Theatre Reviews by Patrons and Professionals
SALT LAKE CITY — Reviewing a show like Ruined by Lynn Nottage is a slightly formidable task. My goal here is to talk about both the text as a standalone piece and the performance of that text. Ruined is a richly dark play set in the midst of a bloody civil war in the Congo. [...]
SALT LAKE CITY — Several years ago I read the play Well in a dramatic literature class and absolutely fell in love with it. The level of meta-theatricality and its deconstruction of contemporary performance trends really resonated with me and it has since been at the top of my list of favorite plays I have [...]
SALT LAKE CITY — This weekend the Salt Lake Acting Company produced its first ever Fearless Fringe Festival: a weekend of three original shows by local artists producing new and experimental works. The show I attended was entitled Yoga Confidential: A Rat Bastard’s Inside Guide to Yoga & Surrounding Areas, written by Stephen Brown. Brown [...]
SUGAR HOUSE — Experimental theatre in Salt Lake and Utah counties is generally an extremely rare occurrence. There is a “mainstream theatre” niche that the general population seems to have bought into exclusively. However, to my very pleasant surprise, I discovered The Sugar Space. The Sugar Space is an unassuming, self-proclaimed “hole-in-the-wall” performance space in Sugarhouse, [...]
SPRINGVILLE — We all know the stereotypes and jokes surrounding small community theatre: amateur, hackneyed performances with no budget and even less entertainment value. However, walking into the Springville Playhouse, I was pleasantly surprised to find a quaint little theatre in the basement of the Springville public library. The small thrust-stage theatre seated close to [...]
SALT LAKE CITY — As a man, I anticipated that walking into a production of “The Vagina Monologues” would be like throwing a steak to a den of lionesses. The piece tends to have an anti-male bias and carries with it a stigma of being a 2-hour “man bashing” session. However, this was not the case at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. They took the piece and instead bolstered understanding and awareness for all audience members in attendance, regardless of sex.