If you missed John Catron‘s intensely silly, hootingly funny and utterly astonishing work in The Winter’s Tale at the Flying G a few seasons back, you should endeavor to journey back in time and check it out. Failing that, you…
Author: John Olive
Deathtrap at the Jungle Theater
“Do you have any idea how much,” Sidney Bruhl rhapsodizes in Deathtrap (at the Jungle, through May 19), “a play like that is worth in today’s market? Two million dollars!” Is it really possible? That a combination of glib theatrics,…
Jackie And Me by the Children’s Theatre Company
Joey Stoshack has an amazing ability: he time-travels. Using an old baseball card, Joey whirls and twirls his way back into the past. In the case of Jackie And Me (playing at Children’s Theatre Company, through April 14), Joey visits…
Hmong Bollywood by Pangea World Theater performing at InterMedia Arts
Bollywood is the common term for the lengthy (they are usually 3+ hours with intermission) Hindi language extravaganzas made in India. These movies, also called masala (i.e., spicy) films, feature genre-mashing combinations of melodrama, romance, love triangles. They contain nasty…
Spunk at Penumbra Theatre
Review written by Janet Preus and John Olive. Penumbra Theatre came charging back to life last night with a production of Spunk, an adaptation of three stories by the great Zora Neale Hurston, written for the stage by George C,…
Elemeno Pea at Mixed Blood Theatre
Money porn. There’s a long tradition in American storytelling of asking audiences to gawk at the shallow goings-on of the ultra-rich. The tradition began in the 20s with the work of Edith Wharton, came into its own during the Depression…
Other Desert Cities at the Guthrie Theater
The past is ineluctably and achingly present in Jon Robin Baitz‘s moving (and occasionally frustrating) drama, Other Desert Cities (at the Guthrie through March 24). The Wyeths, Polly and Lyman, have left smoggy L.A., chockfull of ego and intrigue and…
The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow by Walking Shadow Theatre Company performing at Red Eye
One hates to begin a rave notice with a negative, but it has to be said and I may as well say it now: if you’re looking for a straight forward, coherent and accessible reading of Washington Irving‘s enduring Halloween…
Shadowlands by Open Window Theatre
William Nicholson‘s Shadowlands (Open Window Theatre, through March 10) is a modest play – and I intend this to be high praise. It contains no screechy over-the-top theatrics, no check-me-out-ain’t-I-clever acting, no self-consciously “original” story-lines. Rather, Nicholson simply and effectively…
The Book Of Mormon at the Orpheum
Mormonism offers a broad-side-of-the-barn target for satirists. Just a few historical details (I can’t help myself): in the 1830s Joseph Smith dug up (on a hill in upstate NY) a set of golden plates etched with writing (“reformed Egyptian”). Using…