Author Archives: burdreviews

            Billie Holiday, who died in 1959 at the age of 44, is an icon in the music world. With her voice and unique style, she gave powerful and sensual representation to songs she sang during the height of the jazz age. Lanie Robertson has created in 90 minutes, a powerful play with some ofContinue reading “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill”

August Wilson was an African-American playwright who chronicled life in the Black Pittsburgh community, in which he grew up, in a series of ten plays . Two of them, “Fences” and “The Piano Lesson,” won the Pulitzer Prize. Each play is about another decade of the 20th century, with “Radio Golf” taking place in theContinue reading “Radio Golf at Arden Theatre Co.”

Felix Artifex is a third rate theater producer who is trying to secure a Broadway production for what could be the biggest deal of his career. He has some financing from an unusual source and is trying to secure a contract with a popular movie star to be in the play about the French Revolution,Continue reading “Mistakes Were Made at Act II Playhouse”

Eddie Carbone, an Italian-American, is a longshoreman, working at the docks  of Brooklyn in the 1950’s. He lives with his wife, Beatrice, and their orphaned 17-ear-old niece, Catherine. They are about to welcome Beatrice’s cousins who are coming to America from Italy, seeking work. They are illegal immigrants. That’s how Arthur Miller’s, “A View FromContinue reading “A View From the Bridge at New Light Theatre”

“The Tempest,” written in 1611, is believed to be one of the last plays that William Shakespeare wrote alone. It takes place on a small island somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea, after a storm, a tempest, shipwrecks a ship. We soon learn that the storm was created by Prospero, with his magical powers. He hasContinue reading “The Tempest at Quintessence Theatre”

            Thurgood Marshall was the 76th associate justice appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States after the Court was created by the Constitution over 175 years before. He was also, the first African-American to serve there. His story of fighting to end racism, beginning with growing up in segregated Baltimore, Maryland, is theContinue reading “Thurgood at People’s Light”

With a title like “Lifespan of a Fact,” I knew I had to see the latest production by Lantern Theater Company. There seemed to be so many possibilities. It turned out those possibilities or facts, were the fabrication used to enhance an essay that John D’Agata wrote for a magazine. And when fact-checker Jim FingalContinue reading “The Lifespan of a Fact at Lantern Theater”

I recently received an invitation by a theater company in Camden, New Jersey, that I’d never heard of to see a play I’d never heard of. I was hesitant but also curious, even more so when I learned that the theater, Camden Repertory Theater performed in the living room of a row home. But uponContinue reading “Unfinished Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage at Camden Repertory Theater”

Set in a beauty salon in a small Louisiana town in the 1980’s, “Steel Magnolias” by Robert Harling, revolves around its owner Truvy, her new assistant, Annelle, and four other women, who come regularly to the salon to get their hair done, but more significantly, to talk. One is a wealthy widow, Clairee, who hasContinue reading “Steel Magnolias at Act II Playhouse”

When we think about immigrants trying to come to the U.S., we immediately conjure up images of Latinos at our southern border trying to get into the country. Over the years, immigrants have sought to come to America to escape their difficult lives and start anew. Quotas to keep foreigners out have regularly stopped them.Continue reading “The Last Parade at InterAct Theatre”