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The Wedding Singer
Or: Love in the time of the Keytar There is a surprisingly large stockade of pop-movies-made-broadway-musicals-with-improving-moral-under...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20233 min read
God of Carnage
Or: What’s the point of throwing things if you don’t care where they land? If I were to condense my thoughts on the Jewish Theater...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20234 min read
Carlei’s Romeo and Juliet
Or: “What he’s done to Shakespeare/ Booth did to Lincoln” The best Romeo and Juliet’s I’ve seen made me so breathless, so caught up in...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20234 min read
Man of La Mancha
Or: A jostling but heart swelling ride I must confess to having reservations about Man of La Mancha as a musical. While very attached to...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20233 min read
Unwilling and Hostile Instruments: 100 Years of Extraordinary Chicago Women
Or: Mighty Women, Muddy Drama. Taking its title from a turn of the century misogynist, who doubted the power of women to change anything,...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20233 min read
Kids: from the life and works of Patti Smith
Or: Tender Rock, Intimate Roll “Do you believe in soul mates?” I looked down into the earnest eyes of Maddie Weinstein, crouched before...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20234 min read
The Crownless King
Or: The Storyteller Strikes Back At long last all that was wrong is now right. In a far off time in a far off place the young King,...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20234 min read
Babette’s Feast
Or: “Let it Soak” The above subtitle is taken from a line in the film when the eponymous heroine is being instructed in the universal...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20232 min read
Broadway Boise presents Chicago
Or: The “Old Razzle Dazzle” ain’t what it used to be From where I sat in the Morison center’s orchestra seating I was able to peer down...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20233 min read
The Foreigner at ISF
There is nothing so rare as a well crafted comedy. Nowadays we are sated with cheep pieces, with improbable plots and grade school humor,...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20233 min read
Temple Grandin
Or: Different, not Less As I watched the young Dr. Grandin (Claire Danes), struggle with the overstimulating world, I found it remarkable...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20232 min read
The Wolverine
Or: Gulo Exotica (now with extra Ninjas!!!) “You don’t want to to watch this part” grunts Logan (Hugh Jackman), the ever surly and ever...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20234 min read
The Lone Ranger
Or: Tonto, the Movie Lord, Lord! As much as I hate to admit it, I find that on occasion a nice over the top shoot’em up can be just the...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20232 min read
Blue Jasmine
Or: The Stinking Rich and the Filthy Poor Jasmine (Cate Blanchett), the eponymous broken bird for whom this unfortunate feature is named,...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20232 min read
Every Man Shift (for All the Rest)
A new work by Chad Ethan Shohet and Dakota Brown Or: Like the Tempest, but with Weed, PBR, and (more) Phallus Jokes. I have a new First...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20233 min read
Richard III at ISF
Or: The Blood will Rain Down and the Spit shall Spurt Forth High above us, on a balcony smooth and steely as the modern London’s Skyline,...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20236 min read
Man of Steel
Or: Man of Stale The only fun I had during Man of Steel occurred towards the end of the film as Lois Lane (Amy Adams) descends the...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20234 min read
Double Feature: De-Lovely and The Fall
Or: “One minute you love them. The next, you want to kill them a thousand times over.” The above quotation (liberally tweaked from The...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20233 min read
Sweeny Todd at ISF
Or: Gory Hallelujah! “I have loved this stage/beheld its wonders” “From the Art of Shaw and Wilde/To the Beauties of the Bard” “But...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20236 min read
Tricks: a new play by Lloyd Schwarts
Or: The Very Model of a Modern Family Module It may seem odd to you dear reader why a writer of Schwarts’s pedigree (co-founder of the...
Ben Kemper
May 9, 20232 min read
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