Set in a New York City restaurant kitchen, Tom Rooney’s “Flaming Idiots” is a contemporary farce that has nothing to do with mentally deficient homosexuals, but instead follows the entrepreneurial misadventures of two former postal employees in their attempt to run a gourmet health-food restaurant. One problem: Carl and Phil have no idea what they’re […]
review
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From tusk till brawn
Somewhere on your Google machines, you can find a Top 10 list of the best arm-wrestling movies of all time. Perched at No. 4 is “Over the Top,” Sylvester Stallone’s 1987 flop opus about the sport. And the other nine spots are completely blank. I’d like to think that even if the chart weren’t a […]
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Boy bands + Jesus = weird
It’s hard to tell what the musical “Altar Boyz” is supposed to be. Funky appeal to blind faith? Toothless satire? It’s a good-natured little show, and although “Boyz” pokes fun at church customs, mainly just by referring to them, this Lyric at the Plaza production won’t have the faithful squirming in their seats. But it […]
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Star is born again
Oklahoma City University’s Opera and Music Theater Company kicks off its 60th-anniversary season Friday with the rock musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, the classic tells the story of the final days of Jesus’ life from Judas Iscariot’s point of view. Forty years after it made its Broadway debut, […]
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Peep show
City-based writer/director Robert Matson has resurrected — or is it re-erected? — his original hit play, “Beneath the Zipper,” a celebration of the penis, at The Boom. Think “The Vagina Monologues” for men, but less heady. Which is fine, because I don’t think Matson is looking to change the world as much as entertain people. […]
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Pioneer woman
Surely, you saw the musical history lesson “Quilters” sometime late in the last century. Originally produced in Colorado, the show was popular in the 1980s. In case you didn’t or even if you did, Oklahoma City Theatre Company is presenting a passable production at the Freede Little Theatre. I’m glad they are, because running down […]
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Time to make the ‘Donuts’
Carpenter Square Theatre has come within one block of full circle. Its new, storefront theater on W. Main Street is one block south of the old Carpenter Paper Company warehouse, CST’s first home in 1985. But let’s not wax nostalgic. CST opens its season with Tracy Letts’ “Superior Donuts.” This play was highly anticipated when […]
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Itsy bitsy ‘Bikini’
Nostalgia rules the day in the Oklahoma City debut of “The Bikinis,” a new musical by Ray Roderick and James Hindman. The show is set in 1999 at the 30-year reunion of The Bikinis, a New Jersey-based girl group that failed to break into the national scene after recording one hit single. Inspired by true […]
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Down the ‘Rabbit Hole’
In the 2006 drama “Rabbit Hole,” playwright David Lindsay-Abaire examines a family’s grief after the accidental death of a young boy. But he doesn’t provide any more insight than have the philosophers, theologians and pop psychologists who’ve come before him. That’s because Lindsay-Abaire takes on the great unanswerable question: Why do bad things happen to […]
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New sensation
Winner of nine Tony Awards, the 1975 stage classic follows a group of performers auditioning for a Broadway show. During the course of the day, the domineering director Zach encourages them to reveal their histories, hopes and dreams as he slowly but surely narrows down the field to a lucky few. While the show is […]