Strike Up the Band
David Pittu, Victoria Clark and John Ellison Conlee in a scene from the MasterVoices concert [more]
Toby Tenenbaum
Iolanthe (MasterVoices)
MasterVoices concluded its 2022-23 season with a lovely concert staging performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s rarely seen comic opera "Iolanthe (or The Peer and the Peri)" staged and conducted by artistic director Ted Sperling. The cast was mainly made up of Tony Award winners (Christine Ebersole and Santino Fontana) and Broadway regulars (David Garrison, Jason Danieley and Phillip Boykin) with some fast rising young opera singers (Ashley Fabian and Schyler Vargas) and a principal ballerina from the New York City Ballet (Tiler Peck). All seemed to be thoroughly enjoying their Carnegie Hall outing. The 120-member Master Voices chorus and orchestra gave a glorious rendition of the 141 year old score. [more]
Specially Processed American Me
Who knew that SPAM has figured so importantly in Korean and Korean-American cuisines? Jaime Sunwoo’s "Specially Processed American Me" tells that story and much more. "Specially Processed American Me"—check out those first letters!—uses SPAM as a metaphor to explore the huge subject of the Korean War, SPAM and her own intimate, moving autobiography as a Korean-American. [more]
Twelfth Night (Duende Productions)
By stripping down the show and performing it in a white box theater space with minimal scenery and costumes, the eight actors, doubling up on parts, have fun interpreting Shakespeare’s luscious comedy of unrequited love and mistaken identity for each other, often bringing the viewers into the action (with mixed results). This is probably the friendliest Twelfth Night I’ve ever seen since the musical Your Own Thing in the sixties. [more]