Ashley Pérez Flanagan Archives

Ashley Pérez Flanagan

Oratorio for Living Things

October 20, 2025

To describe "Oratorio" is to flirt with the inadequacy of language. It is a musical work—a sung-through piece in the formal lineage of the oratorio, that 17th-century form that eschews staging and dialogue in favor of spiritual rumination through voice. Think Handel’s "Messiah," and then think again—"Oratorio for Living Things" shares the same bones, but not the flesh. Christian, ever the aural alchemist, reclaims and “rewilds” the form, unbinding it from its ecclesiastical constraints and infusing it with a heady blend of the sacred, the scientific, and the speculative. [more]

ON THE TOWN WITH CHIP DEFFAA: AT “THE CONNECTOR”

March 14, 2024

What a terrific, beautifully layered performance Ben Levi Ross gives in “The Connector”—a moving, original new musical from Jason Robert Brown, Jonathan Marc Sherman, and Daisy Prince. [more]

The Lucky Ones

April 13, 2018

After the first song, “We are in the house where I grew up,” says Abigail, with the bacon and eggs and toast and tea in the morning, on the first day of a new school year. Adding to the confusion are Abigail’s many family members, including her sisters--one of whom is named Emily (Ashley Pérez Flanagan), not to be confused with her new friend Emma (Adina Verson)--her parents, her aunt (the stalwart Maryann Plunkett) and her cousins. Another part of the problem is that there are simply too many people to be contained on the small stage of the Connelly Theater, which may be why the majority of them begin the show in the balcony in the rear of the auditorium. (The Lucky Ones has been directed with an overcrowded zeal by Anne Kauffman.) [more]