The splendid Meanwhile Park outdoor theatrical venue will be the site for the upcoming world premiere of Thomas Misuraca’s In Dogs We Trust, a gay romantic comedy set in a West Hollywood dog park. The play by Misuraca, a Los Angeles-based playwright whose short- and full-length plays have been produced internationally, was selected by a … Read more
Before the pandemic, street theater, roaming stiltwalkers, and aerial artists were part of the Utah Arts Festival experience and audiences scrambled whenever there was a performance either along the south-facing glass wall of the City Library or along the crescent arch or in the heart of the festival grounds. In 2014, Australia’s Strange Fruit using … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Utah Review begins its preview coverage today of the 48th Utah Arts Festival, which will be held June 28-30 (noon to 11 p.m. on June 28-30) on the Library Square in downtown Salt Lake City. As this is the state’s largest multidisciplinary arts and cultural gathering each year, The Utah Review considers … Read more
Ballet West’s 60th anniversary season has been simultaneously a celebration of its groundbreaking legacy in American dance and an exploration of fresh artistic possibilities going into the second quarter of the 21st century. Phil Chan, an internationally known choreographer whose organization Final Bow for Yellowface initially engaged the ballet world’s artistic gatekeepers to resist treating … Read more
The electropop opera Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812 draws the audience into the stage action in ways unlike conventional experiences with musical theater. Take, for example, the rapid-fire exuberance of the Act II sequence comprising Balaga, The Abduction and In My House. On opening night for Pioneer Theatre Company’s (PTC) Utah premiere … Read more
Becoming more popular than its precursor “dream on,” the slangy derisive “in your dreams!” quickly took hold in the 1980s, making it painfully aware that despite desiring so much for something to happen, it will never be. With eight miniature scenes by four Utah playwrights, presented to a tiny audience of six persons per performance, … Read more
In the introduction to her superlative biography Joan of Arc: A History (2014), Helen Castor wrote about her subject’s unique position as historical figure and as an epitome of Medieval Age culture, military history, politics and religious faith: “Unsurprisingly, the effect of Joan’s gravitational field – the self-defining narrative pull of her mission – is … Read more
The idea of turning even a rather small part of Leo Tolstoy’s monumental novel War and Peace into a musical would seem daunting, if not damn near impossible. However, Part 8 of the story, which occurs just before the novel’s midpoint, inspired Dave Malloy to do precisely that. Tolstoy, who achieved the epitome of rich … Read more
Ballet West’s mixed repertory production Love and War generated some of the season’s most meaningful, sensitive performances of the company’s 60th anniversary season. The program note by Adam Sklute, the company’s artistic director, summarized it well: “Love & War is designed to reflect our humanity, showing us our individual soulful divinity, our power and defiance, … Read more
It is a familiar American story: two siblings grieving the death of their mother are discussing and arguing about what to do with her body. In Vichet Chum’s play Bald Sisters, that familiar story expands to an elucidating emotional epiphany about how we engage with and view our neighbors, especially immigrants who have escaped horrifying … Read more