What hooked me was the bit with the table. Early on in “Spring Awakening,” the in-the-round set converts to a boys’ classroom, with no more props than chairs and a table. Once the “Master” quits the room, his teen charges explode. They tear into “The Bitch of Life,” spitting out
Read More →At the end of a recent Stagewest “Scriptease,” there was a lovely moment. As the applause rose, the two leads, Mary Bricker and Rebecca Scholtec, beamed at each other and fell into an embrace. Though the applause made it difficult to hear, I could swear one of them squealed. A
Read More →“One thing we’ve learned,” declares Jo Reid, the director, “is that folks in Ankeny just love Neil Simon.” Really? Granted, “Come Blow Your Horn” is far from the first Simon piece that Reid has done. She’s been with Ankeny’s Community Theater for 30 years. Still, the match hardly seems made
Read More →One weekend, four events? With acts that range from swinging on a star, sort of, to stripping down to skivvies, sort of? Plus a national competition? “We’d chatted about collaborating,” says Felicia Coe, a.k.a. Iowa Fly Girl, one of the women behind the whole whoop-dee-doo. “But we couldn’t figure out
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Posted July 16, 2014in Center Stage
Twenty-somethings these days were raised on the Disney Renaissance. The great run began with “The Little Mermaid” in 1989 and may have ended with “Shrek” in 2001. Afterwards, instead of new movies, the kids got spinoffs. “Shrek the Musical” came in 2008, an attempt to duplicate the breakout success of
Read More →When composer Jake Heggie first heard someone suggest an opera of “Dead Man Walking” back in 1996, he also began to hear the music. As he puts it, “the hair on the back of my neck stood up.” Heggie told this story before opening night at Des Moines Metro Opera,
Read More →Off in faraway places, I’m always hearing about our city’s opera. The rising star Michael Mayes, en route from one big stage to another, even got in touch via Skype to share his “deep respect” for the Des Moines program. This season, the Metro Opera’s (D.M.M.O.) 42nd, singers and musicians
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Posted June 25, 2014in Center Stage
Landmarks of African-American experience turn up all through August Wilson’s drama, “Fences,” which helped it win the 1987 Pulitzer Prize. But the story of the player who broke baseball’s color line, Jackie Robinson, fits especially well. The time is the 1950s, the protagonist is a former Negro Leagues star, and
Read More →Imagine you’re a teenager with dreams of being a comedian. The local club has an open mic night, but you’ve only got five minutes to make ’em laugh. You spend all day rehearsing, preparing your routine as you bus tables, and when that moment comes to step up to the
Read More →Turns out it’s not far from Sesame Street to Broadway. “Avenue Q,” now at Stagewest, demonstrates a terrific musical can combine puppets who look like Kermit and Oscar, kiddie-show singalong energy, and a healthy dollop of raunch. In 2003 “Q” garnered three Tony awards, and it remained on Broadway for
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