Posts By James MacKillop
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23.0KArtsReview | Ditzy and Delightful: Hoof-hearted cheerleader charms in Cortland Repertory’s ‘Legally Blonde’
Much meaning for Legally Blonde: The Musical, running through July 6 at Cortland Repertory Theatre, depends on the shade of pink. Our heroine Elle...
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5.9KArtsReview | CNY Playhouse’s ‘Rumors’ is a labor of love
Revered Broadway playwright Neil Simon passed away last August at age 91, leaving behind a legacy too sizable to address in this space. Yet Rumors...
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5.8KArtsReview | Unexpected plot turns fuel Rarely Done’s ‘A New Brain’
Composer William Finn was never one for mere boy-meets-girl musicals or even boy-meets-boy shows. His best-known works, Falsettos (1992) and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee...
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5.5KArtsReview | Raunch Dressing: Rousing Restoration-style comedy kicks off Ithaca’s Hangar Theatre summer season
The life of the English theater’s first woman playwright Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was so fabulous it almost feels invented. Along with being the first professional woman...
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5.0KArtsCortland Repertory, Auburn’s Merry-Go-Round Playhouse kick off busy season for summer stages
It’s now regarded as the granddaddy of 1950s rock musicals, even though it first started as a wild parody of the Eisenhower era. That’s Grease,...
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6.4KArtsReview | Director Jason Alexander adds dancers to 2-character musical drama
Jason Alexander was in the original cast of Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound (1987) and won a Tony Award for singing and dancing...
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5.6KArtsReview | Cavalcade of jukebox memories is unleashed during ‘The All Night Strut!’
Hard times foster lyricism. The 1930s and 1940s were unquestionably tough decades: unemployment, Jim Crow laws, the Dust Bowl, followed by bloodshed...
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5.9KArtsReview | ‘Drunk with Hope’ probes stories behind women alcoholics
The National Institute of Health reported not long ago that although men still consume more alcohol than women, the differences in abuse between the genders are...
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6.5KArtsReview | Ben Sills as comical character heightens fun of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
Central New York Playhouse’s inventive production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (through Saturday, May 18) takes William Shakespeare’s fantasy comedy in new...
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7.2KArtsReview | Social media, teen athletes, sexual violation provide vivid components for provocative drama
Rape, forced intercourse, was first a moral question: a sin. Subsequently it became a legal question: a crime. More recently it has...
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6.1KArtsReview | The Wizard of Ha’s: Magical school gets rambunctiously parodied
The local premiere of Matt Cox’s off-Broadway smash Puffs marks a generational departure for executive director Dan Tursi’s 14-year-old Rarely Done Productions....
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5.3KArtsReview | Turkey feast triggers family frictions in Syracuse Stage’s ‘The Humans’
Thanksgiving dinner has long since ceased to be the holiday painted by Norman Rockwell. Given the changes in most families, through education...
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5.6KArtsReview | Female pilot operates military drones in offbeat, one-person drama
The one-actor drama about cyberwarfare, Grounded, has been a magnet for female talent. Superstar director Julie Taymor helmed the Public Theater opening...
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4.7KNewsDefining the Alt-Write: Longtime writer reaffirms differences between the downtown daily and our alternative weekly
The “alt” in alt-weekly stands for alternative. In the first 10 years of the Syracuse New Times there was no question what we were an...
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4.4KArtsReview | Minor characters from ‘Hamlet’ take the lead in Shakespearean riff
An early review described Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead as “Waiting for Godot with more laughs.” The show, which opened when the playwright was...
