Posted January 06, 2016in Center Stage
A critic has to be careful with the word “heartwarming,” a groaning cliché. But if ever a theater story deserved the compliment, it’s the one behind Broadway’s “Newsies.” For starters, the show is based on an extraordinary historical episode, an 1899 strike by New York newsboys. The street kids triumphed
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Posted December 23, 2015in Center Stage
Des Moines is offering a double-dip of comedy right through the double holiday. Downtown there’s a one-man show — “man,” more or less — and on the east side there’s a busy musical revue. One’s a touring show, the other entirely homegrown. So, how do you like your yucks? “Dixie’s
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Posted December 16, 2015in Center Stage
The set keeps things plain, but not the pajamas. Designer Tim Wisgerhof restrained himself, deliberately, for the interiors of “Straight White Men.” He worked as if from Sears-&-Roebuck, using mostly brown and beige. He put up artwork by Andrew Wyeth, who celebrated Americana. But midway through the first sequence (the
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Posted December 09, 2015in Center Stage
When an old show succeeds, it’s often got a new look. Trying out a fresh set designer, in fact, may be the best move the Playhouse made. For “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” Andrea Nice, based in New York, has dreamed up strange amalgamations that take you straight to the heart
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Posted December 02, 2015in Center Stage
The Tin Man had to brush up on his tap-dancing. Jay McGill handles the clattery creature, the one who needs a heart, in the theatrical version of “The Wizard of Oz.” The 1939 movie, magical though it was, needed a retooling to work onstage, and for the Tin Man, this
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Posted November 25, 2015in Center Stage
With no more than a shift in his tone, John Robinson could change the direction of the show. At a late rehearsal for “The Thanksgiving Visitor,” he kept switching vocal registers. For a fight scene (his character always comes out the loser), he’d crank up the intensity, and two minutes
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Posted November 18, 2015in Center Stage
While interviewing visiting New York actors, I’ve been told many times that they began in community children’s theater. The latest was Cedar Rapids native Elizabeth Stanley, now starring in “Bridges of Madison County.” She claimed she “owed a lot” to little companies in eastern Iowa. Around Des Moines, young Stanley
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Posted November 11, 2015in Center Stage
Over the years, “The Bridges of Madison County” has become more of a woman’s story. The No. 1 novel of 1993 by University of Northern Iowa graduate and professor Robert James Waller never much developed its female lead. Francesca, the farm wife whose fling with a photographer provides the plot,
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Posted November 04, 2015in Center Stage
When the executive producer of Pilobolus tells me his dancers have “a sandbox attitude,” he says it proudly. “We make all our work collaboratively,” explains Itamar Kubovy. “We’re always, in some way, talking to each other.” Kubovy has helped create a number of the famed troupe’s pieces, and he was
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Posted October 28, 2015in Center Stage
The other night, I heard a jazz singer cover an old chestnut about how “wives should always be lovers, too.” An earworm from the “Mad Men” era, the song urges housebound spouses to stay foxy, “ready for love.” In 2015, the singer brought it off as a gag and tweaked
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