REVIEW: “La Cage Aux Folles” at the Cohoes Music Hall

Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, January 2008 This is the best production of La Cage Aux Folles in the world. Well, okay, somewhere on this planet there is probably a production with snazzier sets. But there is not a better over-all production anywhere anyhow because only the production at the Cohoes Music…

REVIEW: “The Music Man” at the Mac-Haydn Theatre

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…

REVIEW: “Singin’ in the Rain” at the Mac-Haydn Theatre

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…

REVIEW: “Jekyll and Hyde” at C-R Productions

Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, March 2007 C-R Productions has mounted another rip-snorting musical at the Cohoes Music Hall, this time Frank Wildhorn’s Jekyll and Hyde, a huge hunk of faux-Victorian balderdash if there ever was one, but in this fast-paced and engaging presentation directed by Jim Charles the foolishness is overshadowed…

REVIEW: C-R Productions Presents “The Sound of Music”

Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, December 2006 People often ask me: “Is it hard to review the same shows over and over again? What more is there to say about your twenty-third production of The Sound of Music?” The answer is simple: You never see the same show twice. I could…