You could go to Jomama Jones‘s BLACK LIGHT, and just enjoy Jomama’s considerable talent as she presents herself in sparkling evening gowns, a foot long afro and four-inch spiked heels. You could listen to the songs, bask in the talent of…
Category: Reviews
Flower Drum Song is a timely, flawed immigrant tale
David Henry Hwang‘s rewrite of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s now thoroughly antiquated Flower Drum Song, being staged as a co-production of Park Square Theatre and Mu Performing Arts through February 19, explores the tension for immigrants to assimilate and simultaneously respect their…
Promise Land: a universal story of the search for home
Human migration is a timeless effort. People shift, sometimes in great numbers, sometimes as singles or pairs. Transatlantic Love Affair‘s Diogo Lopes decided to tell this story of geographic relocation beginning with the old fairy tale of the Hansel and…
Miranda: a portrait of a Middle Eastern hell-on-earth
Yemen. Good Lord, what a hornet’s nest. The Saudis vs the Iranians. The Houthi rebels vs the Yemeni government. The Americans (and their Saudi clients) vs the Iranians and Al Qaeda. The Sunnis vs the Shiites. Al Qaeda and ISIS…
Little Shop Of Horrors: Twisted Fun
Americans have an affinity for ghoulish comedies. Arsenic and Old Lace, recently revived by the Guthrie, has kept audiences laughing at two murderous old ladies for generations. Rocky Horror Picture Show is another more recent example of this peculiarly American…
Liberty Falls 54321: a camp classic
What is theatrical camp? I pondered thith pithy question as I made my way down frozen Portland Avenue after the opening of The Moving Company‘s goofily effective Liberty Falls 54321 (a remount of a play originally done in 2015). I concluded:…
HWTS’s Top Shows Of 2016
With four theater reviewers, HowWasTheShow.com is covering more theater than ever. We herewith wrap up an excellent year with How Was the Show’s first ever annual favorites list. Some of the plays weren’t even reviewed! But when they were, helpful links…
FUN HOME is fun, tragic, intelligent, witty
A few years ago Lisa Kron wrote the book and lyrics for a musical based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. With the aid of composer Jeanine Tesori the result was the 2015 Tony Award winning,…
The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, at the Orpheum
One of the great strengths of Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is that is does not compromise its perspective, detailing the world through the eyes of a young autistic boy and demanding that…
The Lion In Winter at the Guthrie Theatre
When The Lion in Winter begins on the Guthrie‘s McGuire stage (playing through Dec 31), the great red-velvet curtain opens on a timbered, multileveled tower, topped with two tiers of flickering candles. The set, designed by Christopher Ash, deftly invokes the…