by Chris Rohmann | Mar 9, 2018 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
The artistic nexus of the 1920s known as the Harlem Renaissance or New Negro Movement is remembered as a great flowering of black talent and a golden age in American cultural history. But at least one of its members, looking at it from the inside, saw it quite...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 3, 2018 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
As I wrote in this space last year, “So much of what we see and create seems newly topical and timely” since the rise of Trump. “Everything is now filtered through a horrifying new prism, taking on fresh meaning and urgency.” A striking example of the “Trump Effect”...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 27, 2018 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
A troupe of high-spirited performers bound onstage and solicit goofy suggestions for characters and situations from the audience. Then they improvise short, snappy scenes based on those prompts. The comedy flows from the incongruities and the improvisers’ quick wits....
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 13, 2018 | Articles, Arts, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
If, like me, you thought the National Theatre’s production of One Man, Two Guv’nors, either on NT Live or Broadway, was the funniest, wittiest farce you’ve ever seen (with Noises Off a close second), chances are you’ll enjoy Young Marx. It’s on this weekend at Amherst...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 31, 2018 | Articles, Arts, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
I grew up on Shakespeare and musicals, so what was I to make of Something Rotten!, the hit musical that mercilessly lampoons both? Love it for its origins or hate it for its irreverence? Having missed it on Broadway, where it earned a double handful of Tony...
