Posted August 10, 2016in Center Stage
Cloris Leachman may be a hometown girl made good, but she hasn’t often come home. Now 90, she prefers retirement Hollywood-style, with a trophy room full of awards — including a record eight Emmys. Yet when John Busbee, the man behind “The Culture Buzz” on KFMG, called the West Coast
Read More →
Posted July 27, 2016in Center Stage
A play outside the box, “Hooded” uses a box as a set. The design for Pyramid’s latest production — itself something of an experiment — is by Jordan Weber, an installation artist. Weber has come up with a rotating box, placed center-stage within a horseshoe seating arrangement. Players perch on
Read More →
Posted July 20, 2016in Center Stage
No tribute band ever got a better endorsement. George Harrison, the late great Beatle, once showed up at a performance by Damian Darlington, then and now the leader of a Pink Floyd tribute. What’s more, this was a birthday party for David Gilmour, a founder of the original ensemble. “There
Read More →
Posted July 13, 2016in Center Stage
“Raisin In the Sun” has a rollercoaster of a second act, so gasp-inducing that Lorraine Hansberry’s play became Broadway’s hottest ticket of 1959, and after that, a star-making film for Sidney Poitier. For the production from Pyramid Theatre, Des Moines’ first African-American company, Director Tiffany Johnson found a
Read More →
Posted July 06, 2016in Center Stage
Is this the birth of a star? Sydney Mancasola comes to Des Moines between assignments in Berlin and London, playing the title character in “Manon,” one of opera’s great tragic heroines. She commands the stage on the strength of her voice alone, a soprano that, even as it soars,
Read More →
Posted June 29, 2016in Center Stage
Were those skinny jeans for opening night at the opera? Actually, yes, and a couple of young women sported black ankle-high lace-ups, bohemian. Looking around, you might think the opera was hip. The idea had Artistic Director Michael Egel nodding in agreement. “We’ve done a lot of outreach
Read More →
Posted June 22, 2016in Center Stage
A woman’s naked heel, in an open auditorium, can provide thunderous punctuation. The echoing slaps of the first dancer’s feet in “Shakuntala” gets everyone’s attention at once. The performer, JoLynn Evans, petite though she is, delivers a head-snapping opener. She could be announcing “Showtime!” — with her feet. What
Read More →
Posted June 15, 2016in Center Stage
Could King Lear be showing the Christmas spirit? The aging monarch presides over a tragedy — possibly Shakespeare’s greatest. By play’s end, the bodies onstage include Lear’s three daughters, and among them is the one he betrayed, Cordelia. Yet during a late rehearsal on the patio at Salisbury House,
Read More →
Posted June 08, 2016in Center Stage
Even with no set and only one of the two actors in costume, the tension percolates. The opening minutes of “Mothers and Sons” bring together the conservative mother of a gay AIDS victim and his last, most serious lover. Even in rehearsal, they make an uneasy pair. Nancy
Read More →
Posted June 01, 2016in Center Stage
“You Can’t Take it With You,” the Broadway smash from 1936, has probably been in production somewhere ever since. A laugh-fest with a lot of heart, it took home the Pulitzer. An Oscar-winning movie and thousands of smaller stagings soon followed. “Also, you find the basic story in plenty of
Read More →
