by Chris Rohmann | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
For a 19th-century male, Henrik Ibsen was quite the feminist. His best-known play, A Doll’s House, ends with one of the theater’s most famous sound effects as his protagonist, Nora Helmer, leaves her stifling marriage with the finality of a slamming door. An equally...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 17, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Stage, Stagestruck
Years ago, when I was living in England, one day the doorbell rang and there stood two painfully clean-cut young men in white dress shirts, narrow ties and pearly smiles. “Hello!” one of them grinned, holding up a serious-looking volume. “My name is Elder Smith, this...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 3, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Stage, Stagestruck
Two shows this week find performers venturing beyond the usual parameters of their craft. At UMass, students in the music department’s Opera Workshop take on Gilbert and Sullivan, and in Northampton, stage actors meet improvisers in a mashup of scripts and ad libs. On...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 31, 2017 | Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
The two shows now playing at Hartford’s rep theaters couldn’t be more different, but they still share some core themes. They are Shakespeare’s rambunctious, large-cast Comedy of Errors, at Hartford Stage, and Dominique Morisseau’s small, intense contemporary drama...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 23, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Film, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
Travels with a Masked Man, John Hadden’s compelling “two-character solo performance,” seems to fall squarely in the by-now-familiar genre of the one-person memoir, in this case exploring a rocky relationship with his father. Except that this one is not at all typical....
