Let’s be honest. There is no better season for farce than the holidays at the end of the year. Ask any host who envisions the perfect holiday gathering only to see it unravel, thanks to clashing egos or the chaos of personal drama and fragile relationships. Pioneer Theatre Company (PTC) has wisely chosen farce as … Read more
It would be a very easy task to find examples that counter the assertion of the existence of one truth. In the history of civilization, it often has been assumed that how we inscribe, connote or annotate every experience will lead to a single correct definition or interpretation, thereby negating every other possibility. For instance, … Read more
In between pieces in Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT)’s sensational Ovation production, Nicholas Cendese, a former RDT dancer who is now executive/artistic co-director for the company, talked briefly about the company’s 60th anniversary as an occasion to celebrate its “luminous pinnacle.” Indeed, this phrase encapsulated the astonishing quintet of commissioned works, including two gorgeous world premieres, … Read more
In fashioning complicated characters that encourage audiences to handle more than one thought about a person in their minds, playwright Jen Silverman has always deftly handled themes of isolation, paranoia and loneliness well while suggesting larger social epiphanies in her stories. That certainly is the case in The Moors (2017) and the latest Voodoo Theatre … Read more
For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from … Read more
PYGmalion Productions Theatre Company’s Utah premiere production of Tiny Beautiful Things, which is based on the bestselling book by Cheryl Strayed that was adapted for the stage by Academy-Award nominated screenwriter and award-winning actor Nia Vardalos, is a charming delight of chamber theater, with a quartet of actors who give the audience a soothing respite … Read more
Offering a twin bill that any ballet company would deem difficult to pull off successfully, Ballet West was unfazed on opening night, presenting equally glorious performances of Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, a Victorian-era adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces (The Wedding). The Dream was enchantment par excellence. Ashton’s … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the sixth in an ongoing series of features highlighting authors and new books published by Torrey House Press in Utah. In an earlier Torrey House Press book, The Delightful Horror of Family Birding: Sharing Nature with The Next Generation, Eli J. Knapp, with a unique blend of humility and humor, described … Read more
At its tenth anniversary, the award-winning Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen has ripened beautifully. Gen Z audiences, who are now adults, are processing the themes in an enriched mature perspective. Meanwhile, the newest generation of Gen Alpha theatergoers, many of whom have started college within the last couple of years as well as those either … Read more
“Only one who knows English in its Elizabethan fullness, who can ride with gusto the Elizabethan winds of rhetoric, lyric, and vituperation, who puts no bounds to the theater’s mirroring of nature and release of imagination, can bring to Shakespeare’s plays their merited acceptance with open arms and heart,” the American historian Will Durant wrote, … Read more