Theater Thoughts

Wowsies for "Newsies," the musical with what seems like a cast of thousands that the D'Youville Kavinoky Theatre folks have brought to the stage of the Shea's 710 Theatre. Lots of dancing energy, lots of notable performances (cheers for seventh-grader RJ Creighton, who plays little brother Les, and Matthew Rittler as the hobbling Crutchie) and lots of oppressed laborers (New York City newsboys in 1899) standing up to heartless corporate master Joseph Pulitzer, played with such 10w-40 oiliness by Steve Copps that I wanted to boo him when he took his bow. But, hey, that's just the union man in me. It continues, hot off the presses, through Sept. 29.

So much theater around here now that Curtain Up! has opened the season and only so many pages on the calendar. To date, we've checked off three of our must-sees (you ought to see them too) and they've been full of surprises.  We couldn't miss our good friend Julie Kittsley as one of three women of a certain age (she's the one on the left in the picture) taking their first surfing lessons and diving deeper into their lives in "Wipeout" at the Alleyway Theatre. The surprise here, aside from the fact that everybody spends the entire play on surfboards, are the seats reconfigured into a broad oceanfront. This one ends Sept. 28. The surprise at Ujima Theatre, aside from the bigger-than-usual crowd, is the play itself, "The African Company Presents Richard III," a spotlight on a little-known slice of theatrical history dating to 1821. It runs through Sept. 29. A bunch of terrific performances in this one, notably Gerald Ramsey as the character Papa Shakesp...