Author Archives: Christopher Arnott

Earlier this month Goodspeed Musicals announced the third of the three shows planned for its 2011-12 season at its Goodspeed Opera House home base. Yesterday they announced the second of the three shows which will play its smaller and more progressive space, the Norma Terris Theatre in Chester. The show is Amazing Grace, based on … Continue reading »

My reaction to Macbeth 1969—which has its final few performances this week, closing after the Sunday matinee Feb. 12—was strongly visceral: blinding lights, frantic movement, throbbing drumbeats and heartbeats as harbingers of gunshots. Most of my critical brethren, I notice, overlooked the visual impact of this production and instead took it as an opportunity to … Continue reading »

  Pop scholars alert: You can go on YouTube and find a variety of ukulele players strumming a variation of “Has Anybody Seen My Gal?” which goes “Has Anybody Seen My Cow?” Little do they know that there is a song from 1933 which uses that same line, “Has anybody seen my cow?,” non-parodically (though … Continue reading »

Westport Country Playhouse has announced who’s in its upcoming production of Sondheim & Lapine’s Into the Woods. How do we all get to know this so far in advance of the May opening? Because the show’s a co-production, and opens in Baltimore next month. Baltimore Center Stage, which has Into the Woods as the penultimate … Continue reading »

Go, Gocomics.com!And somebody really ought to do a dissertation sometime on the propensity for comic strips to reference live theater. (Seeing as comics and theater were the two preeminent popular art forms that ruled right up to the birth of electronic media, only to get pushed aside by radio & TV & movies & hi-fis, … Continue reading »

It took me some time to dig deeply into the new Stephen King novel. Sometimes his novels are one-weekend affairs (whatever the size—I remember whisking through The Tommyknockers at spacecraft-speed so I could share it with the rest of the family one Christmas vacation). Other times (as with 2010’s Under the Dome) I can dawdle … Continue reading »

Be sure to sit up close for any Great Small Works show. They’re both small-scale and in-your-face. The progressive very-small-theater troupe, with New York radical roots and academic aplomb and great comic instincts, performs tonight (Friday, Feb. 3) and tomorrow (Sat. the 4th) at 8 p.m. in Wesleyan University’s CFA Hall, 287 Washington Terrace, Middletown. … Continue reading »

The Yale Cabaret has swapped the performance dates of two of the shows on their spring semester schedule. Funnily enough, they’re the two which stuck out from the sched already as being well-known works by world-famous American playwrights (amid the accustomed slate of obscurities and world premieres). Both scripts hail from the ’60s. Flipping Kopit … Continue reading »

New Haven’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas is of course a summertime affair. This year the omnicultural fortnight occurs June 16-30. But for the impatient, the fun begins in late wintertime with a series of A&I announcements and fundraisers. One big event of the 2012 A&I festival is already known: a two-night stand of … Continue reading »

I cringe at the memory of begging my parents to buy me the overpriced “Advanced Fine Edition” of Kreskin’s ESP. For their hard-earned money, I got a pendulum (with cards marked “Finance,” “Travel,” “Career,” and “Love”—this is science?), a board, some ESP cards, and a pamphlet—all junk. The pendulum, moved (ideomotor effect, like Ouija boards) … Continue reading »