Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July 2008 This is NOT Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. I mean that both ways – it isn’t the one he composed and it is nothing like his version. This version, which goes simply by the title of Phantom has a book by Arthur Kopit (what…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July 2008 THE PROLOGUE I feel like Emily Litella. You remember, that character Gilda Radner used to do on the Weekend Update segments on Saturday Night Live back in the day. Emily was a sweet little old lady in a cardigan who never heard anything right and…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, August, 2007 Some old musicals are just that – old. But The Music Man is one of that handful of shows that is always fresh and fun. Written in the 1950’s but set in an amorphous and idealized 1912 (some of the topical references in the show…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, August, 2007 Only recently has there been a trend to convert movie musicals into theatrical vehicles, usually with the view of reproducing, live on stage, the moments we all treasure on celluloid. Frankly, this rarely works well. This summer the Mac-Haydn has presented three movie-to-stage…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July, 2007 One look at the press release for the current Mac-Haydn production of Thoroughly Modern Millie and I knew that this would be the Mac-Haydn at their best. While the theatre frequently gets in very talented young performers for a season or two, it is the…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, May, 2007 110 in the Shade is a little gem of a musical written by those masters of little musical gems – Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt – whose names are forever etched in musical theatre history as the creators of The Fantasticks. Like that phenomenally popular…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July, 2006 My little brown cat Mary is the epitome of style over substance. I believe she is constituted thusly:5% Purrs and Meows5% Owl-y Eyes and Pointy Ears15% Structural Necessities (i.e. bones, blood, vital organs, etc.)75% Fluff Andrew Lloyd Webber has constructed his Cats along the same…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July, 2006 Somehow, I had managed to live 49.5 years without paying much attention to Funny Girl. I had never seen the show or the film. I discovered that I wasn’t even that familiar with the score, which was a surprise. So the first question I…
