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Karl Josef Co

Subways Are for Sleeping

March 1, 2018

"Subways Are for Sleeping" is a valentine to New York and projection designer Lacey Erb has created atmospheric slides and streaming video of such iconic locations as Grand Central Station, Park Avenue, Rockefeller Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Unfortunately, the original problem with the material has not been solved: Tom and Angie are just not very interesting. They have little or no back story and no outstanding characteristics. As was famously true in the original production, the show is stolen by the secondary leads. With their continually inventive schemes to get through each day, slacker Charlie who lives off his former friends and would-be nightclub performer Martha with her Southern accent are a total delight. Unfortunately, they are off stage most of the time. The rest of the many characters are simply walk-ons. [more]

Pacific Overtures

May 23, 2017

The playing space designed by Doyle is a narrow white runway with a stool at one end and at the other, an archway created by continuing the flooring into the air on which Japanese writing appears as on a banner. The audience sits in stadium-type seating on either side of the playing space. Eschewing pageantry, the production puts the cast in very bland outfits of black, grey, white, blue or beige (costumes by Ann Hould-Ward), adding fabric or robes when absolutely necessary. The lighting by Jane Cox occasionally bathes the stage in either red or blue mood lights. [more]

Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill: A Musical Voyage

February 15, 2017

One of the remarkable things about the theater songs of Kurt Weill is that like the later songs of Stephen Sondheim they are all really little one act plays which give the performers a great deal of latitude in how to perform them. As sung by Karl Josef Com, Rachel de Benedet, Michael Halling and Meghan Picerno and as narrated by Brian Charles Rooney, Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill is an extraordinary musical voyage through some of the greatest theater songs of all time written by among the best talents of the 20th century. [more]