My Fair Lady, presented by Lincoln Center Theater, opened at the Civic Center in Des Moines Tuesday night and almost every row was filled. The musical is an adaptation on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion, involving a professor of phonetics training a poor woman with a thick working class accent to pass as a […]
Theatre reviews
Posted inArts & Entertainment
TCR’s essential ‘Out of Bounds’ features stellar performances carrying heavy material
On a stage that resembles a blueprint for adolescence at its cruelest, the protagonist Amy’s origin story in TCR’s Out of Bounds unfolds before the audience in a frustrating, unrelenting-battle-against-the-system fashion. Slut-shaming. Victim-blaming. Mean girls (of all ages) galore. With a showtime of 90 minutes, the 10-act production brings to life a 14-year-old girl’s trauma […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Riverside’s ‘Uncle Vanya’ achieves a moment of peace
A story of family relationships, an examination of how one lives their life, and unrequited love all take equal stage time throughout ‘Uncle Vanya.’ The show runs through Oct. 6 at Riverside Theatre. Tickets are $30.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘The 24th Day’ is tense, dark, dangerous and lovely
“What reality?” you may by now be wondering. “What the heck happens in this play?” But I am not going to tell you. I would not dare spoil one single plot point of this story for you. I wouldn’t dare. I will, however, provide you with a few tantalizing tidbits and a carefully worded warning.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Riverside’s ‘Men on Boats’ is sheer delight
In 1869, Major John Wesley Powell took a crew of nine other men on an expedition to traverse and map the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. In just over three months, six of them emerged on the other side of the canyon, having completed the journey more or less in tact.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
RHCR’s cast brings beautifully crafted ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ to life
Rich Heritage of Cedar Rapids Theater Company (RHCR) opened Driving Miss Daisy to an appreciative audience Friday night — and indeed, there was a great deal to appreciate.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘Apple Season’ is moving and restrained
Iowa City needs new work. We are a City of Literature, a city of curation, a city of having written — new work shakes us out of our steadiness and surety and forces us to contemplate the glorious mess of process. It gifts us with those nuggets of honesty that can be sluiced away by a deluge of revision or buried deep beneath layers of polish.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Love is in the air: ‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change’ delightful seasonal fare
‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change’ is part of Old Creamery’s VIP (Very Intimate Performance) series which has shrunk the theater; the audience finds themselves on what is normally the stage.There is no fourth wall from the start of the play. This is an intimate show where the actors perform without amplification and interact with the audience.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Falling in love with TCR’s ‘Shakespeare In Love’
Tom Stoppard’s ‘Shakespeare In Love’ was a hit on the screen — it garnered a small handful of Oscars for those involved. It makes sense that it would be translated back onto the stage. Thank goodness we have the opportunity to see this story play out in it’s actual wheelhouse.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Authentic stories resonate with humor, tragedy in ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’
Giving Tree Theater’s production of Tiny Beautiful Things, running now through March 10 (tickets $26), might just be the antidote to whatever has got you down lately.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Brash and jocular, ‘Rotten Eggnog’ is the perfect play for Christmas malcontents
Set in a dive karaoke bar adorned with tacky decorations on Christmas Eve, ‘Rotten Eggnog’ opens on Tori as she awaits her two best friends, Rebecca and Addie. For the last ten years, the three women have met on the holiday to exchange gifts, tell their worst Christmas stories and share intimate details of their lives to each other.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘Marjorie Prime’ an incredibly sensitive meditation on aging and grief
The rub of science fiction is that it requires quite a bit of world building to be comprehensible to the audience. Director Jen Brown guides her actors into a subtlety that nicely highlights the universals of personality, humanity and family life without dwelling too long on the technicalities of 2050.
