by | Aug 22, 2023 4:30 pm | Comments (3)
Did any of you, dear readers, catch the appearance of Ron DeSantis just before opening night of the Shakespeare comedy, “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” at Edgerton Park?
by | Aug 22, 2023 8:46 am | Comments (2)
Brian Slattery Photo
Edmund B*Wak Comfort: "God left me just enough to get by."
New Haven artist and designer Edmund B*Wak Comfort faced a harrowing health crisis in the spring that saw him lose both of his legs below the knee as well as a few of his fingers. Now home from the hospital, he has found family and friends rallying to help him, including a performance from the Regicides improv comedy group this Saturday, Aug. 26 that will double as a fundraiser to help him meet living expenses while he recuperates.
“After the incident, I really appreciate being here,” Comfort said. “I realize how precious it is, all the things I took for granted. It is amazing that I still get an opportunity to be here.” He thinks of friends and family who have passed. “I was on the verge of being one of them,” he said, “missing all the beautiful things that life has to offer.”
by | Aug 18, 2023 7:23 am | Comments (1)
Detail from promotional art for Merry Wives of Windsor.
“Here will be an old abusing of God’s patience and the King’s English,” says Mistress Quickly, played with cheeky humor by Martine Fleurisma in Elm Shakespeare Company’s production of one of the bard’s lesser-known works, The Merry Wives of Windsor. The production plays fast and loose with the audience’s expectations, but it never betrays their patience or wastes their time. Instead, The Merry Wives of Windsor — running now through Sept. 3 at Edgerton Park — provides exactly what it promises: wit, wiles, wanton scoundrels, and scheming wives. Most of all, it supplies the audience with over two hours of good, old-fashioned fun.
by | Aug 14, 2023 10:21 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio
This photo says it all.
Under a Saturday night sky swelling with the threat of thunderstorms, The Regicides performed to a rapt and enthusiastic audience at A Broken Umbrella Theatre’s current location on Blake Street with a bonus: they were treated to a preview of the theater’s new performance space in the making, and a pitch for assistance to help it come to fruition — all while eating, drinking, and making merry in the truest laugh-a-minute fashion.
by | Aug 10, 2023 9:03 am | Comments (10)
Thomas Breen Photo
Aric Isaacs and Ian Alderman inside the space at 280 Blake St. to be developed into a black box theater.
A Broken Umbrella Theatre has big plans for the property at 280 Blake St. in Beaver Hills. If they come to fruition, in a couple years the property will house a roughly 90-seat black box theater as well as a cabaret complete with restaurant and bar. According to Ian Alderman, Broken Umbrella’s executive director, the project will likely cost somewhere between $1.5 million and $2 million. Thanks to a $500,000 grant from the state’s Good to Great Program, they’re on their way. To realize their vision in its entirety, they have faith in the strength of the New Haven arts community and its desire to have a space where the arts can be.
Continue reading ‘Broken Umbrella Developing New Space For Arts’
by | Jul 24, 2023 7:33 am | Comments (1)
Eleanor Polak Photos
Mustafe Mussa performs for audience at Gather.
Outside of Gather, the cafe at 952 State St., rain poured down in torrents. Wet-haired and clutching their umbrellas like lifesavers, people filed in, ready to dry off and cheer up. Fortunately, this Friday evening Gather could offer both. Nine performers — two musicians and seven comics — were busy setting up for a show. As Jake Strom sold tickets to the incoming audience members, his fellow comedian Mustafe Mussa stood ready and waiting with a roll of paper towels.
by | Jun 14, 2023 8:35 am | Comments (0)
La Fille du Laitier
La Fille du Laitier's Macbeth Muet.
A black screen. A table, covered by a white cloth. Styrofoam cups and origami paper fortune tellers. These, along with performer-puppeteers Jérémie Francoeur and Marié-Hélène Bélanger Dumas, comprise both the setting and the characters of La Fille du Laitier’s Macbeth Muet, a silent pantomime version of Shakespeare’s classic. Using minimal props and a wealth of choreographed body language, Francoeur and Bélanger Dumas interpret the Scottish tragedy into a visceral and lavish affair that does full justice to the scope of the original play.
Continue reading ‘Macbeth Muet Plays Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow’
by | Jun 6, 2023 8:43 am | Comments (2)
Eleanor Polak photo
At Monday's Shakespeare-in-the-schools rehearsal.
Nineteen middle-schoolers, all dressed in black, filed into the band room of Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School. They were preparing for the dress rehearsal of their production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Before they took the stage, however, they partook in a light refreshment of fruit snacks, Cheez-Its, juice boxes — and grapes. When the students dangled bunches of the purple fruit from their hands, they looked for all the world like the Roman citizens they were about to embody.
Continue reading ‘Mauro-Sheridan Lends Its Ears To The Bard’
by | May 10, 2023 8:50 am | Comments (0)
Joan Marcus Photos
Christina Anderson’s the ripple, the wave that carried me home starts with a perky voice on an answering machine, bright and insistent. The young woman on the other end is trying to get a hold of an older woman. The reason is a civic event, the dedication of a swimming pool, which is to be named after the older woman’s father. When the older woman — Janice — finally calls the young woman back, she is polite, but hesitant. There’s a little pain in her voice, and (the audience can see) more pain on her face. The phone call is bringing up difficult memories. Why would the renaming of a swimming pool do that?
by | May 3, 2023 8:45 am | Comments (0)
Marty Tucker, a recently minted member of New Haven Theater Company, recalled how he was asked to join the troupe. “One night Kevin” — that is, J. Kevin Smith, NHTC’s president — “bought me a beer and said, ‘hey, I got a question for you.’ How are you going to say no after someone buys you a beer?”
by | Apr 28, 2023 8:39 am | Comments (0)
T. Charles Erickson Photos
Steven Sapp.
To a rapt audience at Space Ballroom on Thursday, Steven Sapp, of the theatre company UNIVERSES, was finishing a riveting spoken-word piece. “We bite the hand that feeds us,” he said, “because it hasn’t fed us enough.” The line resonated through the room, a breath before another onslaught of singing and rapping, harmonies and rhythms that formed the backbone of Long Wharf Theatre’s production of Live from the Edge, running at the Hamden music club now through May 21.
by | Mar 22, 2023 9:40 am | Comments (2)
Alejandro Hernández, Camila Moreno, Mónica Sánchez, and Alma Martinez.
Armida has a proposition for the family in front of her. She wants to make Hason, who already works for her, more of a business partner. Hason is game. He’s been working for this opportunity for a while now. Acan, his son, is also ready. He’s been getting used to his life in Los Angeles. But Medea, Acan’s mother, isn’t so sure. She worries about what Hason may be giving up. She and Tita, the family’s matron, worry that maybe Armida’s designs on Hason extend past the professional. In that moment, there is a sense that the family, which has held together through several hardships, might just start coming back. And Medea doesn’t know what to do.
by | Mar 17, 2023 9:03 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Nelson on the set of Barbecue after rehearsal.
A family has gathered in a park. They’re worried about one of their siblings, who has yet to arrive. But it’s clear each of them has their own problems, too. Their conversation is fraught with personal history, some of it harrowing, most of it hilarious.
There’s a scene break. Now the family is back — same pavilion in a park, same cooler, same grill, same clothes. Except that now, all the family members are Black. They pick up right where the White family left off. As if they’re the same family, but different too. Something weird is going on.
Continue reading ‘Collective Consciousness Theatre Serves Up Grilling Comedy’
by | Mar 17, 2023 8:44 am | Comments (4)
On Your Feet! The Story of Gloria and Emilio Estefan.
The music and musical backstories that New Haveners carry around from the last century are popping back up at the Shubert Theatre this spring, still vibrant and relevant to a changing world.
Continue reading ‘Shubert Takes It To The Superstar Conga Limit’
by | Mar 16, 2023 8:45 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery photo
Warren Leftridge, Finn Crumlish, Amelia Tamborra-Walton.
Seymour, who works in a flower shop, has found an unusual plant. He stumbled across it during a total eclipse and has brought it to the store, where it’s attracting customers. His boss, Mr. Mushnik is pleased. But Seymour has discovered a terrible secret: the plant only grows by being fed human blood, and is ever hungry for more. Plus, it seems to be able to talk. What is Seymour going to do? And how will all of this affect the relationship he hopes to have with his co-worker, Audrey?
Continue reading ‘Hillhouse Drama Opens Little Shop Of Horrors’
by | Mar 7, 2023 9:01 am | Comments (0)
Goldfish, the first full production by New Haven Theater Company since Annapurna last May, features a scenic design by director John Watson that truly sets the stage: on one side, a kitchen in a scrappy apartment where 19-year-old Albert Ledger (Nick Fetherston) lives with his father Leo (John Strano), a widower who has a problem holding onto money whenever there’s something to bet on; on the other side, a sumptuous house where a divorced mother, Margaret (Sandra E. Rodriguez), swills martinis in her pajamas and pearls, while sharing smokes with her daughter Lucy (Sara Courtemanche), also 19. In between is a shifting space — now library, now cafeteria, now bed, now bus stop — that serves as the upstate college, set amidst rolling hills, where Albert and Lucy meet and evolve a relationship.
Continue reading ‘NHTC Production Depicts Life In A Fishbowl’
by | Mar 1, 2023 9:01 am | Comments (2)
Linda-Cristal Young Photo
Kayode Soyemi, Ashley Thomas, Jason Gray.
Blood-spattered limbs. Wigs and heels. A marriage in trouble. Angels and demons, birds and fish. All of these and more are part of the Yale Cabaret’s current season, as it has returned to in-person dining and theater under an inspired and historic artistic team pursuing the venerable old goal of delivering the shock of the new.
by | Feb 20, 2023 1:53 pm | Comments (2)
Brian Slattery Photo
Manuel Camacho, Eliza Vargas, and Catherine Wicks in Ice The Beef and Elm Shakespeare's new anti-violence production of Hamlet.
Student leaders and Shakespeare theater-makers came together to create a new performance of Hamlet that was part social justice theater, part violence prevention program — and all heart.
by | Dec 16, 2022 5:19 pm | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden Photo
Eighth grader Dakarai Langley leads "Would Anyone Care?" dance about suicidal awareness.
With a look of defeat, Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School (BRAMS) eighth grader Dakarai Langley lifted his left foot and dangled it over the edge of an auditorium stage as a song shook the dark room with the lyrics: “Would anyone cry if I finally stepped off of this ledge tonight?”
And then Langley kept dancing, proving to everyone in the room before him just how lucky this city is to have this young artist call New Haven his home.
Continue reading ‘Winterfest Wows At Betsy Ross Arts Showcase’
by | Dec 9, 2022 8:54 am | Comments (0)
As A Soldier’s Play — running now at the Shubert Theatre through Dec. 11 — opens, a group of faceless and as yet nameless soldiers join in a song. Their performance is full of strength, energy, even joy. But the song is a work song, captured at Parchman Farm, the notorious maximum-security Mississippi State Penitentiary, in which inmates were made to work in conditions all too reminiscent of slavery. The parallel is clear: these Black soldiers in the U.S. Army, at (the fictional) Fort Neal in Louisiana, deep in the Jim Crow South, are in some sense prisoners, trapped and laboring under a crushing system of racist oppression that they are in no position to be able to change. Though this being the Army, they do have the chance to be promoted in it, if they follow the rules and don’t make too much trouble. So what happens when one of them, Sgt. Vernon C. Waters, is shot to death under mysterious circumstances?
by | Dec 6, 2022 8:47 am | Comments (3)
Dexter Singleton.
As Collective Consciousness Theatre in Erector Square prepares to roll out its plans for 2023, artistic director Dexter Singleton thought back to 2021, when he first walked back into the theater after the pandemic shutdown in March 2020, which interrupted the company’s run of Dominique Morrisseau’s play Skeleton Crew. “We came back into CCT and we still had the Skeleton Crew set in there,” Singleton said. “Jenny” — Nelson, who directs many CCT productions — “said it was like walking into a time warp.”
Continue reading ‘Collective Consciousness Comes Full Circle’
by | Dec 5, 2022 9:02 am | Comments (0)
Joan Marcus Photos
Michele Selene Ang and Katherine Romans.
Set in Lexington, Kentucky (home of the University of), Leah Nananko Winkler’s The Brightest Thing in the World is a rom-com, a sitcom, and a story of addiction and recovery, of the bond between sisters, of goofy romance between a nerdy woman and a more worldly one. It has babbling drunks and maudlin drunks, tough honesty and an almost slapstick emergency, with enticing baked goods, cutesy Christmas paraphernalia, a random dance number, and a final scene of intense, visceral truth. The play, receiving its world premiere, is running now at Yale Repertory Theatre through Dec. 17, directed by Margot Bordelon.
by | Nov 21, 2022 8:35 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery photos
Marmol-Gagne.
Puppeteer and host Anatar Marmol-Gagne was trying to start the Pinned and Sewtered Puppet Cabaret at the State House on Sunday night. The problem: fellow puppeteer Madison J. Cripps, who attempted to hijack the audience’s interest with puppets, dance routine, and blazing harmonica. It seemed like chaos might reign for a moment, until he was dragged away by a giant red cane wielded by a silent stagehand. Marmol-Gagne smiled.
“Who invited you?” she said to Cripps, now offstage. “Oh, right. I did.”
Continue reading ‘Puppet Cabaret Gets Down To Monkey Business’
by | Nov 7, 2022 8:50 am | Comments (1)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Movimiento Cultural
The world-renowned Shubert Theatre was home to some of New Haven’s own on Saturday night, as a show entitled Elm City’s Finest brought artists performing everything from bomba to dramatic monologues to rock ‘n’ roll to this first-of-its-kind event. The evening also included work displayed by local visual artists, food from local restaurants, and wares from local vendors.
by | Nov 4, 2022 9:03 am | Comments (0)
In the first scene of Bekah Brunstetter’s Going to a Place Where You Already Are — now on at New Haven Theater Company as a staged reading through the weekend of Nov. 3 through Nov. 5 — Roberta (Susan Kulp) and Joe (Ralph Buonocore) are sitting in the pews of a church, chatting amiably as the service starts. What they’re talking about is, in some ways, not as important as the fact that they are talking, with the ease and camaraderie of a couple happily together for years. They forget where they are, have to apologize to the people around them. After a minute or so, it finally occurs to Roberta to ask: whose funeral are they attending, again?
Continue reading ‘NHTC Finds Heaven Is A Place On Chapel Street’
