Matsy Stinson

Iceland

March 30, 2023

Composer/librettists O-Lan Jones and Emmett Tinley have created what they refer to as “a re-Creation Myth” in this fascinating interdisciplinary opera theater work entitled "Iceland." It is profoundly musical in that it embraces both opera and contemporary musical theatre by casting 12 opera singers as The Hiddenfolk and Mythic Beasts of Icelandic folklore and two musical theater singers who would be equally comfortable sitting on the Billboard Hot 100 as the two leads that are pushed together romantically over the course of 17 hours one New Year’s Eve in Iceland. [more]

17 Minutes

January 23, 2020

The play succeeds in large part because it begins in the aftermath of a school shooting. There are a few bits of dialogue describing the terror of the incident itself, but there is no onstage representation of the violence, nor any long, involved retelling of it. None of that is really needed, because the chaotic, nightmarish imagery of such episodes has become engrained in our imaginations over the years. Nor does the play aim to offer a solution to the mass-shooting scourge. Instead, it tells a simple—yet decidedly powerful—human story about a figure who is, paradoxically, both on the periphery of the incident and at its heart. [more]

Miracle on 34th Street, The Musical

December 10, 2019

Tony Triano as Santa Claus in a scene from the Argyle Theatre production of Meredith Willson’s [more]

Spin Off

September 25, 2018

Considering the repetitiveness of the material and the fancifulness of the play, Megan McQueen as Rosie Ramirez and Kevin Rico Angulo as Det. Jimmy Marks make a great deal more of their characters than is in the writing, while the rest of the actors in underwritten roles do quite a bit less. Both attractive performers, they make us care about their characters though not much is happening. It is to be hoped that they find more substantial roles soon that will showcase their talents. [more]

Otello (LoftOpera)

March 20, 2017

LoftOpera is a feisty little company that operates around Brooklyn, especially Bushwick. They are giving" Otello" in LightSpace Studios, a disco on Flushing Avenue about the size of a high school gymnasium. There’s a small orchestra (27, about half the size Rossini wrote for), kept under tight but lyrical control by the company’s maestro, Sean Kelly. The singers do not appear to be looking at him for cues while they are enthusiastically playing out the story, but they only got lost once at Saturday night’s performance. [more]