Artswest

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Milk Like Sugar at ArtsWest review

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Kirsten Greenidge’s award-winning coming-of-age story, Milk Like Sugar, is a moving examination of class, race, and gender through the life of a teenage girl. With a stellar cast and beautiful design, Malika Oyetimein’s directorial debut for ArtsWest is a production you won’t want to miss.
Milk Like Sugar is the story of three young women of color living in the inner city. On Annie’s sixteenth birthday, she and her friends make a pact to get pregnant and have babies together as soon as possible. They see this as an easy path to unconditional love and baby shower swag, but things quickly get more complicated…
Malika Oyetimein brings her strength as a director and her passion for telling the historically untold stories of people of color to ArtsWest for the first time with Milk Like Sugar…

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Death of a Salesman

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The Underbelly of the American Dream.

Standing ovations often are not well-deserved; however the truly magnificent production of Arthur Miller’s 1949 Pulitzer Prize winner Death of Salesman, at Artswest, more than deserved the standing ovation, it received at the curtain call on Saturday night. Artistic Director Mathew Wright, took this superb well-constructed play, found an outstanding cast and kept me riveted for three hours. It is clearly the best show I have seen all year.

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‘Voilet’ Sings to what it Means to be Beautiful

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Violet is a 2014 Broadway hit that Director Andrew Russell has stripped down to the ‘bone’ for this run at ArtsWest. The title character Violet (Brenna Wagner) has hopes that a TV faith healer in Tulsa, Oklahoma will heal her face. It was scarred in a freak accident. The creators—Brian Crawley wrote the lyrics and book to Jeanine Tesori’s music—respect the audience and leave it to us to imagine the scar. They had to assert themselves throughout the long development process, but as Crawley notes, “We weren’t about to drive a bus onstage, why not leave the scar to the imagination as well.” Russell followed the spirit and with scenic designer Christopher Mumaw kept the props and furniture to the barest minimum. What’s left is a musical examination of one woman’s vulnerable search for healing and acceptance with little else on stage to distract your attention.

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It’s a Wonderful Life-Solo Performance

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America’s Equivalent to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

Although there have been adaptations in several media of Frank Capra’s classic film It’s a Wonderful Life, ArtsWest’s seems to be the only solo performance adaptation. One actor played the hero, George Bailey, as well as all the other parts, including the guardian angel who tries to prevent him from committing suicide when his there is a business crisis.

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My Mañana Comes—Or Will It?

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A good play brings up many themes you can talk about. Elizabeth Irwin’s latest effort My Mañana Comes at ArtsWest, reaches that status under the direction of Matthew Wright and a brilliant cast and creative team. The themes bounce off one another like the banter of four men doing the best they can to live on the sub-minimum wage plus shift tips they receive working the back-of-house at an upscale Manhattan restaurant.

Theme One: there is no such thing as unskilled labor. The cast is never idle

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Dogfight

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Neanderthal Marines Trolling for Girls

Adapted from the 1990 film of the same name, Dogfight the Musical, opened at Artswest on Thursday. Taking place on November 21, 1963, the eve of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, three teen-aged U.S. Marines spend their last shore leave in San Francisco, before shipping out to Viet-Nam. While there they look for girls to bring to a “Dogfight,” a party where the guy who brings the ugliest girl wins a door prize. Like many adolescent boys in men’s bodies they have both contempt for, and insecurity about, women for which they overcompensate with macho posturing.

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The Mountaintop

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He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve seen the Promised Land

I MAY NOT GET THERE WITH YOU

Were the prophetic words spoken by Martin Luther King Jr. the day before he was assassinated on the balcony of room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN on April 4, 1968.

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Hair!

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To dream of a day when Hair is no longer relevant may be a futile and hopeless prospect.  Close to

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