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| Bud, Not Buddy |
My take: This original one-act play is a co-production with Jazz St. Louis and, according to Mark Bretz at Ladue News, it's "a sure-fire treat for theater patrons young and old as well as devotees of America's original musical art form." This is the first production on the USA since the play's premiere at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C many years ago, which makes it quite a feather in the cap of Metro. The story it tells of life under American apartheid is one of which far too many people in this country seemed determine to write out of history.
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| Rick Jensen and Katie McGrath at the Gaslight Photo by Chet Whye, Jr. |
My take: When I reviewed this show last November at the Gaslight, I said that anyone wanting to write a textbook on how to do cabaret could start with Significant Others. With a great song list ranging from Bon Jovi to Cole Porter, perfectly tailored arrangements by Rick Jensen, ideally paced direction by Lina Koutrakos, and Ms. McGrath's powerfully genuine stage presence, this is a cabaret evening that hits all the right notes, literal and figurative. Go see it—if you can get tickets.
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| Silent Sky Photo: John Lamb |
My take: The significant contributions women have made to the sciences over the years (and the difficulty they have had in getting proper credit for them) have provided fodder for a fair number of books and plays recently. Silent Sky is fiction, of course, but it's based on solid history, and tells a tale that needs to be heard.
Held Over:
The Cabaret Project and The Improv Shop present The Blue Velvet Lounge Saturday, January 27, at 8 pm. There are also performances on February 10 and 24. "The Cabaret Project teams up with The Improv Shop to co-present their dynamic, fully improvised theater piece featuring live jazz standards - direct from the mythical Blue Velvet Lounge. Each performance features eight smart, funny improvisers who create the stories and sagas of the patrons of the Blue Velvet Lounge - on the spot. Surrounded by live jazz vocal standards, this character driven story is a different show each night it's performed. The Blue Velvet Lounge is a perfect evening out for lovers of cabaret and comedy. Food and drink available at the Improv Shop." The performance takes place at The Improv Shop, 3960 Chouteau in The Grove. For more information: thecabaretproject.org.
My take: Cabaret shows are carefully planned, but so is a good improv show. Improvisation works best when there's some sort of structure to build on. So combining the two makes more sense than you might think, especially when the singer at the center of it all is local cabaret pro Tim Schall.
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| The How and the Why Photo: Eric Woolsey |
My take: I'm a great admirer of plays that can deal with complex subjects like nuclear physics (Michael Frayn's Copenhagen) or international economics (Ayad Akhtar's The Invisible Hand) in a way that's dramatically compelling and which illuminates areas of knowledge which are dark for many of us. The reviews indicate that The How and the Why does that with evolutionary biology. Tina Farmer at KDHX says the show "is riveting and filled with interesting ideas that come across as both real science and contemporarily relevant."
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| Menopause the Musical |
My take: This popular ensemble show has been around for a while now, having premiered in 2001 in Orlando, Florida, in a 76-seat theatre that once housed a perfume shop. It's last visit at the Westport Playhouse was ten years ago, and it seems to have lost none of it's comic shine. "Who will enjoy this," asks Ann Lemmons Pollack in a review of the show last year, "beyond women of what they call un age certain? People of both genders around them unless they have no sense of humor. That includes family, friends and co-workers. One of life's cruel jokes is that the menopause hits many households about the same time adolescence does. Here's something to tide us over." Since this is effectively a remounting of that same production, I think I'm on safe ground putting it on the hit list, as I did last January.
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