Everyone, no matter what gender, craves a night of chick-flickery every so often - a night of crashing in front of the TV (or in the seats of the theater, as the case may be) in one's pajamas with a box of tissues and a gallon of ice cream, preparing to escape into the sunny world of romantic musical theater. And, when the mood strikes, what better musical to watch than a classic comedy of mistaken identity featuring songs about blind dates, missing shoes, and, best of all ... vanilla ice cream?
Spectrum Theatre's She Loves Me! fulfills all those desires and maybe more. The performance is an old-fashioned romantic musical set in 1930s Europe with a plot that centers around a cast of clerks working in a parfumerie. The two central characters are enemy clerks, Georg Nowak and Amalia Balash - and, although they constantly bicker and snap at each other, the two are actually each other's secret love letter correspondent, although they don't know it yet. Sound familiar? Wait, you might be thinking, that plot was stolen from You've Got Mail! On the contrary. You've Got Mail!, in fact, stole its plot from She Loves Me!, which was written in 1968. Moreover, You've Got Mail! is not the only film adaptation that has been inspired by the musical.
Spectrum's take on the play involved a shop set as intricate as a candy box - the costumes bright and colorful and the dialogue charmingly delivered - so much so that the audience is caught completely off-guard when the darker elements of desperation, adultery and even suicide creep into this perfect little world. You might want to set the ice cream aside for a while as each of the characters' internal dramas play out on-stage.
All of the actors' performances were charismatic and heartfelt, and the musical numbers - which ranged from soulful inner monologues to raucous fast-forward portrayals of Christmas shopping - were sung with vibrato and enthusiasm, together with excellent orchestral accompaniment. My personal favorite was a hilarious number in which all of the patrons of a caf
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
