Taconic Hills Performing Arts Center / “Sweeney Todd”

REALLY? Community theater is doing “Sweeney Todd”? They’re doing one of the best and most difficult works in musical theater literature? Are they are doing “Sweeney Todd”–with orchestra—in spite of the fact that the whole cast, crew, and orchestra members have day-jobs, other life-responsibilities and obligations besides theater?

Yes, they’re doing it. Darn well.

While every small theater company, even the so-called “professional” unionized ones, are digging around for the smallest cast, the cheapest production, the most minimal musical accompaniment, The Two of Us Productions seems to be saying, “Hell no!” (Or in the case of wicked “Sweeney,” “Hell” yes!) Read more…

“The Brothers Size” / The Ancram Opera House

IT’S A PLAY not a musical, but at one point, Oshoosi, the younger of the Size brothers, sings. He sings an old ballad called “Try a Little Tenderness.” (Oshoosi adds his own Baroque embellishments in the mode that black jazz and pop singers have made their own.)

It is a rare moment in “The Brothers Size,” a play by Tarell Alvin McCraney. At that moment, the character is joyous, free and persuasive, though much of his young life has been none of the above.

Oshoosi has recently come home from prison. At the Ancram Opera House, home has crooked wood slats and a crooked thrusting stage adorned with unidentifiable metal objects and two metal guardians of the homestead—who look surprised to be there. The set is a marriage of African folk art and American car repair. Read more…

“Baskerville” / Theater Barn

“WHAT IS IT ABOUT?” If you’ve just finished reading a book or come from the theater, someone is likely to ask you that.

Ostensibly, “Baskerville,” currently playing at the Theater Barn, is about Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson; and the title promises that the play will be some sort of adaptation or takeoff on Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous novel “Hound of the Baskervilles.”

While it is very smart theater economics for a playwright to piggyback on something famous when creating a new work, Ken Ludwig has ended up making “Baskervile” mainly about something else. Riding on the bones of a Sherlock Holmes story is merely a means. Read more…