Fiasco Theatre Company’s touring production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s cautionary tale of wishes (and witches), Into the Woods, ended its month-long stay in Los Angeles on May 14, 2017, and moved on to Dallas. But before departing LA’s Ahmanson Theatre, the company celebrated its residency in the City of Angels with — what […]
Read MoreFiasco’s re-imagined INTO THE WOODS
Thick taut ropes stretch across the back of the stage at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles like a forest of piano wires. Stacks of piano harps scale each side of the stage, framed by a proscenium of keyboards. Sitting center stage, glowing beneath a canopy of shimmering mismatched chandeliers, is an upright piano on […]
Read MoreSondheim’s Post-modern Reinvention
Like many Stephen Sondheim fans, author Robert L. McLaughlin discovered Sondheim’s musical work when he found a cast album (in his case, Company) at the library while in high school. McLaughlin, now an English professor at Illinois State University, was inspired to act in college and beyond because of his interest in Sondheim: “Seventeen years […]
Read MoreSondheim in Trondheim
Rabarbrateateret (“The Rhubarb Theater”) is a theater company situated in the idyllic “old town” Bakklandet in Trondheim, Norway’s third largest city. The company has mounted acclaimed productions of Waiting for Godot and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, among others. Their first Sondheim show was an intimate Sweeney Todd, played in about four square meters in the […]
Read MoreJohn McMartin, Follies’ Original Benjamin Stone, Dead at 86
John McMartin, an actor with a flair for patrician roles, died on July 6, 2016. According to the New York Times, the cause was cancer. He was 86. McMartin, whose stage career began in 1959 with an appearance in Little Miss Sunshine off-Broadway, scored one of his biggest career successes a dozen years later […]
Read More