Some of the opening night audience greeted Priscilla fondly, like an old friend unseen since her movie came out years ago. I hadn’t seen the movie, never met the old bus, but it wasn’t hard to understand the warm feelings for the Queen of the Desert that hauled two drag queens and a transgendered performer […]
Articles by Warren Francke
Donuts More Substantial Than Sit-Com Suggests
Superior Donuts would be rightly praised for the remarkable play it is except for one huge handicap: It isn’t August: Osage County. Both plays were written by Tracy Letts who first wrote such shockers as Killer Joe and Bug.They led his novelist mother to say her son’s characters always end up dead or […]
Root for Motley Trio
Some of the opening night audience greeted Priscilla fondly, like an old friend unseen since her movie came out years ago. I hadn’t seen the movie, never met the old bus, but it wasn’t hard to understand the warm feelings for the Queen of the Desert that hauled two drag queens and a transgendered performer […]
Jersey Boys’ Story Still Compelling
I suspect some go to Jersey Boys just waiting for Frankie Valli to sing “too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off of you” in that high falsetto before belting out, “I love you baby.” That’s certainly part of the fun, but I’m partial to the story of the Four Seasons […]
Her Plea to “Send More Sky”
No offense to directors intended, but I’m not usually influenced by their program notes. This time, though, Susan Clement-Toberer grabbed me with three words that closed her comments on the new Blue Barn play, Silent Sky. She wrote, “Send more sky,” the plea from playwright Lauren Gunderson’s key character, Henrietta Leavitt, who searches […]
Those Hills?
The Sound of Music first played the Orpheum Theatre a few years before we saw Julie Andrews as the movie’s Maria in 1965…and almost every year for the next half century. And I’d interviewed the real Maria Von Trapp, so that up-close-and-personal impression of a tall, dignified woman with her gray […]
THE PLAY’S THE THING
Lets not pretend that Jason Gross and Bill Gaus are your average theater-goers. They were far more prepared than most of us to enjoy the shows booked on Omaha stages in 2016. But their enthusiasm for live theater is a great starting point for looking back at the best the year brought to metro audiences. […]
Holiday Classic
Start with the songs from the greatest tunesmith in American history. He gave us not just the nostalgic title song and the others in this holiday musical now playing the Orpheum, but “God Bless America,” “Easter Parade” and hundreds more. And revisiting Irving is not even the best thing about […]
Operation Crucible
Operation Crucible shows four survivors of the Sheffield Blitz, the Nazi bombing of the British city known to the rest of the world for its cutlery but targeted for its vital steel-making in World War II. Those bare facts only scratch the surface of the humanity brought to life as […]
Cabaret
Shakespeare wasn’t thinking Cabaret but got it half right when he suggested, “All’s well that ends well.” In the case of the Sam Mendes conversion of the Kander-Ebb-Masteroff musical into an aptly sleazy and decadent Berlin at the dawn of Nazi genocide, all’s well that both starts and ends well. Not […]
