The best play of the year was Lyric Theatre’s The Glass Menagerie. Smartly directed by Michael Baron, the production kept a faithfulness to the script that gave theatergoers an idea of how the play must have looked and sounded in 1945. Dawn Drake’s set design and John Fowler’s lighting balanced the real and surreal in […]
Larry Laneer
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Sing it
When an adapter and director makes a familiar story seem fresh, success has been achieved. When the feat is repeated, success has been transcended. Such is the case with Lyric Theatre’s A Christmas Carol, adapted and directed by the company’s artistic director, Michael Baron. This is the same production Lyric has staged for three years […]
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Most drab
Surely you’ve read about the uproar from some quarters over OKC Theatre Company’s production of Paul Rudnick’s glib comedy The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told. A state legislator, who also happens to be a Baptist preacher, began an effort to shame officials into barring the show from CitySpace in city-owned Civic Center Music Hall. City […]
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To the Cabaret
Reduxion Theatre Company’s production of Cabaret is a little show in the tiny Broadway Theater, but, brother, it packs a punch. And if that isn’t enough, the show includes six nubile lasses prancing around in bras and panties while smoking cigars (real ones!) and a couple of cute chorus boys to boot. What’s not to […]
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‘Medea’’s house
Medea, presented by the Oklahoma City Theatre Company at CitySpace, is a perfect demonstration that no matter how much things change, they stay the same. The play is a box-office smash from 431 B.C. and one of the most famous Greek myths, written by Euripides. Medea’s plight could be ripped, as they say, from today’s […]
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Choir ‘Boyz’
Theatergoers around here sure have been getting a strong dose of religion lately. First came Godspell from City Rep, and now Pollard Theatre Company is presenting Altar Boyz. Going to the theater these days reminds us sinners that we’re backsliders. In Altar Boyz (Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker, music and lyrics; Kevin Del Aguila, […]
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A ‘Spell’ on you
Godspell cast Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre opens its season with a production of the 1971 musical Godspell that has all the charm of a committee meeting in search of agenda. The show poses this ontological question: Why did God endow human beings with a mind if we’re not supposed to use it? The show, by […]
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Don’t be ‘Lear’y
Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park (OSP) ends its summer season on a satisfying note with a spirited production of King Lear, in which Hal Kohlman gives a commanding performance in the title role. One wouldn’t expect Kohlman’s Lear to go gentle into that good night, and he doesn’t. Director Kathryn McGill staged the play with […]
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Which witch?
The musical Wicked has flown into the Thelma Gaylord Performing Arts Theatre on brooms and bubbles, the preferred modes of travel for the show’s witches. The production huffs and puffs, but in the end, it’s no more than a colorful spectacle and emotional dud. Based on Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked: The Life and Times of […]
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Whoa, men
Let the backstabbing and catfighting begin! They come in copious amounts, along with lots of other stuff, in Reduxion Theatre Company’s entertaining, if not particularly compelling, production of the comedy The Women by Clare Boothe Luce.As denizens of New York City’s Park Avenue, the play’s characters can afford to run off on consolation trips to […]