Spring Awakenings

It’s May! The sun is out! Bring on the homoerotic turmoil!

Performance The Little Dog Laughed (Portland Center Stage)It’s obvious why there are so many plays and movies about show business—“write what you know” applies to playwrights, too—an ...   More

 

Wednesday, May 7, 2008 WW Editorial Staff

4x4: The Ballet Project (White Bird)

Four on the floor: All ballet, all night long.

Performance Apparently there’s been some confusion over 4x4: The Ballet Project, the last show of White Bird’s current season. For the record, 4x4 isn’t a collaboration among ballet companies, n ...   More

 

Wednesday, May 7, 2008 HEATHER WISNER

Nobody Here But Us Chickens (Third Rail)

Performance The trouble with most “comedies with a conscience” is that the laughs are usually balanced with an equal measure of sincere exhortations and emotional passing of the hat. That’s fine ...   More

 

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 BEN WATERHOUSE

The Long Christmas Ride Home

Theatre Vertigo shakes up the floating world.

Performance As Sammy Hagar is always eager to remind us, there’s a time and place for everything. Late April sure doesn’t feel like the proper time for a play about a Christmas ride—didn’t ...   More

 

Wednesday, April 23, 2008 BEN WATERHOUSE

Too Cool For Words

NYC’s Wordless Music Series comes to Portland.

Performance Despite corporate music’s attempts to squish creativity into tidy, discrete pigeonholes, the more out-there manifestations of alt rock, free jazz, post-classical avant garde and electronica shar ...   More

 

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 BRETT CAMPBELL

Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (Oregon Ballet Theatre)

Oregon Ballet Theatre shoots to thrill with Balanchine's Slaughter.

Performance There are gun-slinging gangsters, a sultry stripper and some surprisingly animated corpses in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, but the real eyebrow-raiser here is the talking. You just don't hear chatter ...   More

 

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 HEATHER WISNER

Sometimes a Great Notion (PCS)

REVIEW: We are lumberjacks. We’re not OK.

Performance The trouble with adapting any well-loved work of art to a new medium is that no matter how loyal you are to your source material, fans of the original will never accept your work on its own terms. For ...   More

 

Wednesday, April 9, 2008 BEN WATERHOUSE

Air-Condition (White Bird Dance)

PREVIEW: Brenda Angiel’s floating dance party.

Performance Tango, not aerial dance, is Argentina’s best-known cultural export. But with the Buenos Aires-based Brenda Angiel Aerial Dance Company, you get both. In fact, Angiel believes a certain aerial ta ...   More

 

Wednesday, April 2, 2008 HEATHER WISNER

The Tudor Choir

Mozart: the original music pirate.

Performance Think corporate control over music is a hassle now? Consider the 17th century’s Devotional Rights Management. In the 1630s, the pope commissioned Gregorio Allegri to compose a musical setting of ...   More

 

Wednesday, March 26, 2008 BRETT CAMPBELL

Albert Herring (Portland Opera)

Spitzeresque tale: Chastity is the best policy.

Performance Ever been praised for something that labeled you a doofus? Perfect attendance? Clean underpants? That’s the premise for Benjamin Britten’s comic chamber opera Albert Herring, based on a sh ...   More

 

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 JOHN MINERVINI