LONG SWORDS, LITTLE WOMEN

posted by James Reel

    From the intentionally ridiculous to the potentially sublime in the latest Tucson Weekly … First, my review of the latest Gaslight put-on:

    At a theater where the scripts can have more holes than Prairie Dog Town, Gaslight Theatre's latest musical melodrama has only one gaping absence, an unforgivable lost opportunity: The bitter, limping Phillippe, twin brother to King Louis XIV of France, is being prepared by evil forces to seize the throne, but not once does he break into "Great Pretender."
    Really, what is Gaslight coming to when the bad guys miss a chance to turn into The Platters for three minutes?   
    Otherwise, Peter Van Slyke's adaptation of The Three Musketeers trips along smartly enough. It's not one of Van Slyke's funniest, most out-of-control shows, but it doesn't fall with a thud as if skewered by the Musketeers themselves. What this production has going for it most of all is an ensemble that swings through the show with an infectious joy. They may not have a lot to work with, but they're having tremendous fun.

    It's new, it's popular ... and it's an opera.
    Hard to believe, but true. Mark Adamo's Little Women, written for Houston Grand Opera in 1998, is being produced all over the country in an era when operas don't generally get performed after their premieres—and few enough are premiered in the first place. Even the University of Arizona Opera Theater is having a go at Little Women this weekend.