26 Jul 2005

Josh Duffee's Jazz Makes Audiences Feel Young at Heart

By Mike Schulz
When you first meet the energetic, charming Josh Duffee, within five minutes you find yourself thinking: This man is sharp. This man is focused. This man came ready to play. And what he plays is jazz.
26 Jul 2005

Ed Polcer: Improvising His Way to Fame

By Mike Schulz
For Ed Polcer, bandleader and performer with the much-loved swing ensemble Ed Polcer's All Stars, a musical career shouldn't have come as a surprise. He hails from a horn-playing family - his father performed weekends at the Majestic Theatre in Patterson, New Jersey, and his uncle was a jazz musician who toured with Benny Goodman's orchestra.
26 Jul 2005

Ghostlight's "Will Rogers Follies" a Spirited Mess

By Mike Schulz
Overreaching in the arts is often a good thing. Take, for example, The Will Rogers Follies, the latest presentation from Ghostlight Theatre, Inc. This is a hugely ambitious musical comedy. Not only does it aim to reproduce the experience of the Ziegfeld Follies stage shows in all their splendor and extravagance, but it's meta-theatre as well. The production is narrated by Rogers (Shane Partlow), who freely admits to being dead for decades, yet Rogers also converses onstage with the actual Ziegfeld (voiced by the show's director, Steve Flanigin), and other performers drop in and out of character to comment on the action as it progresses. Rogers also receives occasional visits from a long-dead pilot (Dr. Walter E. Neiswanger), while we in the audience are treated to musical contributions from others who are, similarly, deceased.
26 Jul 2005

Bay's Latest a Personal Best - and an OK Movie: "The Island," "Hustle & Flow," "Wedding Crashers," and "March of the Penguins"

By Mike Schulz

Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor in The IslandTHE ISLAND

If we absolutely must endure movies by Michael Bay, we could do a lot worse - we have done a lot worse - than The Island. As usual, there isn't a plot point or turn of character here that Bay doesn't make wincingly obvious, and, apparently, there's no getting rid of either his tiresome sentimental streak or his sniggering, insulting stabs at "humor." (When Bay attempts to be serious I giggle, and when he tries to make jokes, I go numb.) But I'd be lying if I didn't admit to being reasonably entertained by The Island. Bay has hold of an intriguing story idea, and even if the movie eventually turns into routine action-thriller nonsense, at least that nonsense is delivered with speed, a few memorable images, and even something resembling humanity. Like all Michael Bay movies, The Island runs a good bit over two hours. Unlike the others, I barely noticed.

19 Jul 2005

Making Something Delightful Out of "Nothing": Genesius Guild's "Much Ado About Nothing"

By Mike Schulz

Ah, Genesius Guild. By the time the company's Saturday-night production of Much Ado About Nothing commenced, the quality of the show barely mattered, because I was already thoroughly amused by the audience.

19 Jul 2005

The Underpants Fall, but Timber Lake's "The Underpants" Doesn't

By Mike Schulz
If there's one theatrical axiom I've subscribed to over the years - both as a performer and as an audience member - it's this: If anything is going to go wrong with a production, it'll go wrong on opening night. (Things also tend to go wrong when the show is being videotaped or ... ahem ... when a critic is in the audience, but that's a whole 'nother story.)
19 Jul 2005

Play Ball!: "Damn Yankees" at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre

By Mike Schulz
In the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre's production of Damn Yankees, the characters you might find yourself adoring the most aren't the devilish Applegate, or the seductress Lola, or newfound baseball star Joe Hardy, despite the considerable talents of those playing them. They're Joe and Meg Boyd, whose story sets the plot in motion, and who - as portrayed by Rob Engelson and Nicole Horton - provide the show with more cumulative emotional impact than you might be expecting. Horton isn't on stage as often as some of her co-stars, and Engelson appears even less frequently, but their spirits hover over the whole production, and it's not until the last scene that you realize just how much of Damn Yankees' success rests on how much you like Joe and Meg.
19 Jul 2005

Burton's "Chocolate Factory" Less Treat Than Toothache: "Charlie & the Chocolate Factory" and "Howl's Moving Castle"

By Mike Schulz

Johnny Depp in Charlie & the Chocolate FactoryCHARLIE & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

For the life of me, I can't figure out what director Tim Burton was trying to accomplish with Charlie & the Chocolate Factory that wasn't previously accomplished by Roald Dahl's book or the beloved 1971 film.

12 Jul 2005

Music Guild Presents a Huge, Handsome "Fiddler on the Roof"

By Mike Schulz
It's too bad that so many of us greet the news of another area production of Fiddler on the Roof with an audible groan, because the show itself is really, really good. The music is marvelous, the characters are enjoyable, the story is well-plotted and touching, it's always funnier than you remember it being ... if you're a musical-theatre fan and if you've never seen it, you have no excuse. But, let's face it, it can be a daunting musical to sit through. "I love that show," you'll hear people say, "but, Jesus, it's long ... ."
12 Jul 2005

A Pleasing, If Uneven, Walk Through "the Forest": "Another Part of the Forest" at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre

By Mike Schulz
There are two styles of drama going on in Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest, or at least there are in the Richmond Hill Players' current production of it: domestic and melo-. A prequel of sorts to the author's more widely known The Little Foxes, Another Part of the Forest features, as its central figure, patriarch Marcus Hubbard (Stan Weimer), the richest man in Bowden, Alabama, circa 1880. A cruel, conniving, even murderous despot, Marcus is universally reviled, especially by his children - Benjamin (James V. Driscoll), Oscar (Steve Mroz), and Regina (Keri Cousins) - all of whom, for reasons of their own, want their hands on the family fortune.

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