Blogs: The Wicked Stage

  It was something of a surprise when the unpretentious Memphis beat out both the indy-rock spectacle American Idiot and the afrobeat fantasia Fela! for the 2010 Tony Award for Best Musical: the latter two musicals had generated a lot more buzz (if not box-office receipts) than this modest, earnest, and generally enjoyable tale...
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  Stravinsky and Shatner in the same season? We’re not exactly sure how Arts San Antonio cobbled together its 2012-2013 slate—how many Trekkies will be rioting for Le Sacre du Printemps this spring?—but it turns out that Shatner’s one man show is a surprisingly charming evening of (I suppose) theater. Well, perhaps theater is too...
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Well, The Wicked Stage has fallen woefully behind. Yes, I still have theater reports on Madrid and Los Angeles in my hopper, but I plead (as my friends and colleagues know too well) that I really should be writing my #@$#* book. But as the year winds down, I find that I simply have...
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  Weirdly, I’d never before seen a version of the original Peter Pan before last night’s opening here in San Antonio: yes, I’d witnessed postmodern Peter Pans (such as the American Repertory Theater’s deeply flawed Peter Pan and Wendy) and manic mash-ups (such as Peter and the Starcatcher, currently enjoying a healthy run on...
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Well, the Wicked Stage was perfectly ready to spread some snark after discovering that the first national tour of Catch Me If You Can was—horrors!—non-Equity (that is to say, non-union): that’s the sort of cost-cutting measure usually reserved for a tour that has seen a few go-arounds. But for all of our wickedness—and venom...
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  Well, I’m afraid I’ve been AWOL in the Bay Area while the spectacle of “Vibrator-gate” continues to unfold at the Playhouse (see my initial review of Sarah Ruhl’s “The Vibrator Play” here, the Playhouse President’s subsequent interview here and a fascinating piece by Jade Esteban Estrada for Plaza de Armas here). The good...
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It’s been exciting lately at the Wicked Stage; first, this blog was announced as a finalist for an AltWeekly Award for best blog, with the winner to be announced on June 8th. (And in the finest tradition of the Academy Awards, I’d like to mention what an honor it is just to be nominated....
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Last week’s pre-Tony Awards jaunt to NYC revealed that the go-for-broke style of the English music hall—already a subtext to Mary Poppins—has nearly monopolized the Tony Awards season, as both Peter and the Starcatcher and One Man, Two Guv’nors feature a peculiarly British blend of music, mime, and farce. Of the two, Peter and...
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Christopher Sieber may strut upon the stage in high heels and a feather boa, but it’s George Hamilton who’s sort of a drag in an otherwise effective revival of La Cage Aux Folles. And that’s a shame, because Sieber is so talented and so winning that he pretty much pulls off the evening in...
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Holy shit.  In December and January, I wrote two columns critical of the San Pedro Playhouse’s lackluster programming, which tends towards warhorses of the “family-friendly” musical theater canon. Last week, newly-appointed President Asia Ciaravino announced that they were scrapping three previously announced productions for next year—“older” musicals like South Pacific and Will Rogers Follies—and...
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So I headed up to Austin to catch Annie Baker’s The Aliens at the Hyde Park Theater, a trip that surprised even me. From the reviews, I figured it’d be the sort of play I normally loathe: heavy on the talk, light on the dramatic action. And indeed, The Aliens turned out to be...
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The highest compliment one can pay to a film-to-stage transfer is that it doesn’t feel like a film-to-stage transfer: that it has a life, and radiance, entirely its own. So I’ve never watched Stephen Daldry’s film of Billy Elliot partly because I’ve been so enchanted by his musical of Billy Elliot, which seems to...
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