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BILL RODRIGUEZ

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Cirque Dreams gets seasonal at PPAC

An acrobatic Holidaze
There is plenty of color and spectacle for the little ones and dexterous skill for the big kids (aka adults), as Cirque Dreams Holidaze dazzles at the Providence Performing Arts Center through December 18.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 14, 2011

Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium’s Parade

An unfortunate man
Parade might be the best musical, as well as the most unlikely one, that you've never seen. Its one-line plot description isn't exactly alluring.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 07, 2011

Review: Mosaic

A Latin American tapestry
With all the pan-Asian restaurants around, it only makes sense that there would be a pan-Latin restaurant thriving in Providence. Mosaic, a Latin American bistro, is doing a good job of it on the outerskirts of Olneyville.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 07, 2011

URI stages Chekhov’s head-spinning Seagull

Writing what he knows
A loves B but marries C because B loves D, who loves E but eventually returns to B. Meanwhile, K, L, and M . . . . It's that sort of plot.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 07, 2011

2nd Story serves a pair of frisky farces

French ticklers
How generous. With its latest production, 2nd Story Theatre is giving us a hilarious double feature.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 30, 2011

Trinity’s compelling Christmas Carol

Comfort and joy
The more things stay the same, the more they change. At least that's the way they've been having it with Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol at Trinity Repertory Company for 35 years.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 30, 2011

Review: Simply Thai

Plain and fancy
The restaurant is named Simply Thai, but the food you can expect to get there is not so simple at all. It's set up like a fast food place but it serves flavorful, complex Thai dishes I wanted to linger over.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 30, 2011

2nd Story’s inspiring Little Women

Timeless acts of kindness
Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is so beloved a morsel of American literary optimism that it would be hard to do badly with an adaptation of the 1868 novel. And there have been numerous ones, from films to an opera and a musical.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 21, 2011

Come You Back at Roger Williams University

Bloody lessons
Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. And those who can do both do so with enthusiasm, as professor of theater Peter Wright is proving with the well-acted Come You Back , which he wrote and directed. It's at Roger Williams University Theatre through December 3.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 21, 2011

Review: Clarke Cooke House

A meal for every mood
Although it looks a lot more welcome in the middle of Newport's Bannister Wharf than the proverbial blind man's elephant, depending on where you sit in this sprawling 18th-century building, the dining atmosphere can impress you as fun or formal or in-between.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 15, 2011

Mixed Magic’s muddled Life’s a Dream

A sword, but no sorcery
'Tis a lumbering theatrical beast to try to chain, but billing the old Spanish war horse Life Is a Dream as Life's a Dream is not enough to tame it for modern theatergoers. Mixed Magic Theatre is staging the 1635 classic by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, directed by Jonathan Jacobs (through November 27).

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 15, 2011

The Gamm’s entrancing Hamlet

The stuff of greatness
For many years, Tony Estrella is perhaps the strongest off-Trinity actor around here. One performance in particular — his 1997 Hamlet title role for Alias Stage — has had devoted theatergoers talking about it ever since.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 08, 2011

A feisty Lady Windermere’s Fan at Brown

Social insecurity
Late 19th-century England may have imprisoned, ostracized, and fatally broke the health of Oscar Wilde, but not before he took up his pen and successfully dueled with British hypocrisy in several successful social satires.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 08, 2011

Les Misérables leads the charge at PPAC

Les Misérables leads the charge at PPAC
I'm not sure whether Les Misérables is defiantly and respectably uncontrite as a melodrama or merely unabashedly so. Does this operatic musical rush with such defiant conviction across the mire of melodrama that it doesn't get stuck?

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 02, 2011

Providence College’s Cripple of Inishmaan

Urge for going
Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan , the last of his Aran Islands trilogy, is being served very well by the actors at Providence College Theatre (through November 6). You could say without heated opposition that they are doing a better job than the playwright himself did.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 02, 2011

Review: Chopmist Charlie’s

Sea fare and playful decor
Maybe more restaurants should have rich fantasy lives.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 02, 2011

Trinity Rep’s poignant Clybourne Park

Walking the color line
It would take a mountain of homage to overshadow the immense chutzpah that playwright Bruce Norris required to ride on the shoulders of an American theater classic like Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In the Sun .

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | October 25, 2011

Review: 15 Point Road

Dishes both inherited and original
How is it that seafood at a restaurant located on the water's edge is more appetizing than at one located inland, even a few blocks up the street? I don't recall ever salivating because a steakhouse was next to a cow pasture.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | October 25, 2011

URI’s Marat/Sade finds pleasure in pain

Musical madness
To compare a crazed society to a madhouse is a trite observation. But it became an astute metaphor and powerful theatrical experience when playwright Peter Weiss created Marat/Sade , as URI Theatre is robustly demonstrating (through October 23).

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | October 18, 2011

Review: Van Ghent Café

More than waffle time
As ethnic cuisines go, most of us would be hard-pressed to anticipate much beyond their eponymous waffles when looking forward to a Belgian restaurant.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | October 18, 2011

Rock of Ages lets its hair down at PPAC

Can’t fight this feeling
Rock of Ages is such an explosive, face-melting jukebox musical that only afterward do we realize it didn't include two hours of skyrocket pyrotechnics — although all the laser beams through fog come close.

By: BILL RODRIGUEZ | October 05, 2011

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