Guides
For anybody under 30 (or maybe even 40), it must feel as if God wrote "White Christmas" on the eighth day of Creation - right after He took a quick rest and cranked out "Silent Night." But, like everything else, "White Christmas" really does have a story - an unusual
Stage
I love jokes. I love to listen to them and tell them. I especially like the way that something so quick and short establishes a believably unreal world that pops with the punch line. It creates its own kind of sense; we call it non-sense. So I liked playwright Sarah
Stage
David Mamet's 1988 play "Speed the Plow" is a profane, high-powered satire of the movie business and the unrelenting cynicism and underlying fear of those who pursue money and power at all costs. It takes an equally high-powered cast of three to pull off its sudden changes in mood and
Music Articles
Singer Michael Feinstein says, "When I choose a song, I go with my gut. It's hard to do because there are so many brilliant songs to choose from." Although he includes current songwriters in his performances and recordings, and has recently toured and recorded with Jimmy Webb ("Wichita Lineman," "MacArthur
Stage
It's important to write about Blackfriars Theatre's appealing new theater and "Zorba," the 1968 John Kander-Fred Ebb musical that opens the troupe's 60th season. But I want to hold off for a minute to single out one member of the company. Ken Harrington has been a mainstay of Rochester theater for
Stage
Stephen Temperley's "Souvenir: A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins," now at Geva Theatre Center, may not be much more than half a play, but the long-admired Judy Kaye as the real-life Jenkins is all that a playwright and an audience could hope for. A serious actor and
Guides
Fall signifies beginnings in classrooms and on stages. So, like a lot of people, maybe more than most, I'm always eager for the first curtain to rise. When I read the press releases from Rochester's different theaters, though, the first thing I did was screw up my nose and scratch
Stage
You wouldn't expect somebody who has sung with the New York City Opera to have created the role of Rosie in "Mamma Mia!," but Judy Kaye gets around. She has been getting around professionally for more than 40 years, working in opera and cabaret, and with symphony orchestras, but mainly
Music Articles
"Exciting!" That's the word that keeps recurring when you talk to Amy Sue Barston and Edward Klorman, the founders and artistic directors of the Canandaigua LakeMusic Festival. That's not because they're inarticulate, but because they're true believers in chamber music, that supposedly dowdy music intended for the blue-rinse crowd. Barston,
Stage
What better way to mock or deride than to attach "immortal" to somebody's name? Such has been the fate of eponymous William Shakespeare, who lent his name to the Shakespearean Age, rather than selling the rights as we would probably do. He was also burdened with "The Swan of Avon,"
Stage
It sounds a little like a double-play combination - Wilde to Coward to Shaw. Except the Shaw Festival has benched Oscar for the 2009 season, given Bernard a limited number of at-bats, and announced that Noel will be hitting cleanup. Eugene O'Neill, Garson Kanin, John Osborne, and Stephen Sondheim provide
Stage
The patio of what Carter W. Lewis' "Evie's Waltz" calls Clay and Gloria's "middle class suburban home" is just a little seedy. The door and the window need painting, and the propane canister for the gas grill is rusting away. It's a fitting image for Clay and Gloria even though
Music Articles
In the 2004 Lotte Lenya Competition, tenor Richard Todd Adams remembers that judge Teresa Stratas "gave me unbelievable feedback. When I went to the finals, I had a swelled head and faked my way through it. I didn't win, and afterwards, Stratas grabbed me and cussed me out: ‘You're too
Art
Extravagantly romantic yet sophomorically naughty, outrageously Bohemian yet primly Calvinistic, E.E. Cummings became known as the poet who didn't use capital letters. Except he did, just not conventionally. For years, he experimented with the use and appearance of letters and punctuation marks. He even had a personal typesetter, S.A. Jacobs,
Stage
Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's 1979 tale of "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" plays out in mid-19th century London, begrimed by the foul cauldron of the Industrial Revolution. Now being revived in a rich and expressively sung production at Geva Theatre Center, "Sweeney" is a brilliant
Stage
A few scenes in act two suggest that there's a smart, sharp political melodrama somewhere down inside Peter Morgan's "Frost/Nixon," now playing at Geva Theatre Center, but otherwise you'd never know it from Morgan's desultory writing, Steven Woolf's static direction, and the cast's listless acting. I can't remember a
Guides
The opening of a theatrical season is frenzied and frustrating and filled with hope. Old movies gave us dozens of backstage musicals so that Mickey & Judy and Fred & Ginger could tell us what it's supposed to be like. Reality sets in soon enough, but for now all you
Stage
Tina Fabrique gives a soaring, scat-singing, ballad-caressing performance as Ella Fitzgerald in "Ella," the not-quite-a-play that opened Geva Theatre Center's 2008-2009 season last Saturday night and filled the not-quite-full auditorium with joyful song. Fabrique has a full voice, an intuitive feel for jazz, and such irrepressible delight in what she
Stage
Here are reviews of four more plays from The Shaw Festival's 2008 season, each about the search for love and its sometime confusion with sex - or marriage. The original 1973 production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's "A Little Night Music" was magical and
Choice Events
Once while listening to WXXI's radio show "Fascinating Rhythm," I heard Michael Lasser tell the story behind "Mack the Knife." It was always a great swing dance tune to me, and while not really knowing all the lyrics, I assumed it had something to do with
