‘Les Miz’ magic finally lights up local theater
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: “Les Misérables” will pack a wallop the likes of which has never before hit Des Moines community theater. A big number like [...]
Read More →
Posted March 19, 2014in Center Stage
Posted March 12, 2014in Center Stage
Gravity-defying humanity
In mid-Manhattan, the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater is a behemoth. Along Ninth Avenue, you’ll see the name plastered across the largest dance space in the world. In Des Moines, though, [...]
Read More →
Posted March 05, 2014in Center Stage
Whirling, wacky and out of Chicago
When improv comedy works, it suggests an eruption of ping-pong balls. The players start with something ordinary, and without so much as costumes or props, they wind up rocketing off [...]
Read More →
Posted February 26, 2014in Center Stage
‘Venus in Fur’ finds its goddess
On a recent stop at Chicago’s Art Institute, I spent time with the Greco-Roman antiquities. Most bare a picture of some god — or is it an actor, playing a [...]
Read More →
Posted February 19, 2014in Center Stage
‘Our Town’ darkens Des Moines while raising the bar
I have a problem — a great problem for any theater critic: I have enjoyed a season of theater, which required no digging to find compliments. If the Des Moines [...]
Read More →
Posted February 12, 2014in Center Stage
Coming of age with two faces
“True West” may exist on a map, but Sam Shepard has somewhere scarier in mind. The 1980 play, often called Shepard’s masterpiece, reduces a Los Angeles, Calif., ranch house to [...]
Read More →
Posted February 05, 2014in Center Stage
Dunderhead Noir, done with brio
At Ankeny Community Theater, a late rehearsal of the mystery-farce “Death by Chocolate” proved swift, professional and, at times, delightful. Yet I kept wondering whether any company could bloom under [...]
Read More →
Posted January 29, 2014in Center Stage
It’s McMurphy Against the Machine in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’
“Aggressive.” That’s the word Tim Wisgerhof uses to describe his set for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The designer imagined a sort of “machine” that was “chewing into the [...]
Read More →
Posted January 22, 2014in Center Stage
‘Don’t wanna be an American idiot,’ but you’ll wanna see the show
Josephine Spada, young but already a veteran of New York musical theater, speaks of her role in “American Idiot” with the cool of a professional. “It’s like being shot out [...]
Read More →
Posted January 15, 2014in Center Stage
Cue the nervous laughter over ‘Clybourne Park’
Ken-Matt Martin delivers the great freak-out of “Clybourne Park,” late in the brilliant second act, and he does it without a word. Martin, playing “Kevin” in this half of the [...]
Read More →
