Posts by Bill Eadie
ion’s Mystery Plays is for Genre Junkies
Mystery Plays were medieval pageants that were acceptable to church authorities because they were moral fables based on Biblical tales. Mr. Aguirre-Sacasa’s mystery plays are also moral fables, but his Bible is the horror genre itself, as taken from its most populist master practitioners: Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone,” Alfred Hitchcock, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King.
Read MoreAiry Anything Goes Makes an Enjoyable Evening
Airy is good for summer musicals staged outdoors, and Moonlight Stage Productions version of Anything Goes doesn’t push the envelope at all in making an enjoyable evening for its audiences.
Read MoreLamb’s Leads From Strength in See How They Run
Producing Artistic Director Robert Smyth has a knack for staging plays from the 1940s. He gets the era, how people talked then, and he’s fascinated with the details of the kind of well-made play that 1940s writers routinely produced. But, these plays today are considered quaint, and they’re seldom done. Mr. Smyth consistently provides persuasive evidence for reviving shows from this period.
He’s also good at directing farce, and See How They Run is a classic 1940s British farce. It should be a winner at Lamb’s and it is.
Read MoreDancing Kicks It For The Altar Boyz
The first thing you should know about Altar Boyz is that it’s fun. The second thing you should know is that it’s fun. The third thing you should know is that not much else matters. Noah Longton’s production at the Diversionary Cabaret (which means that the show is not an official Diversionary production and the…
Read MoreTour of La Cage Worth Seeing Despite It All
Producers Fran and Barry Weissler have made a lot of money doing what’s called “stunt casting.” They take an appealing show, front it with a “name” celebrity they think audiences would pay to see, surround the star with a cast that can sell the show, and then if the star bombs the rest of the…
Read MoreEssay: A Noble and Dirty Business
Seeing San Diego REP’s excellent season-opening production of Zoot Suit left me wondering about the role of politics in theatre and theatre in politics. It’s doubtful that the theatre will impinge much into the upcoming presidential race (though President Obama held a fundraiser on Broadway recently and has seen at least a couple of Broadway…
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