Review

Triple-bill review: PYGmalion Theatre Company’s Witch, Salt Lake Acting Company’s Very Like A Whale, Westminster University’s Chance Operations

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PYGMALION THEATRE COMPANY: WITCH Playwright Jen Silverman certainly is admired by Salt Lake City theater companies. The most recent example is the outstanding production of Witch (a 2018 play), directed by Morag Shepherd, in a PYGmalion Theatre Company run which continues through Oct. 17. This is the third Silverman play within the last year to … Read more

Sugar Skull! A Dia de Los Muertos Musical Adventure: two City Academy students review this UtahPresents’ Family Sunday show

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Editor’s Note: In extending a tradition to feature student reviewers, The Utah Review, with the assistance of Christal Jackson, an English teacher at City Academy, is offering opportunities this year for students to review productions representing Ballet West, Salt Lake Acting Company and Utah Presents. This is the first of seven shows that students will … Read more

Two thrilling season openers: Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s Act I, Repertory Dance Theatre’s Legend & Lore

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RIRIE-WOODBURY DANCE COMPANY: ACT 1 Expanding the possibilities of dance theater, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s 63rd season opener, Act 1 was as spiritually entertaining and satisfying as it was artistically successful. With two new works by eminent New York choreographers, the production rose upon the company’s legacy of innovative artistic directions that its founders Shirley Ririe … Read more

A pair of outstanding fiction releases from Torrey House Press: Eli McCann’s Stitched, Annie Lampman’s The Origin of Ava

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the 11th in an ongoing series of features highlighting authors and new books published by Torrey House Press in Utah.  There are two boffo fiction releases this year in Torrey House Press’s outstanding catalog. In both instances, the authors make  a solid case for the wise stewardship independent publishers offer in … Read more

Two late summer dance performances: RDT Link Series’ This Will Destroy You, Nava Dance Theatre’s Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies

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REPERTORY DANCE THEATRE LINK SERIES: THIS WILL DESTROY YOU If one needed a forceful example of dance’s capacity to convey intense emotions, This Will Destroy You, an evening-length work directed by Molly Heller, was presented recently by RDT’s Link Series. The cycles of grief, labor, care, and unresolved voids were evoked in ways that superseded … Read more

A supreme opener for Pioneer Theatre Company’s 65th season: Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor Is the Villain

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In one of the many classroom scenes, vintage 2018, in Kimberly Belflower’s play John Proctor Is the Villain, Nell (Rocky Anicette), who just recently transferred from a school in Atlanta to one in a small Georgia town, is talking to Mason (Gage Martinez), the class jokester who really wants to play basketball but ends up … Read more

Theater roundup: Footpath Theatre Company’s Western Minerals and Their Origins, The Rose Performing Arts Coalition’s Nevermore, ThreePenny Theatre Company’s The Death of Nero

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WESTERN MINERALS AND THEIR ORIGINS: FOOTPATH THEATRE COMPANY IN ASSOCIATION WITH FLYING BOBCAT THEATRICAL LABORATORY AND UTAHPRESENTS  Setting an impressive benchmark for UtahPresents’ Stage Door Series opener, Western Minerals and Their Origins by Footpath Theatre Company in collaboration with Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory is among the best chamber theater plays that have emerged over the … Read more

Late summer roundup at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art: Snowtrickle, feldspar, dirt; The End; Rapture | Rupture; Dirt Nap; Cornelius Cardew: Treatise with Interdisciplmary Arts Collective

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Several late summer exhibitions at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) are set to close soon. The Utah Review offers a roundup. Eleanor Mahin Thorp: Snowtrickle, feldspar, dirt (through Sept. 19) In her show, Snow-trickle, feldspar, dirt, Eleanor Mahin Thorp adds rich textures (pigment, mineral matter, and surface disruptions) to her paintings which documents … Read more

The joys of creating on a usable past: ThreePenny Theatre Company’s forthcoming premiere production adapting Mikhail Kuzmin’s 1929 play The Death of Nero

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During his lifetime, Mikhail Kuzmin produced an extraordinary output, including poetry, novels, critical essays, musical scores, and plays. However, in the mid 1920s, as Stalin tightened his grip on the new Soviet state, Kuzmin became persona non grata in the eyes of the regime and published virtually nothing during the last 10 years of his … Read more

Telling ‘a pretty cool story’ in Torrey House Press recent book: R.E. Burrillo’s American Archaeology is entertaining exploration revealing more than a fascination with ‘really old stuff’

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the tenth in an ongoing series of features highlighting authors and new books published by Torrey House Press in Utah.  In 2022, when R.E. Burrillo set out to write America Archaeology, he was primed to write a fun book about, in his words, “a pretty cool story.” Of course, there are … Read more