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Shout! The Legend of the Wild One Review - Legit Reviews-Abroad, Entertainment - Variety

Link: Shout! The Legend of the Wild One Review - Legit Reviews-Abroad, Entertainment - Variety.

The life and times of 1950s/'60s Aussie rock idol, Johnny O'Keefe, provide serviceable fodder for a rollicking retro-tuner in "Shout! The Legend of the Wild One," which rates high on the clap-along, feel-good meter. A re-vamped version of the 2001 original, the current show (now wrapping its Melbourne leg before moving to Sydney) boasts gleaming production values, big orchestral sound and mostly strong perfs from a cast that cannily mixes younger and older talents from the national music scene.

'Anne Frank' musical in motion - Entertainment News, Legit News, Media - Variety

Link: 'Anne Frank' musical in motion - Entertainment News, Legit News, Media - Variety.

MADRID "The Diary of Anne Frank" is an unlikely vehicle to be made into a musical, once strictly the realm of love stories and lighter fare. But a Spanish tuner based on Frank's written account of her experiences -- starring a 13-year-old novice selected by the public -- is being readied for its premiere this month in Madrid, despite the misgivings of the book's copyright owners. The diary of the German-born Jewish girl who died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 and has become a symbol of the 1.5 million children killed in the Holocaust inspired 1955 Pulitzer-winning drama "The Diary of Anne Frank," by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. That play was made into a 1959 film directed by George Stevens, which garnered three Academy Awards. But until now, the diary, written in Amsterdam while Frank and her family hid from the Nazis behind a false bookcase in a warehouse, has never been the inspiration for a musical.

Fuerzabruta Review - Variety.com

Link: Fuerzabruta Review - Variety.com.

Imagine a performance of Cirque du Soleil's "O," except instead of sitting in your comfortable Las Vegas seat, you are thrust into the middle of the show and forced to experience it viscerally, vertiginously and very wetly. This is something like the effect of seeing "Fuerzabruta," a gravity-defying Argentine spectacular from the makers of "De La Guarda" that has to be seen to be believed. Premiered in 2006 at London's Roundhouse, the show kicks off a European tour on the Edinburgh Fringe in a purpose-built black tent, while a franchise production is due in Gotham in October.

Variety.com - Reviews - Company

Link: Variety.com - Reviews - Company.

SYDNEY -- The second production from Kookaburra is a vast improvement on the fledgling Australian musical theater outfit's debut earlier this year with "Pippin." Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's 1970 musical, "Company," about the metropolitan angst of marriage and commitment, is infinitely more relevant to contempo auds and features superior production qualities. But any ambitions Kookaburra might have of joining the international cutting edge remain, well, ambitions.

Variety.com - Reviews - Sunshine On Leith: A Musical

Link: Variety.com - Reviews - Sunshine On Leith: A Musical.

If the Proclaimers are the unlikeliest of pop stars -- identical twins in unflattering geek glasses singing in broad Scottish accents -- then "Sunshine on Leith" is the unlikeliest of tuners. Eschewing the relentless cheerfulness of jukebox musicals like "We Will Rock You" and "Mamma Mia!," it opens with soldiers singing about death ("Sky Takes the Soul"), offers a completely new set of arrangements with little opportunity for the audience to sing along and presents the title track as a downbeat lament over a hospital bed. Like the band, the show refuses to play by the commercial rules, and, like the band, it comes out on top.

Variety.com - Reviews - Futurology: A Global Revue

Link: Variety.com - Reviews - Futurology: A Global Revue.

In a remarkable fusion of conference etiquette and cabaret flamboyance, Scottish company Suspect Culture has taken the temperature of our globally warmed-up times and produced a theatrical hybrid that's as entertaining as it is politically ambivalent. Lying somewhere between satire and surrealism, "Futurology: A Global Revue" paints a wry and witty picture of a generation caught in the headlights of an apocalyptic juggernaut. But while its refusal to commit itself to any route out of our impending eco-nightmare is deliberate, it also feels like an evasion.