Several theater companies went out of business in 2015, while others moved to more comfortable digs, hoping their audiences would follow. Of those that stayed put, many pushed themselves by producing challenging works, particularly mega-musicals and powerful new dramas. There was too much quality happening to contain the year in 10 productions, so here instead (in my … [Read more...]
Community dance: A brace of Nutcrackers
As aficionados are happy to point out, The Nutcracker is a most unusual classical ballet in that it doesn’t really have a central character. What it does have is a first half in which mime is crucial to telling the story, and a collection of widely varied dances for the second. It’s a strange story, too, drawn from a tale by the German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, and no … [Read more...]
ArtsPreview 2009-10: The season in opera
The coming opera season has been scaled back somewhat in both of the major local companies, but opera devotees will still have plenty to look forward to. In addition to the seven local productions, there will be five others from two different trunk companies, and 11 high-definition broadcasts of live performances from New York’s Metropolitan Opera, screened at the Society for … [Read more...]