Category: Theater
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Seattle 2025 Fall Dramatic Arts Preview

While we cannot right the Earth’s tilt, there are some consolation prizes for contending with the dark. With most everyone hunkering down, the dramatic arts kick into high gear again, and really thrive, starting in the fall. … In the land of the Big Dumper, let’s get our Big Bottoms off the couch and into…
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The Have Nots! Have Lots, Piccolo Spoleto Review

…Another scene had Rucker and Finch playing a premise completely devised by the audience — acting out “that famous Australian custom of flossing after sex.” This is when the night becomes great. Audience members have the goofiest things to say, and as Tavares says, “we try not to turn anything down.” So what you get…
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Laurie Anderson’s Moby Dick, Spoleto Festival Review 1999

“Up front, like Ahab guiltily admits in the beginning of Laurie Anderson’s Songs and Stories from Moby Dick, “I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never read the book! It’s too big!” … Unfortunately, the show’s not much more than that: a “reading’s cool” PSA for technophiles.” From the S.E. Barcus Charleston City Paper archives, 1999.
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Kurt Weill’s Die Burgschaft, Spoleto Festival Review

“Die Burgschaft is the story of Mattes and Orth, two men in the mythical land of Urb who witness the gradual and tragic degradation of their trust in one another because of the dividing and corrupting influence of money and power.” From the S.E. Barcus Charleston City Paper archives, 1999.
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Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Spoleto Review 2001

Many in the audience seemed truly touched by this “jewel of Western opera repertoire,” as Director Chen Shi-Zheng has called it.
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Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, Spoleto Review 2001
“For all the kitsch and Brecht, what I would’ve loved to see was a critique of this dopey and insulting take on women….”
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Stephen Sondheim’s Company, Piccolo Spoleto Festival Preview

The musical “Company,” by Stephen Sondheim, is being revived by the Footlight Players for Piccolo Spoleto due to its outstanding success in January. “Company” is considered a “concept” musical due to its non-linear form of storytelling. It washes over you with a collage of relationships, giving you a better understanding of what it’s like to…
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Eric Bogosian’s Suburbia, review
1998 Archives My Charleston City Paper review of Eric Bogosian’s Suburbia, produced by the College of Charleston, October, 1998. Follow S.E. Barcus on Facebook.
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Charles Busch’s Psycho Beach Party, review
“Besides the funniest script this year with the best acting, you get dance numbers … Metts opens the show with some sexy freak-out strobelight hula hoop madness that gets everyone rocking.”
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Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, Review

Review of Charleston Stage Company’s 2000 production of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes”. From S.E. Barcus’ Charleston City Paper archives.