The Ingenues

What did our critic think of DREAMGIRLS at Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe?

After a lifetime of playing ingenues, Susan Derry has grown up, and her new nightclub act shows how beautifully she has done it.

I asked two simple, yet broad questions to a handful of different Xavier University Theatre majors. The questions are as follows: What is something you want to see more of in theatre? What is something you want to see less of in theatre?

The Segal Centre for Performing Arts is announcing the Montreal premiere of Indecent, directed by Segal Centre Artistic and Executive Director Lisa Rubin. Inspired by true events, this buzzworthy new play by Paula Vogel is an homage to the art of making theatre, and is one of the most produced plays across North America this season. This riveting play filled with music will be in the Segal Centre's Sylvan Adams Theatre from April 28 to May 19, 2019.

Willow Sizer takes you right back into the presence of scintillating forties diva songstresses, all the way down to the shivers along your upper arms. Sitting spellbound in the Loft at Chapel of Chapel, an uncontainable crowd were transported back to the times of undulating figures and captivating stylings. Sizer's cabaret show, Put the Blame on Mame is a genuine and charming education on her upbringing discovering her legitimately impressive talents under the guiding hand of blueprints set down my masterminds like Eartha Kitt, Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth. The show was so good, this reviewer questioned whether they had lost their wits completely, the kind of platitudes it was engineering in his ordinarily critical mind, completely disarmed by Sizer's singing and sensuality evocative of everything those incredible women brought into our collective consciousness.

Ali Ewoldt, the standout star of the on-going national tour of the latest Broadway revival of WEST SIDE STORY, wanted to really follow her dreams. Though always drawn to musical theater all her life, she decided to graduate from Yale with a degree in Psychology, thinking it was a 'safer' bet than to pursue a life in the theater. But her dreams proved to powerful to ignore, prompting her to take on musicals full-tilt, culminating in her Broadway debut as Cosette in LES MISERABLES. Now she's wowing audiences across America with her take on Maria, in the smash hit revival of WEST SIDE STORY, now playing at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Orange County, CA through September 18. Before landing in Costa Mesa with the tour, Ewoldt chatted with BroadwayWorld's Michael Lawrence Quintos to talk about her early theater experiences and working with the late Arthur Laurents.