Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw Seventy years after its first iteration as a television play, Reginald Rose’s work – originally titled Twelve Angry Men – remains a pungent critique of racism and xenophobia. Sherman L. Sergel adapted the teleplay for the stage in 1955 and Rose did the screenplay for the classic 1957 film featuring … Read more
Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw What better way to ring in the Halloween dread than a musical biography of the U.S.A.’s most celebrated master of the macabre? . . . [T]he show melds fact and fiction with a lush operatic score that runs the gamut of genres . . . a spooky and loving tribute … Read more
Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw Playwright Ashley Rose Wellman’s world premiere dramedy depicts a complex mother-daughter relationship with nuanced characters and snappy dialogue. Set in a cramped and cluttered animal shelter, Wellman’s play explores themes of euthanasia, abortion, and single motherhood. These are embodied by human as well as Bunraku-influenced puppet characters, resulting in a … Read more
Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw In the early 1950s, playwright Arthur Miller and his friend Elia Kazan pitched Miller’s dockworker-based screenplay The Hook, with Kazan as the proposed director, to Columbia Pictures’ boss Harry Cohn. When Cohn – and the FBI – wanted to change the corrupt union villains from Mafia thugs to Communist ones, … Read more
Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw This international theatre festival has winnowed hundreds of submissions down to 52 entries, all ten-minute one-act plays, 31 in English and 21 in Spanish. Audience members and a jury of industry professionals vote on the best plays, with awards and a cash prize presented to the finalist during the closing … Read more
Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw Opening on Broadway during the U.S. housing-based financial meltdown, this 2008 Tony Award winner for Best Musical deals with gentrification, yet another real estate-grounded scourge that disproportionately harms marginalized communities. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s music and lyrics, an exuberant mix of hip-hop, salsa, and other energetic musical genres, and Quiara Alegría Hude’s … Read more
Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw Director Nike Doukas adds a three-piece combo and rocking beat to Shakespeare’s tale of magic, revenge, and love in a production that is part musical, part radio play, and all fun. Rather than a set that depicts the play’s island motif, Doukas and scenic designer Angela Balogh Calin strategically place … Read more
Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw Arthur Miller’s 1949 classic challenged the USA’s post-World War II optimism, serving as a pungent indictment of the country’s drive for economic success and the toll it took on working class people in their scramble for The American Dream. Almost seventy-five years since its Broadway debut, Miller’s seminal work is … Read more
Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw With its hashtag retitle alluding to the #MeToo Movement, author/adaptor Charles A. Duncombe’s version of William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure offers a timely skewering of sexual harassment, religious hypocrisy, and state repression. Rather than a wholesale adaptation, however, Duncombe maintains the original setting and intersperses contemporary banter and narration with … Read more
Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw That adolescent boys and young men played the female roles in William Shakespeare’s day surely wreaked humorous havoc on the Bard’s gender-bending comedy. Director Ken Knight has gone a step further, casting women in some of the male roles, and thus amping up the gender fluid frivolity of this classic … Read more