Broome Arts Mirror – Local Theatre Reviews
The Broome Arts Mirror is a group of volunteers affiliated with the Broome County Arts Council who write previews and reviews about local performances and arts shows. For inquiries, including having someone review your local production, please contact us at bamirror@broomearts.org.
Ti-Ahwaga steps into the batter’s box with provocative play
By George Basler The prize-winning play Take Me Out, now being presented by the Ti-Ahwaga Community Players, is a baseball story with a twist, focuseing on what happens when a mixed-race superstar centerfielder comes out publicly as gay. “What I like is that it's beautifully written. It’s also about [...]
Madrigal Choir to visit Broadway
By George Basler In its more than 40-year history, the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton has performed everything from spirituals to Medieval chants, from traditional Christmas melodies to 16th century antiphonal music. Now the choir is taking on Broadway with “The American Songbook: Broadway Tunes from Gershwin to Hamilton” to [...]
TCO presents Mozart masterwork at Forum
By George Basler Tri-Cities Opera will conclude its 2022-23 season with a work that a 2017 BBC Music Magazine poll named as the greatest opera ever written. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. Figaro marks “our full return to big, grand productions” with glorious costumes and sets, TCO [...]
Fiddler Ball to lead program at Cranberry Coffeehouse
"Upstate Crossroads," a concert by fiddler Tim Ball and guitarist/singer Helen Kuhar, will start at 7:30 p.m. Saturday (April 15) at the Cranberry Coffeehouse at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Binghamton, 183 Riverside Drive, Binghamton. After 20 years performing in Celtic and contra dance bands and a lifetime [...]
Cider Mill farce finds humor in efforts to bring ‘GWTW’ to the screen
By George Basler There’s no denying that, since its premiere in 1939, Gone with the Wind has found its niche in American popular culture. Even people who have never seen the film, or read the Margaret Mitchell novel upon which it’s based, have at least a passing knowledge [...]
KNOW Theatre to take funny, heartbreaking look at a tortured relationship
By George Basler American playwright Sharr White is known for weaving dark humor into painfully sad situations. That’s certainly the case with Annapurna, which had successful runs in Los Angeles and Off Broadway in New York a few years ago. The play “covers a lot of bases: love, loss, [...]
BCAC announces 2023 UCF recipients
The Broome County Arts Council (BCAC) has announced $259,110 in 2023 United Cultural Fund (UCF) awards to 21 local artists, arts organizations and community non-profits. Applicant statistics in Broome County reflected a nationwide picture, according to BCAC, with a greater number of medium-size and large arts organizations seeking deeper [...]
Phelps to host retrospective of local playwright Judith Present’s works
By George Basler Judith Present calls herself “a storyteller. And for more than 40 years, the Hancock-based playwright has been telling stories in plays she has written and performed across the region. Her specialty is creating dramatic monologues in which characters reveal the fears, feelings and hopes present [...]
Hills of Endicott will be alive with ‘The Sound of Music’
By George Basler After more than six decades of immense popularity, The Sound of Music has earned its place in the pantheon of great Broadway musicals. “It’s a show everyone loves,” said Patrick Foti, artistic director at the Endicott Performing Arts Center, which will stage the show Thursday through [...]
Binghamton Philharmonic’s musical tasting menu harkens back to heyday of BC Pops
By George Basler A mixture of “bonbons, greatest hits, humor and fun” is how Executive Director Paul Cienniwa describes the Binghamton Philharmonic’s upcoming “Pops at the Forum” concert Saturday (March 25) at the Broome County Forum Theatre in downtown Binghamton. The goal is “to revisit the style of [...]
BU will be seeing green with Irish song and dance
By George Basler Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, an energetic blend of Irish singing, dance and music is coming to Binghamton University’s Anderson Center. Wings: A Celtic Dance Celebration, features vocalist Evangeline O’Neill, seven Irish and world champion dancers, and a small group of musicians playing [...]
Summer Savoyards present classic Shaw play on class and gender
By George Basler By chance, an egotistical phonetics expert meets a Cockney flower girl and decides to show off his expertise by turning her into a "lady," who can pass as a duchess in bourgeois English society. For musical comedy fans, the story is instantly recognizable as the [...]
BLAST bringing heartfelt semi-autobiographical musical to Cider Mill Stage
By George Basler In the late 1980s, Jonathan Larson, who would later create the musical blockbuster Rent, was going through something of a personal crisis. Approaching the age of 30, he was concerned that his theatrical career was stalled and that he might have to give up on [...]
BCO to perform landmark work of Black female composer
By George Basler In 1933 Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E minor premiered to great acclaim when it was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “It is a faultless work that speaks its own message with restraint and yet with passion … worthy of a place in [...]
Binghamton University heads into big performance weekend
By George Basler This weekend (Feb. 23-26) is shaping up as a big weekend for the arts at Binghamton University with a student-performed play, a student-performed opera and an appearance by a world-renowned gender-bending dance troupe. Student play Thrive, or What You Will, a new work by feminist [...]
