The musical Legally Blonde can share a deceptive appearance with its heroine, Elle Wood. It appears to be a happy wish-fulfillment college story in that cartoonish land of musical comedy created by the bouncy music and lyrics of Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin and the book by Heather Hach. Elle seems to be a typical […]

Simon is a 15-year-old high school sophomore living with his mother in the apartment they moved into two years ago after his father was killed in a car accident that Simon witnessed. Both still suffer from depression, missing husband and father. Charlotte, the mother, also suffers from the way Simon has isolated himself. He finds […]

A medical term takes its name from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. The Baskerville Effect is a statistical observation noting that fatalities from heart attacks are increased by extreme fear or stress. So it is that a gigantic, ghostly, blood-flecked hound with fiery red eyes roaming the moor at […]

Emma is the best of holiday treats in the superb production by the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

In defining the meaning of terms used in theatre, scholars, critics, and others sometimes assert that if a play ends in a death it is a tragedy, if it ends in a marriage it is a comedy. What are we to call one that ends in both? That is the difficulty that W.S. Gilbert has […]

The Muny — country’s oldest and largest outdoor musical theater — is now “The Tony Award Winning Muny”
So what difference does winning a Tony actually make?

A “deposition” is the taking of testimony outside of court. It is also the name of the latest play produced by First Run Theatre. The deposition in Amy Hanson’s play is much like being in a court. It has a plaintiff and a defendant and an attorney for each of them, as well as a […]

The epic musical Les Misérables is as marvelous as ever in its 13th visit to the Fox Theatre.

In 1817 the English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the phrase “willing suspension of disbelief” to describe what we do when we believe in the truth and reality of a work of fiction in order to enjoy it, such as a novel, a poem, a play, a movie, or whatever shape such a […]

Discover how 4 Hands Brewing and RAC St. Louis brought local artists together for a one-of-a-kind collaboration that supports the arts in the city.