Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July 2009 As I was leaving the Mac-Haydn after seeing their first public performance of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast I observed a child of about seven or eight leaping straight up and down in great glee exclaiming “I just loved that show! It was so exciting!”…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June 2009 Will I ever get out of the year 1890 this summer?? Carousel, Hello, Dolly!, and, obviously, Paris 1890, Unlaced are all set in that year. The Gay Nineties, the Gilded Age, La Belle Epoch” – whatever you call them, the last years of the 19th century were…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, February 2009 This is the third production of the stage musical of The Full Monty that I have seen – the second I have reviewed – and until I saw this mounting at the Cohoes Musical Hall I have been a staunch defender of the show as…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, December 2008 The last time I saw Nuncrackers, in May (yeah, in May, go figure) 2005 at the Mac-Haydn, I called it “one big Christmas turkey*.” Now I really like roast turkey, but at that time I did not use the word in a complimentary manner.…
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 Being my curmudgeonly self, I was less than thrilled with the announcement that the Mac-Haydn would bring me “Christmas in July” with a production of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. It is my opinion that we get way too much Chistmas when it IS Christmas,…
