Results tagged “metropolitanplayhouse”

MUSIC: Merkin Concert Hall is reopening, and to help celebrate some of the piano greats will be on hand for a free, six hour concert. Philip Glass and John Medeski will be amongst those who will perform. Get more details here.

THEATER: Eugene O’Neill’s early one-act plays get a rare blast of daylight in The Pioneer, a new production that stages four of his nascent gems plus a whimsical monologue O’Neill wrote from the point of view of his dog. The plays boast O’Neill’s signature assortment of furious, flailing characters that would come to dominate his full-length work. Writing for the Times, Rachel Saltz notes that the plays range from “interesting” to “wonderful” and concludes that...

Playbill reported yesterday that South Pacific, the only Rodgers & Hammerstein musical not yet revived, will be back next year. No surprise there – every other hit show from the 20th century has had a second stint now, so it’s more a wonder that this one has taken so long. A Chorus Line just closed in 1990 and is already scheduled to reappear this fall; there are even rumors of Cats embarking on a second life in the not-too-distant future, and it only closed in 2000. This is why we would keep going to off-off-Broadway shows even if we could afford the big tickets: while there are certainly plenty of small troupes that perform from a standard repertoire of old classics, these are often adapted beyond recognition, and in general at any given time there are far more brand-new works than warmed-over, recycled stuff.

Metropolitan Playhouse hosts Poe-Fest, starting tonight. As you may have guessed Poe-Fest is inspired by the life and the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Performers from all over the country congregate for a two week festival of Poe saturated theatricals. Included are performances, musicals, monologues, dances, jokes and whatever else the Poe-esque style can be injected in to.

This year more than any we remember from recent past, theater companies are gearing up to bring you Halloween-related shows. It’s appropriate, when you think about it – actors are all about dressing up as people/things other than themselves, so they should lead the way when the rest of the world decides to masquerade. In any case, options abound citywide. Psycho Clan, for instance, has an interactive haunted house program called Nightmare going, which looks pretty freaky just from the website. The 13 rooms are supposed to be “more David Lynch than John Carpenter” and it’s already selling out.