Finally, here’s a chance to see Mike Waugh answer nature’s call right onstage. He does this bit of business in Matt Pelfrey’s thriller, An Impending Rupture of the Belly. Being the seasoned pro that he is, Waugh surely shakes the dew off the lily and talks to a man about a horse without fail, and […]
Larry Laneer
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No objection
You know you’re in for an evening of light entertainment when a musical opens with a number titled “Ohmigod You Guys,” sung by a bevy of University of California-Los Angeles Delta Nu sorority sisters. Legally Blonde: The Musical, based on an Amanda Brown novel and the 2001 motion picture, is now being given a modest […]
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Heavy mental
Soon after meeting his fellow patients in an unnamed mental institution, Randle P. McMurphy exclaims, “Damn, what a sorry-lookin’ bunch!” Funny, I thought the same thing when viewing the OKC Theatre Company production of Dale Wasserman’s highly effective adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. OKCTC should take that as a […]
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Spring into action
With a youthful cast under Michael Baron’s direction comes a highly satisfying Oklahoma premiere. In the much-lauded Spring Awakening, Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik have adapted Frank Wedekind’s 1891 German tragedy about teenage angst and sexual awakening into a musical. Employing contemporary slang and combining the 19th-century setting with a rock score, the show attempts […]
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Shine on
Melanie Marnich’s docudrama These Shining Lives is meant to be taken both literally and figuratively: Women whose jobs literally cause their bodies to glow from radium poisoning provide shining examples of lives nonetheless well lived. Based on actual events and people, the play takes place between 1922 and 1938 in Chicago and Ottawa, Ill. Catherine […]
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Sex ed
An entire category of theater instruction exists to coach actors in what may or may not come naturally. Ironically, techniques used in stage combat apply to intimate scenes. Tonia Sina Ellis, adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma’s drama school, specializes in choreographing sexual intimacy for the stage. She wrote her master’s of fine arts […]
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Stripped down
Deborah Draheim fans (count me among them) have been eager to see her in the consummate musical-theater role for the mature woman, Mama Rose in Gypsy. The buzz was she’d be good in the role, and it proved true, as seen in the modest production now at the Civic Center Music Hall’s Freede Little Theatre. […]
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Clowning around
The aliens in Aliens with Extraordinary Skills aren’t extraterrestrials; they’re two illegal immigrants from the former USSR constituents of Moldova and Russia trying to make it in the good ol’ U.S. of A. And that’s about the most interesting thing in this play by Saviana Stanescu, directed by Rhonda Clark. Professional clowns Nadia (Gwendolyn Evans) […]
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Artistic endeavors
The audience is both omniscient and clueless viewing Keith Bunin’s The Credeaux Canvas, a 2001 play now at Ghostlight Theatre Club, under the direction of Emily Etherton. One moment, we possess important information the characters don’t know, and the next moment, they’re springing something new on us. Set in the world of struggling artists in […]
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Inns and outs
Almost every show in Oklahoma City Theatre Company’s season is an American play written between 1957 and 1982. Why the company has selected plays from such a limited place and period is a mystery, but its current offering is Bernard Slade’s 1975 romantic comedy, “Same Time, Next Year,” directed by Cristela Carrizales. In this Neil […]