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GARNERDANCES premiered Strings! An Evening of Dance, at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, June 17. The evening’s length work featured dancers Shannon Mockli, Laura Katzmann, Mariah Melson, Suzanne Haag, Antonio Anacan, and Cory Betts, with choreography, costumes and lighting design by Brad Garner. Continue reading
Bravo, Scapino! Based on Molière’s 1671 comedy Les Fourberies de Scapin, Cottage Theatre’s presentation of Scapino! — directed by George Comstock — is a quirky tale of love and mischief. The play is set in Naples, and the frantic plot is fairly easy to follow, assuming you’ve had enough coffee that day. Continue reading
Chekov updated for a post-Prozac world in OCT’s uneven production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike As with writers David Mamet or Aaron Sorkin, to properly experience playwright Christopher Durang you first have to commit to the musical rhythms of his language. Durang’s humor, dark and cynical as it is, lies within that rhythm. Continue reading
The irreverent postmodern humor of Monty Python — a stew of bawdy iconoclasm, parodic schmaltz and geek-boy cheekery — achieved perhaps its finest expression in the 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This cult classic contains so many insider touchstones (the Knights Who Say Ni, Frenchmen who fart in your general direction, a homicidal rabbit) that, by now, it requires its own cultural thesaurus. Continue reading
Now celebrating its 14th season, The Shedd’s Magical Moombah serves up vaudevillian romps for kids as well as kids-at-heart. I chased down two of Moombah’s illustrious founders, Judith “Sparky” Roberts and Scotty Perey, to see what makes Moombah tick. “The main idea is to share songs — American standards — from the popular awareness,” Roberts says. In a Moombah show, those songs are packaged in a way that’s kid-centered and fun. Continue reading
Premiering this weekend at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, winner of the 2013 Tony Award for best play, represents a kind of second act for playwright Christopher Durang. “Durang is known for his outrageous comedy, and rightfully so,” OCT director Tara Wibrew says. “But I particularly appreciate that his characters are lovable. In many of Durang’s pieces, there isn’t a villain against a hero — just good people taking opposing routes in an attempt to make life better.” Continue reading
Written by Joe DiPietro with music by Jimmy Roberts, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change is a series of skit-like vignettes punctuated by songs loosely hung around themes of love, sex, relationships and marriage. First performed Off-Broadway in 1996, the popular and award-winning musical is on now at Actor’s Cabaret under the direction of Anthony Krall. Continue reading
Way back when, the late, great American writer Kurt Vonnegut published a short story — “Who Am I This Time?” — about a pair of community theater actors who, awkward in so-called real life, fall in love through the character they play on stage. In Vonnegut’s sure hands, the conceit is melancholy and sweet, a concession to the fraught slapstick of authentic emotional connection. Continue reading
Sharply written and deeply empathic, Steve Yockey’s Blackberry Winter trains a bright light on Vivienne, whose mother has lived with Alzheimer’s disease for a few years and is now in the throes of transitioning from assisted living (Vivienne refers to it as “the Residence Inn”) to a more confining, yet safer, nursing home. Played with tenderness and perfect clarity by Mary Buss, Vivienne is magnetizing as she draws us towards onstage objects that both elicit and anchor all-too fleeting memories: a little wooden horse, a pile of ladies’ scarves, a trowel. Continue reading
If we could time travel, rock-‘n’-roll fans might want to dial their wayback machines to Memphis’ Sun Records, Dec. 4, 1956, when legends Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash created an unforgettable musical session. Perkins, already a powerhouse with hits like “Blue Suede Shoes,” had booked the studio that day and hired a little-known session player to back him up — a guy named Jerry Lee Lewis. Continue reading