Musical Theater
'Mamma Mia!' returns to Grand Rapids
by (John Kissane)
Submitted 11-27-2024 under OPINION
Early into "Mamma Mia!," you realize that the show will not be resisted. Not that many will try. But if anyone does (arms crossed, one imagines, perhaps a beret tilted at a disapproving angle), the show will twirl, mug and sing into a...
'Cats' comes to Grand Rapids Civic Theatre's stage
by (John Kissane)
Submitted 11-24-2024 under OPINION
"That corpse you planted last year in your garden, Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!" - T. S. Eliot...
MJ dramatizes King of Pop's preparations for his 1992 tour
by (John Kissane)
Submitted 07-10-2024 under OPINION
For those too young to remember, it's difficult to imagine how omnipresent Michael Jackson was at the height of his career. Walk into a convenience store, and you'd hear "Billie Jean" playing. "Rock With You" would be...
Tick, Tick...Boom! Explodes Into Song
by (John Kissane)
Submitted 05-24-2024 under OPINION
In high school, faced with yet another rejection slip, I hit upon what seemed to me an irresistible idea: write a poem about rejection on the back of the slip and submit it. The editor to whom I’d sent the first poem rejected that one, too....
Twenty years on, Wicked still soars
by (John Kissane)
Submitted 05-23-2024 under OPINION
Having grossed over $1.6 billion in revenue, Wicked is the most popular musical of the century and the second-most popular of all time (The Lion King, which is nearing $2 billion, is the only show to have surpassed it). How does a show get to...
In "Disney's Descendants: The Musical," youth choose their own path
by (John Kissane)
Submitted 03-04-2024 under OPINION
In fifteenth century France, a seventeen-year-old girl was sent by the king to a battle—the outcome of which was very much in doubt. She arrived wearing armor and raising her banner high. The king's faith was justified. Rallied by the...
Grand Rapids Civic Theatre Stages Disney's Beauty and the Beast
by (John Kissane)
Submitted 11-27-2023 under OPINION
Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête, released in 1946, was some kind of miracle. It expanded on the 1757 fairy tale of the same name, telling a story both enchanting and, at times, a little scary. In one typically surreal touch, real arms,...
In Funny Girl, Katerina McCrimmon Blazes
by (John Kissane)
Submitted 09-21-2023 under OPINION
Funny Girl (onstage until Sept. 24 via Broadway Grand Rapids) rises or falls on Fanny Brice. Even more so than most musicals, its star is its star — the body around which everything else orbits. If she doesn...
Sweeney Todd Cuts As Sharply As Ever
by (John Kissane)
Submitted 09-13-2023 under OPINION
At first, you don’t see him. You see others, though: the citizens of long-ago London. Horror-struck, they sing operatically of Sweeney Todd, a man they call “the demon barber of Fleet Street.” Todd shaved his customers, yes, shaved...
Hadestown Sings It Again
by (John Kissane)
Submitted 05-10-2023 under OPINION
"It's an old song, but we're gonna sing it again." That's the promise of Hadestown, the Tony Award-winning musical that retells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. By moving the action from ancient Greece to a lightly...