Utah Theatre articles published in 15 Bytes, Utah’s art magazine, including theatre reviews, interviews with playwrights, directors, actors and more.
Daniel Beecher, Stephanie Howell, Robert Scott Smith, Christy Summerhays, Jay Perry, and Emilie Starr in Eric Samuelsen’s The Ice Front. Photo by Rick Pollock. Historical dramatic theater pieces are often difficult to pull off in a small, quiet black box setting. Plays of such gravitas seem to require […]
The Weyward Sisters, by local playwright L. L. West, is a quaint journey through a never-before-seen side of “Macbeth” that is both hilarious and refreshing, with the three leading ladies carrying the story brilliantly through to its conclusion. The play starts out with a brief introduction – a […]
Anne Cullimore Decker’s home on the East Bench of Salt Lake City is a lot like Anne Cullimore Decker herself: elegant, gracious, artistic. One of Utah’s premiere dramatic artists, she’s worked in theater, opera, television, and film. Decker’s life is an inspiring journey through a commitment to art, […]
If one felt the need to defend the relevance of Shakespeare in the 21st century, it would be difficult to manufacture better coincidences to do so: on the eve of Utah Shakespeare Festival’s staging of Henry V, a play about public morals and individual responsibility, of the duties […]
It became the Marx Brothers’ first feature film, released by Paramount Pictures in 1929, but it began as a Broadway musical in 1925, with book by George S. Kaufman and music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. Cocoanuts is a musical romantic comedy invaded by vaudeville. Adapted by Mark […]
Though 55 years old, the Utah Shakespeare Festival is shiny and new this season. With the dedication Thursday of the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts, which includes the Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA) and Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre, the festival will find a new home in […]
In his latest work, Remington and Weasel, Utah playwright L.L. West gives a knowing nod to the freedom and consequences that come with throwing out the play book to live life on one’s own terms. Appropriately set in the rigid confines of academia, the story follows film Professor […]
Once upon a time, stories told through theater resonated with audiences because they explored uncomfortable yet real themes, but this power has been diminished by the popularity of theatrical productions with fairy-tale endings where love conquers all and conflicts are ultimately wrapped up in a tidy, sugar-coated […]
There is one topic du jour that seems repetitive: devout Mormons, lapsed Mormons, non-Mormons, all appear concerned lately (belatedly) with LGBT rights in the LDS Church. Books like the Mormon mystery His Right Hand by Mette Ivie Harrison, so many newspaper articles and letters to the editor, and […]
I had forgotten she plays the drums. Or that she once wrote the Itty Bitty Salt Lake City feature for the Deseret News. Amazing what you discover while researching a piece on someone you thought you already knew a lot about. Elaine Jarvik is a woman of numerous […]
Night after night, a young white woman watches news broadcasts about police violence against African- American citizens. Although she lives far away, she is moved to act against the brutality she sees on the screen by joining the protest effort. The year is 1965—but it could just as […]
Picture a young child coloring: they smile in delight at picking out just the right crayon or enthusiastically grab a random one from the floor; they fill the page with broad strokes of vibrant color without any regard for the lines (assuming there are any); and an infectious […]
Early in Salt Lake Acting Company’s production of “Streetlight Woodpecker,” the protagonist Benji (played by Stefan Espinosa) mistakes the pecking of a neighborhood woodpecker for the sound of distant machine-gun fire. Benji, who has just returned from active duty with debilitating injuries, struggles to readjust to his hometown […]
Been there, done that. Many of us have, I’m sure. “I don’t know the title or the author but I can kinda tell you what the cover looks like. Can you find it for me?” “Well, why can’t you call Barnes and Noble to see if they […]
In PYGmalion Theatre’s excellent Buyer & Cellar, you have Barbra Streisand as herself; a quick cameo by her husband, James Brolin (in search of frozen yogurt with sprinkles); her down-on-his-luck employee, Alex More (recently fired as Disneyland’s Mayor of Toontown for telling a child where to put […]
If you are familiar with the irreverent, bawdy, ever-so-absurdist humor of Mel Brooks’ films and plays, you will instantly understand the kind of wild ride the Grand Theatre’s The New Mel Brooks Musical: Young Frankenstein promises its audience. For those uninitiated into the 1974 cult film, the story […]
Pozdnyshev did it in the conservatory with a knife. We learn that much early on in “The Kreutzer Sonata,” Eric Samuelsen’s world-premiere one-act play, a superb adaptation (and condensation) of Tolstoy’s 1889 novella about murder and madness. Combined with a spellbinding performance of much of Beethoven’s Violin […]
