The explosion of theater continues and it’s hard to keep up. I hope people are picking up Style’s Mid-Season Arts issue that has my piece on the Minds Wide Open celebration. As it has for the Acts of Faith festival every year, the Richmond theater community has taken the opportunity afforded by a big, broad theme to bring some challenging work to local stages. Should be a fun few months.
The issue also has a preview on “The Lion King” production that lands here next week. Style is taking advantage of the long run of this show and assigning a reviewer (me) to it. I found plenty to be critical of the only other time I saw this show (traveling production in Virginia Beach many moons ago) and am wondering whether my memory will hold true or if I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Richmond Shakespeare’s Macbeth opens this weekend and the T-D had a nice preview of it yesterday. In case you missed the T-D review of “God of Carnage,” here’s a link.
Mr. Miller over at GayRVA has been weighing in on a number of shows lately; here are some links to reviews of Carnage, Always…Patsy Cline, and The 39 Steps. The last of these has prompted some passionate responses as such reviews are wont to do.
In the meantime, a particularly articulate rave about “Lord of the Flies” was posted by Ms. Jewett over at Richmond.com. It’s a good thing that this show is running another couple of weekends so people have the chance to catch it.
I don’t know if this happened when I was out of town or if I’ve just been even more out of the loop than usual, but I heard that Derome Scott Smith has resigned from AART. I don’t know for sure but that might have some to do with the “Ain’t Misbehavin” opening being moved to end of next month. I hope all is well with Mr. Smith and wish him well in all his future endeavors.
I think I've mentioned Dan Savage in this column before but the sex-advice columnist continues to put out a great podcast that deserves mention in particular for his somewhat over-the-top recommendation for "Anything Goes" on Broadway. It's one of the more unexpected places to hear the ranting of a theater advocate. Tune in for the "Anything Goes" rave, stick around for the challenging and entertaining content that follows!
1 comment:
Dave --
Re: "The Lion King". I think the stage version is awfully bloated and never shakes the fact that the movie did it all better. BUT. The stagecraft is amazing, and the translations of those filmic moments are often breath-taking .. especially the opening number. We have never seen it on Bway, just on tour at the KC, and will be seeing it again here. When those giraffes come on stage ... :-)
And don't forget "Next Fall" opens at RTP on Feb 23! You have to come to SOMEthing at RTP this season. (There, that's your shame-shame moment.)
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