by Chris Rohmann | Jul 9, 2014 | Stagestruck
“The Vinegar Works” began with an in-joke for PBS viewers: a recitation of Edward Gorey’s ghoulish alphabet poem “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” (“A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears…”)...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 27, 2014 | Stagestruck
Ring Lardner was the master of comic fiction with a cynical edge and George s. Kaufman the master of urbane Broadway farce. When they teamed up in 1929 to adapt a Lardner show-biz story, the result was June Moon, an urbane romantic comedy with an ironic edge that...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 1, 2014 | Stagestruck
“Blow winds, and crack your cheeks!” shouts King Lear in Act 3 Scene 1 as he rages in the tragedy’s climactic storm. But on the night I saw the play last week, at the New York Public Theater’s free outdoor Shakespeare in the Park, that line...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 19, 2014 | Stagestruck
“Tap predates jazz,” explained Michelle Dorrance when introducing an informal showcase of work by her students at Jacob’s Pillow earlier this summer. That is, before the blue note came the shoe note. But Dorrance is no strict preservationist –...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 23, 2014 | Stagestruck
This could have had the makings of an uncomfortable evening in the theater: a young company in a new play written to order by a friend of theirs, with an opening-night house full of friends and supporters ready to laugh lustily at every suggestion of a joke. Given...
