STAGES & SCREENS

Anyone who has the impression that Broadway musicals are just for theater kids, gays or Manhattan elites with hundreds to spend on a single ticket should travel to the center of the country to check out the The Muny in St. Louis. It just won the Regional Theater Tony Award this month, and I attended for the first time on its opening night on Monday June 16, a day declared “Muny Day” by St. Louis’ mayor to celebrate its new national status and the opening of the new season. What I found was that this 107-year-old, 11,000-seat outdoor theater, the oldest and largest in the country, which gives away 1,500 of its tickets every single summer night – even Broadway is dark on Mondays, but not The Muny! -- to fans devoted enough to spend the day picnicking in Forest Park to get in, is unlike anything else in the country and is a place where, you might say, everyone is a theater kid. While most musicals make millions of dollars per week on Broadway, and are viewed as big commercial enterp...

The Opera Theatre of St. Louis, an underrated gem that gets -- but deserves more -- national attention, celebrated its 50 th anniversary this month with four solid operas that outshine the offerings of larger opera companies in many ways. The Opera Theatre received advance features from The New York Times and the Associated Press for its world premiere this summer of This House , a Harlem-set tale of ghosts and gentrification from composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettists Lynn Nottage, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, and her daughter Ruby Aiyo Gerber. But the reviews this summer were mostly local, and I always end up wondering whether St. Louisans realize quite how special an asset this annual festival of four operas really is. It was my second trip to the city to see the offerings there, having been drawn in 2023 by a new production of Treemonisha by Scott Joplin and two other operas. Most of the operas this year beat that year’s selections, which impressed at the time. The f...