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Sanctified Explores Through Music How Diverse Attitudes are Transformed into an Inspired Unity

  Marissa Lily, Mils James, Manny Walker, Emir Hardy, Chuck Timbers, Cheryl El Walker, Katy Cotten & Brenda Marks Set by Mark Clayton Southers Credit all Photos: Kim El One of the many things live theater does well is taking its audience to different places, times and moods through the power of story-telling. While this is a fairly obvious observation, this thought became especially poignant when, over a period of less than 24 hours, when I found myself on board a battleship in late 18 th century Portsmouth, England, then, 17 hours later, walking into a small Black church in rural South Carolina in the present day. The vehicles for this geographic time travel to places and times worlds apart were Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera, “H.M. S. Pinafore” and playwright Javon Johnson’s “Sanctified.” Both works, while musical comedies with morals to the story, came from diverse and rich cultural backgrounds. I’ve already published my review of Pinafore on my arts and enterta...
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Merrily We Roll Along - A Children’s Ditty No More

Marnie Quick as Beth, Dan Mayhak as Frank, Catherine Kolos as Mary, NathanielYost as Charley and David leong as Joe Credit: Deana Muro     Judging by the full and rich sound of the first notes music director, Douglas Levine gets from his eight-piece orchestra, you have to assume Front Porch Theatricals is giving its audience a exemplary production of Merrily We Roll Along. And you’d be right.     Off to a good start musically, the show goes on to feature some fine vocal and acting skills from its cast of, would you believe, 19.     Talk about a challenge. In her directorial debut no less, actor and educator, Daina Michelle Griffith, corrals this expansive cast with the skill a Catholic nun herding a group of grade schoolers to daily mass. Only this is no throng of pre-teenagers but a horde of professionals with talent galore up to the task of bringing Broadway‘s legendary Stephen Sondheim‘s work to life.     The musical...
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Theater Review of “Refugee Rhapsody”– Paradise Lost and Other Pressing Issues

Milia Ayache as Sakinah in front of a video image of Fouad Hari Bhaskar Credit PICT Sakinah, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, and Fouad, son of Syrian refugees, are friends and lovers working low wage jobs in playwright Yussef El Guindi’s provocative “Refugee Rhapsody.” A chance meeting with the daughter of a very wealthy corporate magnate sends their everyday lives topsy-turvy. A serious work with humorous touches now getting a “rolling world premiere” by Pittsburgh International Classic Theatre, the play opens in a prison cell where Sakinah (Milia Ayache) is being interrogated by Jenny (Dominique Briggs Jackson) about her involvement in a unspeakably heinous crime. Irascible and petulant, Sakinah is coaxed along to tell her story by the mild mannered yet tenacious Jenny, a counselor working for the defense. Milia Ayache as Sakinah and Dominique Briggs Jackson as Jenny Credit: PICT While the two jockey back and forth in the combative interview, one of the production’s most r...
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