Under no circumstances would I publicly suggest that you indulge in mind-altering substances before seeing the District Theatre's Hair. I would, however, recommend that you ask for a hit of whatever actor Chris Causer is high on - even if it's just the exhilaration of performing - because, clearly, its side effects include having, and giving, the time of your life.
Five months after its first staging of the bawdy Broadway musical Avenue Q, the District Theatre has brought back its prurient puppets for another round, and with the replacements of just two cast members and minor reworkings made by director Marc Ciemiewicz, this return performance is still enough improved (from an already laudable production) to make the show worth seeing again, if not for the first time.
After seeing Friday's performance of Hank Williams: Lost Highway at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, I am reassessing my typical disdain for jukebox musicals, particularly those that are biographies of particular artists wrapped inside collections of their greatest hits. Playwrights Randal Myler and Mark Harelik, here, managed to create a work that - in addition to being cohesive and easy to follow - nicely weaves Williams' hits into the story and is incredibly interesting to boot. And thanks to a pleasingly lengthy, Hee-Haw-esque scene in the middle of the second act, Myler and Harelik also avoid the seemingly too-frequent theatrical trend of shows with second acts that are much too serious and downbeat.
Prior to the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's opening-night performance of Smokey Joe's Café, and immediately following the Bootleggers' "birth of rock 'n' roll"-themed pre-show, my partner's daughter, Hannah, tried to argue that the doo-wop style of music heard in the wait staff's entertainment was not rock n' roll because ... well, because she's 13 and knows everything, the history of the genre be damned. Yet despite also proclaiming that she hated this sort of "it's not really rock 'n' roll" music that I warned her would populate the entire evening's entertainment, Hannah was all smiles at intermission, excitedly talking about how much she loved the songs, and even citing a few favorites by name. I hope Hannah's changes of opinion and attitude are testaments to the quality of Circa '21's endeavor. It's truly fantastic.
