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On Jan. 11, one night before its spring semester line-up begins in earnest, the Yale Cabaret is presenting a special one-night engagement of Yale College alum Holcombe Waller, the introspective yet theatrically inclined singer/songwriter/producer who originally hails from California and now lives and works in Oregon. Earlier this month, Waller debuted Surfacing, which he described … Continue reading »

Doing another idiosyncratic “Play in A Day” project with whichever kids show up, Thursday Dec. 29 from 2-5 p.m. at Never Ending Books, 810 State St., New Haven. We adapt, design and rehearse a classic theater piece in just three hours, then perform the results when the parents arrive to bring their children home. All … Continue reading »

My favorite internet radio station, BBC Radio 4, is broadcasting its 1986 radio adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1980 dysfunctional family comedy Season’s Greetings. Peter Vaughan and Nicky Henson star in the 90-minute production, directed by Micahel A. Simpson. available via a “Listen Now” function through Sunday, here. The ten-character play, a sort of kindly British … Continue reading »

I dig out a version of this immortal sketch from Peter Cook & Dudley Moore’s Good Evening (aka Behind the Fridge) to watch or listen to every year at this time. You can find a tidy short rendition of “Gospel Truth” on the show’s soundtrack album or on the episode of Saturday Night Live which … Continue reading »

From the current, Christmas-spirited issue of World of Archie Double Digest (#12, Jan. 2012). You know how this is going to end—the Riverdale students’ outlandish solutions to real-life education crises give Betty fodder for her Drama Club sketch, and inspire mirth, mockery, meditation and ultimately admiration from the school administrators. Appropriately, my copy has gotten … Continue reading »

It’s Christmas, and for some that means endless talk about American Girls dolls. The American Girls brand of dolls, novels, videos, clothing, self-esteem manuals and other accessories for the well-heeled, history-literate female child has always been theater-friendly. Some of the American Girls stores have even had their own auditoriums and live musical revues. All the … Continue reading »

Exit the Actress By Priya Parmar (Touchstone, 2011) Packaged to look confusingly like a Philippa Gregory or Lauren Willig novel, Exit the Actress has a tone and structures which distinguish it from a lot of mainstream historical romances. Its cast of characters, listed in the front of the book as if you reading a theater … Continue reading »

There are other ways to be an angel than saving bedraggled building-and-loan guys from suicide. Long Wharf Theatre is asking audience members, and anybody who happens to stop by the theater, to donate non-perishable foodstuffs which will be distributed to the needy by Connecticut Food Bank. A press release explains: “People interested in donating can … Continue reading »

Interesting pre show phenomenon at performances of A Doctor in Spite of Himself, which closed last week at Yale rep. Rallied by some animated young ushers, audiences were urged to get up and shake their booties, dancing in the aisles and in their seats. The activity put the crowd in an appropriate mood for the … Continue reading »

Saw the new Alvin & The Chipmunks movie, Chipwrecked with my daughters yesterday. We’d already read the novelization, so we were prepared. Except the novelization doesn’t include any incidents of singing, dancing or sight gags, so it’s rather more existential about the whole trapped-on-a-desert-island thing. You’d think there’d be little of interest in Chipwrecked for … Continue reading »