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Showing posts from December, 2022

CELIA IPIOTIS REVIEWS "SOME LIKE IT HOT"

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Photo by Matthew Murphy New York, New York December 18, 2022 -- Hallelujah! A smart, entertaining, boisterous musical landed on Broadway. Some Like It Hot directed and choreographed by the masterful Casey Nicholaw soars at the Shubert Theater. The brilliant mixed cast tosses zingers worthy of Chris Rock, Lindy Hops their hips off, sing to the rafters and swing that 1930's jazz music off the charts. Originally a wildly popular Billy Wilder film, Some Like It Hot starred the inimitable Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe. Hard to top? Perhaps. Yet, the Broadway transformation renovated by Matthew Lopez and Amber Ruffin injects freshness into an old-fashioned musical, the likes of which we haven't seen in ages. Chased by an AL Capone-style thug after witnessing a murder, two itinerant jazz musicians Joe (Christian Borle) and Jerry (J. Harrison Ghee) disguise themselves as females and join an all-female jazz band featuring the gorgeous vocalist Sugar (

CELIA IPIOTIS REVIEWS "THE OLD MAN & THE POOL"

New York, New York December 4, 2022 -- More a storyteller than a comic who bolts jokes one after the other, Mike Birbiglia exudes an easy intimacy with his audience of friends. Birbiglia focuses on a list of ailments, from heart disease and diabetes, to nocturnal sleepwalking, that positively add up to a hypochondriacal looney. Intent on getting healthier, Birbiglia recounts knotty conversations with a doctor who recommends a healthier lifestyle. When the doctor suggests working out, Birbiglia demures, so she suggests swimming 5 days a week to which he replies, "no one swims 5 days a week," and she responds, "yes they do" and he retorts "Phelps doesn't swim 5 days a week" while she demures "yes, he does." Inane as that sounds, the everyday banter strikes home. Alone on the stage in front of a projection of aqua water in a swimming pool (you really don't want to know the stats about the ratio of urine to chlorinated water) dsigned b