We've got issues.
Let’s be real: At least 80 percent of the time, taking on a production of Les Misérables is a bad idea. “Ambitious” doesn’t begin to describe this excruciatingly melodramatic 1,500-page historical novel-turned-stage musical. Continue reading
Sight Unseen is an Obie award-winning play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies. The play, which opens this week at The Very Little Theatre, takes as its subject a renowned artist and strips him naked of all the trappings of success, leaving almost nothing where a man once was. Continue reading
Theater has long served as fertile ground for new ideas to germinate, with playwrights boldly questioning the status quo and planting the seeds of change. Eugene audiences will have the opportunity to examine two politically charged plays, as the University of Oregon Department of Theatre Arts presents Chantal Bilodeau’s Sila: An Arctic Story and Lane Community College’s Theatre Department performs Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Continue reading
Sara is unlucky. She has a problem with light bulbs blowing out, leftovers spontaneously combusting and goldfish going belly up before their time. But in the new comedy Lucky Me by Robert Caisley — now playing at Oregon Contemporary Theatre — Sara finds something special because of her supposed faults, not in spite of them. Written in a snappy style reminiscent of Kaufman and Hart, Caisley populates Sara’s leaky apartment with a cast of genuine and lovable misfits. Continue reading
With a large, skilled cast and an indefinable but undeniable energy, the reaction to New Hope Christian College’s Hairspray was: Wow. “This is one of the best musicals I’ve seen in Eugene,” an audience member gushed at intermission. Continue reading
“I like new contemporary work that will push me to the next level,” says D.C.-based Washington Ballet’s Jared Nelson, who was in town last fall to set a demanding new dance on the Eugene Ballet Company. Nelson’s handiwork, the Eugene premiere of Washington Ballet artistic director Septime Webre’s pulsating “Fluctuating Hemlines,” will serve as the performance opener when the 15-member Eugene Ballet Company performs it, along with Tommy The Ballet, April 11 and 12. Continue reading
“We’re sort of a road-hardened, long-running, tight theater ensemble,” says Hand2Mouth Theatre’s artistic director Jonathan Walters. “Our shows are sophisticated, structured and incredibly interactive.” Founded in 2000, Portland-based Hand2Mouth sails into town for one-night-only, Sunday, April 19, at Oregon Contemporary Theatre. Continue reading
It’s rare that college students watch a senate hearing on C-SPAN and then decide to try and change the world. After comedian Seth Rogen delivered a statement on Alzheimer’s Research in February 2014, however, it was hard not to sympathize with his cause. Rogen explained that more than five million Americans have Alzheimer’s (including his own mother-in-law) and that nearly 16 million Americans will have the disease in the next 35 years. Research also suggests that deaths caused by Alzheimer’s have increased almost 70 percent in the last 15 years. Continue reading
Spring blasts off with Quixotic Fusion’s Gravity of Center tour, whose performance culminates the city of Eugene’s two-day (sub)Urban Projections digital art and media festival. Hailing from Kansas City, the brainchild of percussionist and artist Anthony Magliano and theatrical designer Mica Thomas (who studied at Southern Oregon University in Ashland), Quixotic combines movement, music, digital art and aerial athleticism to create cutting-edge new work. Continue reading
The year is 1928, the last gasp of the good times before the crash of the Great Depression. Fringe is flying, bathtub gin is flowing and Queenie and her man Burrs are in a bad romance. Continue reading