Posts Tagged ‘Pearl Cleage’

BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY


Love, hate, and jealousy. Pearl Cleage’s Blues For An Alabama Sky has them all, and an abundance of laughs to boot, in Center Theatre Group’s sensatinal revival of the Atlanta-based playwright’s 1995 hit, directed by none other than its original Alliance Theatre Company star Phylicia Rashad.
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WHAT I LEARNED IN PARIS

The 1973 election of Maynard Jackson as Atlanta’s first African-American mayor is merely the backdrop for Pearl Cleage’s What I Learned In Paris, a romantic roundelay Noël Coward could have confectioned, its made-for-each-other exes J.P. and Evie giving Private Lives’ Elliot and Amanda a run for their money, albeit with a good deal more soul.

Following its 2012 World Premiere at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, Cleage’s entertaining if overlong comedy now arrives at Burbank’s Colony Theatre with some sparkling performances and an often fascinating look back at the heady changes wrought by the previous two decades’ Civil Rights crusade and the then burgeoning Feminist Movement.
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FLYIN’ WEST


12 Years A Slave’s recent Oscar wins make Flyin’ West, Pearl Cleage’s post-Civil-War slice-of-African-American-life-on-the-Kansas-plains, a particularly serendipitous choice as International City Theatre’s latest crowd-pleaser. That director Saundra McClain and her cast of six have come up with a particularly fine production of Cleage’s 1992 hit is icing on the cake, or in the case of Flyin’ West, ice cream on the apple pie.
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