats,’ a charming sendup of manifest destiny
Before attending Men on Boats at the Des Moines Playhouse’s newly renovated black box Studio Theatre this past weekend, I recalled another production of the play I had seen six years ago. I didn’t remember much about the prior viewing, except that I had cried at the end.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Review: Riverside ensures you’ll never see the ‘The Illiad’ the same way again with ‘The Cure at Troy,’ a tale of snakes and scruples
Iowa City’s Riverside Theatre is entering the final week of performances for their run of The Cure at Troy, a play featuring a lesser-known character detailed in Homer’s Iliad.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Young actors soar in ‘The Lightning Thief,’ a mythic musical for Cedar Valley families
Waterloo Community Playhouse/Black Hawk Children’s Theatre’s newest musical production The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, adapts the popular fantasy series about a teenager who finds out the father he’s never met is one of the Greek gods…
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Review: The road to Hell runs through Hancher for ‘Hadestown,’ a grim but crackling musical tragedy
A haunting hymn to love, sacrifice and the inescapable grip of fate, Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown arrived at Hancher Auditorium with all the mythic grandness one would expect from a Tony Award-winning musical — though the production occasionally wrestled with the very myth it sought to reimagine. From the moment the orchestra’s brooding, blues-infused tones seeped into the […]
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Review: A fading celebrity challenges a criminal president in ICCT’s finely tuned ‘Frost/Nixon’
Iowa City Community Theater (ICCT) premiered its production of Frost/Nixon on Friday night at The James Theater. The play by Peter Morgan – a British playwright probably best-known to Americans as the creator of The Crown – was first staged in London in 2006.
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Theater Review: ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ from Coralville’s City Circle Theatre Company
Before now, I wasn’t familiar with the 1992 Tony award winner for best play, Dancing at Lughnasa, or its playwright Brian Friel, who has been called “Ireland’s Chekhov.” I also must admit that I’ve attended Coralville’s Center for the Performing Arts and its resident theater company, City Circle’s productions, far less than some of the […]
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‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ sees Willow Creek Theatre Company bask in genderfuckery
I write this review of Willow Creek Theatre Company’s production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, text; Stephen Trask, music and lyrics) with the music of Tomato Boy playing in the background on Bandcamp. There’s not much available; a few singles, a collection of three titled birthday demos. The earliest was added […]
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‘We never do anything remarkable just for ourselves’: ‘Buffalo Women’ opens on Juneteenth
Three minutes to curtain on June 19, 2022, the Kate Goldman Theatre at the Des Moines Playhouse was mostly full. The blackbox was decked in a sparse yet effective smattering of western themed set pieces and there was an excited hum emanating from the audience about what was to come. Buffalo Women, which was produced […]
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 […]
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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 […]
