Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Pianist/composer/arranger Billy Strayhorn (Frank Lawson) grew up in a family dominated by his alcoholic, abusive and homophobic father. His first love was classical music, but he was gay and black, and in the 1930s and 40s gay was emphatically…
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw When Mrs. Patrick Campbell was rehearsing for her debut in the role of Hamlet’s Ophelia, her mentor, George Bernard Shaw, gave her a choice piece of advice: “In Shakespeare, the only justification for a pause…
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Playwright Jon Robin Baitz has always tended to treat his subject matter obliquely and to view it from a slightly skewed vantage point. But here, he’s tackled his subject head-on, becoming downright confrontational. And since…
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Sparkles (Barkley Romero) is a 17-year-old Latina who lives with her mother, Lisa (Lena Marie), in a Highland Park house which tends to slide downhill whenever they miss a mortgage payment. (This is magic realism…
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw We’ve been besieged of late by a plethora of juke-box musicals, but the production company For the Record has put a new spin on it. They bring us a soundtrack musical, whose score is derived…