Fresco Opera Theatre repackages the genre Musical makeover Jay Rath on Friday 02/05/2010 It ain't your grandparents' opera. Fresco Opera Theatre is opera as if P.T. Barnum had to reinvent it for Lady Gaga: fast, sexy, short and as snarky as possible. Madison's newest performance troupe looks forward to madly combining the fustiest of art forms with children's tea parties, game shows, puppet shows and pro wrestling. >MoreMMoCA's Apple Pie looks at America, from earnest to bleak Slices of life Jennifer A. Smith on Friday 01/29/2010, (1) Recommendation There's something I love about a Paul Shambroom photo in the collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. The 1999 image captures a city council meeting in tiny Dassel, Minn. (population 1,134). Four middle-aged women, including the mayor, sit in a modest meeting room surrounded by maps and flags. Though they're casually dressed -- and each has a can of Coke at the ready -- there's a seriousness to the proceedings. >More
Family dysfunction is funny in Broom Street Theater's Cattywompus Amelia Cook on Saturday 01/16/2010 10:43 am, (1) Recommendation In a week filled with much sadness because of the crisis in Haiti, Broom Street Theater's Cattywompus was a welcome escape into fun. Written by Broom Street regulars Justin Lawfer and Christina Beller, who also directs, Cattywompus gives the cast the opportunity to showcase their diversity and depth as actors. >MoreMadison Theatre Guild and Madison Savoyards' Tarantara! Tarantara! feels not quite finished Josh Wimmer on Saturday 01/16/2010 10:30 am "More lively! More lively!" cry W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan at one point in the first act of Tarantara! Tarantara!, as they urge a new cast member to put more energy into a song. The new singer has the idea, but he's unpolished and his performance falls flat. It was a good metaphor for opening night of the Madison Theatre Guild and Madison Savoyards' production of the show. >More
Shear Genius hairstylists say the dumbest things Cutting remarks Dean Robbins on Friday 02/05/2010 Shear Genius has a knack for finding the world's least charming hairstylists. The new season features the usual group of crude, arrogant self-promoters, who must create "hot" (read: horrifying) hairdos for a $100,000 prize. They're attended by a mentor who dispenses vapid advice like "make sure it looks like a hairstyle." >MoreLying to Be Perfect attempts an extreme makeover Dean Robbins on Friday 01/29/2010 In Lying to Be Perfect, Nola (Poppy Montgomery) is an overweight magazine editor who has a deep, meaningful relationship with doughnuts. She's a frumpy doormat in the office but has devised a secret alter ego: a sexy advice columnist whom no one has ever seen. >More
Mass Effect 2 is the first great game of 2010 PC, Xbox 360 (Rated Mature) Doug Elfman on Friday 02/05/2010 Everybody keeps asking me what new game they should play. I finally have a four-star answer in 2010: Mass Effect 2. This is a fun, addicting, epic, cinematic and totally nerdy masterstroke. >MoreDark Void is fairly fun and fresh, despite dumbness PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 (Rated Teen) Doug Elfman on Friday 01/29/2010 Funny dialogue awaits you in Dark Void. But I think it's accidentally funny, instead of funny on purpose, like in a B-movie. Then again, this is a humans vs. aliens shooting game, set in the Bermuda Triangle, so that's kind of accidentally funny in itself. >More
A Book A Week: Brooklyn by Colm Toibin Becky Holmes on Thursday 01/28/2010 6:00 pm I find the accolades accorded to Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn mystifying. A few weeks ago Toibin won the Costa Novel of the Year Award for it; the Costa is a prestigious British literary prize given to authors from the U.K. and Ireland. He was favored to win the bigger prize, the Costa Book of the Year, but lost to poet Christopher Reid. >MoreA Book A Week: The Glass Room by Simon Mawer Becky Holmes on Monday 01/25/2010 6:00 pm Simon Mawer's The Glass Room is a big book. A Big Book. A book about art and its role in our everyday lives. What better way to frame this discussion than to create some characters who are living inside a work of art -- a glass house designed by a visionary architect. >More
A Book A Week: Read My Pins by Madeleine Albright Becky Holmes on Saturday 02/06/2010 6:00 pm Not being a terribly close follower of diplomatic maneuvers, I was unaware of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s famous use of pins to telegraph her thoughts and intentions to world leaders and the press. But lots of other people were aware of it, and now Albright has written a book about it, Read My Pins, to accompany an exhibit of her pins organized by the Museum of Art and Design in New York. >MoreHuge ensemble performs in Jazzworks Dance Company's Overture program Katie Reiser on Saturday 02/06/2010 9:45 am Jazzworks Dance Company packed a lot of dancing -- and a lot of dancers -- into a two-hour production at the Overture Center's Capitol Theater on Friday night. The first act boasted six pieces, three of them premieres, performed by company members. The second act was one long and bustling piece, "A World Without Walls," featuring the company members and children from The Madison Professional Dance Center. >MoreA Book A Week: The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther Becky Holmes on Wednesday 02/03/2010 6:00 pm Someone recommended Yasmin Crowther's The Saffron Kitchen to me as a good follow-up to Bitter Sweets, which I read a few weeks ago. It's another immigrant story; Maryam moves from Iran to London as a young woman, marries an Englishman and has a child. Eventually she feels an overwhelming urge to return to Iran to rediscover her girlhood and to reconnect with people she has lost. >MoreMcSweeney's makes a newspaper: A review of Panorama The literary quarterly creates a tribute to everything that's fit to print Joe Tarr on Monday 02/01/2010 12:00 pm, (1) Comment, (3) Recommendations When I was a kid, one of the few rituals I shared with my dad was on Sunday mornings. We'd hop in the car and drive to a doughnut shop for a dozen doughnuts, then head over to the cigar shop/newsstand on State Street in Erie, Pa., my hometown. I fell in love with the ritual of spreading out with a Sunday paper, munching down doughnuts over the funnies.So I was a sucker for the latest McSweeney's, the quarterly literary journal that revels in experimenting with form. >MoreUW dance program's Jin-Wen Yu observes a milestone with new and past works in Meta-50 Katie Reiser on Friday 01/29/2010 10:45 am UW-Madison dance program chair Jin-Wen Yu celebrates his 50th birthday with his company's Meta-50, an evening of works presented in Lathrop Hall's Margaret H'Doubler Performance Space. Thursday night's opening performance, which included four premieres from Yu, was crowded. >MoreMadison Opera's Turn of the Screw features able singing, quirks of staging John W. Barker on Friday 01/29/2010 10:00 am It was brave and ambitious of the Madison Opera to choose Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw for its mid-season production. Perhaps the most intriguing and durable of his "chamber operas," this one takes up the best-known of Henry James's ghost stories, a study as much in psychological enigmas as in ectoplasm. >More
Too many loose ends in StageQ's Random Harvest Bruce G. Bradley on Friday 01/01/2010 9:00 am, (3) Recommendations It's hard to know how to characterize Richard Willett's play Random Harvest, now playing at the Bartell Theatre. It's described in the playbill as "a ghost story about living without fear," but it's also about the elusive butterfly called memory, as well as being a discourse on success and a meditation on that whole "Meaning of Life" thing. >MoreForward Theater stages Christopher Durang's acclaimed political satire Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them Tales from the Bush years Jennifer A. Smith on Thursday 12/31/2009, (3) Recommendations This year, one of New York's theatrical success stories had one of the oddest titles in recent memory: Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them, by Christopher Durang. >More
Madison Ballet turns in pleasing Nutcracker Susan Kepecs on Monday 12/21/2009 10:01 am, (1) Comment, (1) Recommendation Madison Ballet's Nutcracker faced big obstacles this year. Still, despite setbacks, the company turned in a solid holiday performance. >More
Velliquette and Sargent shows at Watrous Gallery offer distinct visions Joy vs. darkness Jennifer A. Smith on Thursday 12/31/2009, (3) Recommendations The James Watrous Gallery, tucked on the third floor of the Overture Center, is heading into 2010 with two very strong -- and very different -- exhibitions. >MoreThe Statue of Liberty goes for another dip in Lake Mendota in 2010 Isn't she lovely Jay Rath on Thursday 12/24/2009, (1) Recommendation In February, Madison's iconic Statue of Liberty is returning to Lake Mendota. First displayed as a UW student-government prank in 1979, the submerged-looking Lady Liberty has returned to Lake Mendota only three times, in 1980, 1996 and 2009. It also appeared near the Alliant Energy Center in 2004. >More
Log in