RSS 2.0 FeedScrubdog millionaire
Tue, Mar 03, 2009
Theatre Review: The Clean House is a scenario borne out of a Thirties screwball comedy; evidently, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to clean their own bathtubs.
| Sign up for our weekly e-blast |
Major funding for KCMetropolis.org
is provided, in part, by:
Steve Shapiro
Theatre Contributor (Past writer)
Steve Shapiro has been writing about the arts for over twenty-five years. He wrote and broadcast a weekly radio book review on KCUR-FM for ten years, and has contributed to NPR's Morning Edition book segment.
As a contributor to local publications such as KCMetropolis.org, KC Tribune.com, The Kansas City Star, Review, The Pitch, and Helicon 9, he has published essays and criticism on art, books, cinema, theater and the cultural Zeitgeist.
A chapter on the museum architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Steven Holl was published in the anthology, The Sixth Surface: Steven Holl Lights the Nelson-Atkins Museum (2007). On the side, he juggles Dachshunds and is available to moderate book groups.
FILM REVIEW: Remembrances of revolutions past
Mon, Feb 23, 2009
Film Review: Steven Soderbergh’s four-hundred-and-seventeen-minute film, Che, is actually two films—for some viewers it might be one too many films, but then I suppose there are people who think one can eat too much chocolate cake. Appetites must be fed.
You can’t go home again
Mon, Mar 23, 2009
Theatre Review: At first glance, Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio appears unlikely as ideal material to be turned into a musical.
FILM REVIEW: Bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Wed, Mar 18, 2009
Film Review: Superheroes and superstars alike are conspicuously absent from Kelly Reichardt’s meditative Wendy and Lucy, an independent film whose throwaway budget of $200,000 would not be enough to pay for an intern’s cup of coffee on the set of Watchmen.
Thy neighbor’s life
Mon, Apr 13, 2009
Theatre Review: Rain pours down and thunder echoes throughout Jim Grimsley’s surreal suburban drama The Borderland.
FILM REVIEW: Hamlet in Hollywood
Thu, Oct 30, 2008
Of all the movie genres developed by the studios and given Hollywood’s mark—the big-pageant musical, the screwball comedy, the romance, the star vehicle—film noir turns out to be the most complex and satisfying.
INDIE FILM REVIEW: Sets and set-ups
Sun, Oct 12, 2008
Critic Steve Shapiro pre-sreens Jacques Tati's Gestamkunstwerk Playtime.
FILM REVIEW: Synecdoche, New York
Mon, Nov 17, 2008
Not having all the answers is the movie’s one answer. How much need-to-know do you need to know about a person’s life?
FILM REVIEW: The Godfather Trilogy: An offer no one can refuse
Wed, Nov 26, 2008
Sitting in a darkened theater watching Brando materialize out of the darkness and Pacino turn from a young naïf into a cold-blooded killer was aheightened experience, like being at Bayreuth listening to Die Walküre.
FILM REVIEW: I remember mama
Wed, Apr 22, 2009
Ah, Fellini. Ah, "Amarcord!" This lusty, luscious lulu of a movie, a paean to the director’s Italian childhood in the 1930's, ranks high in the pantheon of imagined memories turned art.
Going to the moon, again
Sun, Oct 05, 2008
“Go to the moon, you selfish dreamer,” KCM contributor Steve Shapiro fires up the base and throws down the gauntlet. Steve, welcome home!
Don Seinfeld de la Mancha
Sun, Oct 12, 2008
If literature were a competitive sport, then Don Quixote is all the Olympic gold medals rolled into one.
Of love and book burning
Fri, Oct 24, 2008
KCM theatre critic Steve Shapiro reminds us that “Where there is music there can be no mischief.”
All too human
Sat, Oct 25, 2008
In the theater especially, remaking familiar productions is paramount to keeping works relevant. Steve Shapiro tell us why the KC Rep's Radio Golf hits that mark.
The not-so-satanic verses
Mon, Feb 02, 2009
In a sense, for the Rep’s "The Arabian Nights," the actors themselves serve as the stage; they create set after imaginary set with their dialogue and their physical interactions.
Bringing it all back home
Wed, Feb 04, 2009
Armed with nothing more convincing than the writer’s customary grab bag of fiction, drama, and journalism, Wilder turned the daily detritus into cosmic questions about faith, history, America, individualism, home and hometowns.
Meet the parent
Mon, Jan 19, 2009
At heart, it ["The Glass Menagerie"] is the eternal story of a family living together physically but living individually in their own dream worlds.
Sister Meshugganah
Tue, Nov 25, 2008
Sister Mary, played—or rather, incarnated—by Ron Megee, makes the Rev. Jeremiah Wright seem like Mother Teresa.
A little scheme writ large
Mon, Nov 24, 2008
And so charged is the story that even in a dramatic adaptation, like the annual Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s version, it needs little in the way of ghostwriting to improve it. Indeed, a stage production may be the best way to go...
The nice man cometh
Tue, Apr 28, 2009
When the Kansas City Repertory Theatre announced in 2007, that its new artistic director would be the thirty-something Chicagoan Eric Rosen, the search committee was gambling on youth and youth's ability to summon something stirring in an environment when every night is opening night and the show begins at the top of the ninth inning.
Starlight's Trek
Sun, May 03, 2009
There are stars, and then there are stars -- and then there is Denton Yockey. In his new capacity as president and executive producer of Starlight Theatre, Yockey is the guiding force behind the actors, singers and dancers seen from under the night skies.
Suspenders of disbelief
Tue, May 26, 2009
"A Flea in Her Ear," much like Michael Frayn's theatrical comedy "Noises Off" and Preston Sturges's 1948 movie "Unfaithfully Yours," if about anything, is about the love of performing. The KC Rep cast takes dialogue that needs a specific Mel Brooksian mania and finds it; this is one of those ensembles that probably could entertain an audience with a Chinese takeout menu.
Smells like team spirit
Tue, Jun 16, 2009
Stephen Karam, who was barely twenty-six when his first play, "Speech & Debate," premièred in New York in 2007, is not writing in the vein of the expected: throughout his play when pivotal moments arise the characters fall silent. Karam's characters are a talky trio, but they know when words are not enough.
The real housewives of Windsor
Mon, Jun 22, 2009
For this production of "The Merry Wives of Windsor, " director Sidonie Garrett leans toward the visual--more Coen Bros. immediacy than the traditional Laurence Olivier subtlety. Working in an outdoor setting, Garrett must insure the last rows get the punch line before the front half is laughing at the next joke.
See you later, elevator
Wed, Jul 15, 2009
Cole Porter might well have been named Cool Porter. More than 70 years after he wrote some of the finest, wittiest, kickiest music and lyrics in the American theatre - make that in American music - his oeuvre remains instantly recognizable and dreamily memorable.
Show trial
Mon, Aug 17, 2009
Starlight Theatre's production of "Chicago," looks all the sharper, given all we have witnessed in the rise of celebrity journalism and the cutting of corners in matters of truth and justice. Those who have seen only the movie version might be surprised: this version (itself a 1996 revival) moves to a tighter tempo.
Portrait of the artist as a young ladies' man
Mon, Oct 19, 2009
The echoes of a life that reverberates around the world haunts David Cale's monologue "Palomino." In this world première, which opened Friday night on the Kansas City Repertory Theatre's Copaken Stage, Cale, acting, writing and self-directing, provides a funny, at times sentimental, at times almost cinematic, ultimately indelible performance as several characters, both male and female, who find themselves connected by six degrees of separation and desires.
How can I resist you?
Tue, Sep 08, 2009
If you miss the touring version of "Mamma Mia!" that opened last night for a one-week run at Starlight Theatre, you can always track it down in Germany, Amsterdam, Switzerland or Spain; from Newcastle to Taipei, the bubbly musical taken from those ingratiating Abba songs precludes language and geographical barriers.
Where the wild things are
Sun, Sep 20, 2009
The Kansas City Repertory Theatre's presentation of "Into the Woods" under guest director Moisés Kaufman's God-like execution, brings to light the show's bedazzling interplay between the story and the songs. It is not too high praise to say that the intermission is needed so the audience can catch its breath for the second act which builds to its famous finale. (Held over thru October 11)
Flog the dog
Tue, Nov 17, 2009
The 1997 Barry Levinson film "Wag the Dog" took the idea that politics is 1% decision-making and 99% show biz, and turned it into a satire of Shavian, if not Shakespearean, proportions. In Beau Willimon's savage comedy "Farragut North," the spin-doctor gets spun--it is a case of the dog getting flogged.
Belly up to the Bard
Tue, Nov 24, 2009
How shall we compare Shakespeare to other writers? Rees' answer is: listen. Listening to him change pace and cadences from modern English to excerpts from Lear, Henry V, Richard II and others showcased the command of language: at those times, Rees the entertainer was subsumed by Rees the actor, and we might have been visited, even blessed, by the playwright's ghost.
The reincarnation blues
Tue, Dec 08, 2009
For Christopher Durang, the neurotically-charged playwright of the Unicorn Theatre's lastest play Miss Witherspoon, the stage is a second home; his comedies put his characters in situations as absurd and frightening as an hour at a psychoanalyst's couch set up in a confessional.
It's all right, Ma (I'm only bleeding)
Tue, Feb 02, 2010
The Unicorn's version of "Grey Gardens" communicates the sadness and the strangeness of Edith and Edie Beale's years together, with the understanding that it need not be thoroughly dispiriting if one can sing about it.
Of being and naughtiness
Mon, Mar 08, 2010
I had the best seat in the house for The Unicorn Theatre's production of Lia Romeo's comedy "Green Whales:" not by dint of a critic's power, but simply because the couple seated in front of me were engaged to be married.