Email Author Dennis Brown

2012 Stories by Dennis Brown

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  Sugar Coated: The Muny spins Joseph light as air and oh, so sweet

  published July 26, 2012

  How do you feel about cotton candy? Despite its lack of sustenance, some people delight in the sweet taste of spun sugar disintegrating in the... More >>

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  In Dreams: The Muny pins its hopes on Jennifer Holliday in ambitious Dreamgirls

  published July 19, 2012

  How I wish I could back into this review by talking about all the terrific things the Muny has done with its long-overdue debut staging of... More >>

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  COVER STORY

  Muny Magic: A new artistic director sets about reinventing Forest Park's unique theatrical treasure

  published July 5, 2012

  FRIDAY, JUNE 15, is a typical day at the More >>

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  Chi-Normous! The Muny brilliantly brings Chicago back from the dread

  published June 28, 2012

  It's almost as if this week the Muny is debuting a new musical. Which is rather hard to do, seeing as how John Kander and Fred Ebb's... More >>

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  We're Not in Kansas Any More: The Muny season whirls in with Thoroughly Modern Millie

  published June 21, 2012

  Early in Act Two of Thoroughly Modern Millie, the season opener at the Muny, Millie Dillmount, the sassy string bean from Salina... More >>

• Stink Globally: Insight Theatre spoils And the World Goes 'Round

  published June 21, 2012

  The evening begins in a smoky haze. A jazzy three-piece combo led by Stephen Neale is onstage. As Johanna Elkana Hale sings the title song from... More >>

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  Play Musty for Me: Some plays grow old gracefully. Others just grow old.

  published June 14, 2012

  So here's the general premise: At the outset of The Damask Cheek, a comedy of manners by John Van Druten and Lloyd Morris, that... More >>

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  Dear Syringe: Insidious is a play about addiction that fails to get under your skin

  published June 14, 2012

  Midway through Act Two of Insidious, a new play by Ibn Shabazz that's on view at the Black Rep, a young addict who has triumphed... More >>

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  Strop in the Name of Love: Opera Theatre's Sweeney Todd thrills and kills

  published June 14, 2012

  They are not an agreeable bunch. Almost every character in Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the 1979 musical... More >>

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  Funny Isn't Everything: Paul Rudnick's New Century is too, too cute

  published May 17, 2012

  Paul Rudnick — playwright, screenwriter, essayist — is a man with a mission. He advocates for a tolerant world where acceptance... More >>

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  Shtick or Schlock: James Sherman's farcical tribute to Yiddish theater has everything but the laughs

  published May 17, 2012

  Is there anything more enjoyable than watching good actors work? And when those actors are portraying actors, there's an added wrinkle of fun.... More >>

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  Kickass! The Black Rep hauls off and whomps Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

  published May 10, 2012

  We are in a shabby Chicago recording studio (evocatively designed by Tim Case) on a wintry March afternoon in 1927. A white record producer... More >>

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  World War II memoir Conversations with an Executioner is all talk, no action

  published April 26, 2012

  No theater company in town delights more in transporting its audiences to remote places than does Upstream Theater. For its current offering,... More >>

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  Maim Event: St. Louis Actors' Studio doesn't quite slay the darkly comic Killer Joe

  published April 19, 2012

  By evening's end, the mayhem in Tracy Letts' grim 1993 comedy Killer Joe is downright cacophonous. Yet the current St. Louis... More >>

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  Tall in the Saddle: Cavalia gallops into town and delivers astonishing entertainment

  published March 29, 2012

  On this, its first visit to St. Louis, the Canadian-based entertainment Cavalia has made camp just north of Busch Stadium. Inside its turreted,... More >>

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  Tall in the Saddle: Cavalia gallops into town and delivers astonishing entertainment

  published March 22, 2012

  On this, its first visit to St. Louis, the Canadian-based entertainment Cavalia has made camp downtown. Inside its turreted,... More >>

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  Schooled: On the short list of the best theater productions of 2012, No Child... pulls ahead

  published March 29, 2012

  Take this as a personal confession. I've been tiring of one-person plays of late, especially one-person plays where a single actor performs... More >>

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  Grumpy Old Mensch: Fine performances increase The Value of Names at New Jewish Theatre

  published March 29, 2012

  There are many maxims about theater, but none is truer than this: Casting is everything. Even a major play can seem small if the actors are... More >>

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  Creature Double Feature: If you're itching to see The Glass Menagerie, this is your week

  published March 15, 2012

  Like an over-ardent gentleman caller, The Glass Menagerie is wooing St. Louis theatergoers from two directions. Tennessee... More >>

• The Glass Menagerie

  published March 8, 2012

  Like an over-ardent gentleman caller, The Glass Menagerie is wooing St. Louis theatergoers from two directions. Tennessee Williams'... More >>

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  Long Twain Runnin': Hal Holbrook's one-man show has been a fixture for decades — but it never gets old

  published March 8, 2012

  Like the mighty Mississippi River that Mark Twain helped to immortalize, Hal Holbrook just keeps rolling along. Mark Twain... More >>

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  Oh, Bleak: Upstream Theater gets down with Jean Genet's The Maids

  published March 1, 2012

  When the cat's away, the mice will play. You won't hear that idiom in Jean Genet's 1947 absurdist play The Maids, which is currently being... More >>

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  Let's Get Ready to Grumble: The West Side Story revival at the Fox has a face made for radio

  published February 23, 2012

  Let me tell you what's terrific about the current staging of West Side Story at the Fox Theatre: the sound. I've never heard songs so... More >>

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  Flesh Wound: The Rep's production of David Mamet's Race is barely skin deep

  published February 16, 2012

  "Race is the most incendiary topic in our history," a white attorney tells his black paralegal in David Mamet's prickly new whodunit. "And the... More >>

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  Martinus Zoeloe is one sweet role — too bad Athol Fugard's Playland is a two-character drama

  published February 9, 2012

  It's New Year's Eve 1989. A traveling carnival has set up shop outside a small town in the South African desert. Judging from the deserted... More >>