Matt Mitchell Archives - TheaterScene.net

Matt Mitchell

ON THE TOWN…. with CHIP DEFFAA , November 8, 2017

November 11, 2017

Memo to Broadway producers: You need to do everything you can to hook the next generation while they're young. I got hooked on theater because I saw the greatest performers, the greatest shows, from when I was very young. It would be very hard for a young person of today to see as much great theater as I did, growing up. When they read about some tickets going for a thousand bucks apiece, they might well conclude that theater isn't meant to be for them, but mostly for rich older folk. I have some friends who work in the theater who say they can't afford to take their families to shows. And that worries me. [more]

Lili Marlene

August 19, 2017

The songs never come up to the title song made famous by Marlene Dietrich who’s mentioned several times during the play. Antin’s attempt at playful seduction, “Take Me Home Tonight,” sung by the half-dressed cabaret girls and his German-style drinking song, “Fill My Stein with Beer” are pleasant pastiche, but “How Can Germany Survive?” (sung by the beleaguered Willi) and “Time to Stand Up” (sung by Josef) are heavy-handed and obvious. The lyrics throughout, even in the love songs are of the “moon-June” variety, but, as mentioned, are sung with great feeling. [more]

Rudresh Mahanthappa: “Bird Calls”

December 22, 2015

Mahanthappa's elegant and exciting compositional voice is well established. His jazz combines the full development of the genre since its inception with the idiom of South Indian classical music which is his personal inheritance. Mahanthappa – among other jazz artists featured in recent years in the Jazz at Miller Theatre series, such as Anat Cohen and Miguel Zenon – has already contributed to an expanded vision of jazz as an American art form that can incorporate global influences; Mahanthappa has indeed been both exemplar and participant in the necessary and welcome twenty-first century examination of the fluid meanings of “American” and “global.” [more]