Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June, 2002 It is a great pity that Christianne Teasdale is so dead wrong as Nellie Forbush, otherwise this would be a really great production of South Pacific. But because Teasdale tries and misses in this pivotal role, it is simply a good one. I say this…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June, 2002 This is one of the best shows I have ever seen at the Mac-Haydn. It looks great, it sounds great, and it is just plain fun. There were moments of color and light and song and dance that just made my heart soar.…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June, 2002 Mack and Mabel is a legendary flop. It opened on Broadway in the fall of 1974 with the legendary Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters in the title roles. It has a score by the legendary Jerry Herman (composer of Hello, Dolly! and Mame), was directed and choreographed…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June, 2002 If you like the Lawrence Welk Show, then you will just love My Way, a lightweight entertainment billed as a “tribute to Frank Sinatra” currently running at the Theater Barn. Basically this is a ninety minute concert of 56 Sinatra standards, strung together by…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, May 2002 I think it takes real chutzpah to stage Assassins less than a year after 9/11. In a summer season where many area theatres are busily waving the flag, scheduling this daring, edgy musical which explores the lives and possible motives of nine people who attempted…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, May, 2002 Nuns wearing wimplesAnd captains with whistlesBrave young MariaAnd Nazis who bristleEdelweiss, goatherds,And children who singThese are a few of my favorite things— with apologies to Oscar Hammerstein II Although I entered the Mac-Haydn the other night with my curmudgeonly “I Hate Rodgers &…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, January 2002 Quilters is a fascinating show based on real stories of 19th century pioneer women in the American west. Most of those women would have been quilters, and authors Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek uses quilting and quilt patterns as a way to organize these…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, August, 2001 Like many people of my respectable middle age, I have a personal attachment to Jesus Christ Superstar born of it being a seminal piece of music from my early adolescence. And yet I had never seen the show staged. I was a fourteen-year-old atheist living…
