Finding Neverland at HCT

I don't think I have ever had a more emotional response to a show than than the one I had when I saw Finding Neverland on Broadway (I was crying my eyes out by the end) so I was beyond excited when it was announced as part of the 2025 season at HCT and I have been eagerly awaiting my chance to see it ever since (I've also been recommending it to all of my theatre friends). I went to a matinee yesterday afternoon and, while I thoroughly enjoyed it, I feel like it is missing some of the magic of the Broadway production. J.M. Barrie (Keith McKay Evans) is a playwright suffering from writers' block, much to the chagrin of his snobby society wife Mary (Jordyn Aspyn Durfey) and his exasperated theatre director Charles Frohman (Alex King), when he meets the Llewelyn Davies brothers, George (Lucas Huizingh), Jack (Andrew Laudie), Peter (Flynn Mitchell), and Michael (Link Evans), and their mother Sylvia (Amy Shreeve Keeler), in Kensington Gardens. The Llewelyn Davies family, especially Sylvia and Peter, help him find his imagination again and inspire him to write the play Peter Pan while Barrie helps Sylvia, who is sick, and Peter, who is still mourning the loss of his father, learn that you shouldn't take life too seriously. I really love all of the music in this show but I was especially impressed by Evans' passionate rendition of "My Imagination" and Keeler's powerful performance of "All That Matters" (they both have beautiful voices) and their chemistry is palpable in "Neverland" and "What You Mean to Me."  I loved the innovative staging of "Believe," when the brothers fly around Kensington Gardens in a giant paper boat, "Circus of Your Mind," when ticking clocks (which represent the people who disapprove of Barrie) are transformed into a giant crocodile, "Stronger," when Barrie's alter ego Captain Hook (Alex King) takes him to a pirate ship to encourage him to be bolder, and "What You Mean to Me," as Barrie and Sylvia dance with their shadows (performed by aerialists Lance Nielson and Samantha Nielson). I also enjoyed seeing Peter Pan (Tyson Russell) fly around Barrie in certain scenes because he represents Barrie. The stage is brilliantly configured as a series of giant books with projections of text all around the theatre and many of the set pieces, which come in from the wings, up from the pit, and down from the rafters, look like line drawings (I especially liked the duvets on the beds in the nursery). The period costumes are gorgeous, especially all of Sylvia's gowns and Captain Cook's elaborate frock coat. However, with the exception of Shelby Maughan, who plays Mr. Henshaw, and Colton James Kraus, who plays Mr. Cromer, I found the acting troupe to be very bland (they are completely over-the-top in the Broadway production) so the songs "The World Is Upside Down," "Something About This Night," and "Neverland (Reprise)" are a bit underwhelming. To be fair, I attended a matinee with many empty seats (my whole row was empty) so that may have affected the energy. Finally, I waited with great anticipation for the penultimate scene with Sylvia because, in the Broadway production, it is one of the most magical bits of stage craft that I have ever seen and, honestly, I was disappointed with this version because I found it a bit pedestrian (I expected more from Dave Tinney and the state-of-the-art stage). There is actually a lot to love about HCT's version and my comparison to the Broadway production is probably unfair so I definitely think it is worth seeing. It runs on the Young Living Centre Stage through June 14 (go here for tickets) but act quickly because many shows are sold out.

Note:  A huge shout-out to Indy, who is making her acting debut as the Barries' dog Porthos, because she is adorable and she does such a great job!

Juliet & Romeo

My sister and I are not the biggest fans of Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet but, as soon as we saw the trailer for a new adaptation, we knew immediately that we wanted to see it because it is a musical!  We had the chance to see it yesterday and both of our inner thirteen year old selves loved it.  Prince Escalus (Rupert Graves) is fighting to keep control of Verona and he must ally himself with either House Montague or House Capulet to get the support he needs and this escalates the ongoing feud between them.  Lord Montague (Jason Isaacs) looks to his adopted son Mercutio (Nicholas Podany) to advance their cause because his own son Romeo (Jamie Ward) has started to rebel while Lord and Lady Capulet (Rupert Everett and Rebel Wilson, respectively) bring their unsuspecting daughter Juliet (Clara Rugaard) home from school to form an alliance with Lord Paris (Dennis Andres) in exchange for his army.  Romeo spots Juliet across a crowded square and they bond over their appreciation of Dante Alighieri.  They eventually fall in love and, when they realize that they represent opposing houses, they turn to the Friar (Derek Jacobi) who sees their union as a way to achieve peace and he marries them.  However, when violence erupts on the streets leading to the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), Romeo is banished and he must resort to a bold plan involving the Apothecary (Dan Fogler) in order to be with Juliet.  This takes quite a few liberties with the source material, including a really wild ending, and this would normally bother me but the changes work within the context of a story about choosing your own destiny.  The runtime starts to feel long during the third act when Juliet takes the potion and Romeo misses the message from the Friar but I always find this section of the play tedious when it is performed on stage so I can't fault the movie for it.  The songs eventually all blend together and they definitely have a Disney Channel Original Movie sound but I really enjoyed them (see the aforementioned comment about my inner thirteen year old self) and I suspect that teens everywhere (the target audience) will love them.  My favorites are "Beat the Same," "I Should Write This Down," "The Mask I Wear," and "Streets On Fire."  Ward and Rugaard are very appealing and have great chemistry as the titular characters and I also liked Jacobi as the Friar because he acts as a sort of narrator.  The visuals are gorgeous, with production design by Dante Ferreti and costume design by Luciano Capozzi (I loved the masquerade ball), and the cinematography is dazzling (especially the overhead shots of the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt on the bridge).  I know that everyone is going to hate this but, to me, it was a bit of escapist fun and my sister and I had a blast watching it.

Shadow Force

I wasn't really interested in Shadow Force but there are not a lot of new releases in theaters this weekend and my nephew is a fan of Omar Sy so we went to see it last night.  If I hadn't seen Magic Farm at Sundance I would call this my worst movie of 2025.  Isaac Sarr (Sy) and Kyrah Owens (Kerry Washington) are highly trained agents who were once part of a multinational covert organization, known as Shadow Force, led by Jack Cinder (Mark Strong) who now works for the G7.  After they fell in love, got married, and had a son, they decided to leave the organization knowing that this decision would put a bounty on their heads.  Kyrah spends the next four years hunting down the agents who were once their colleagues while Isaac goes deep under cover to care for their son Ky (Jahleel Kamara).  However, when Isaac uses his highly specialized training to foil a bank robbery, he blows his cover and Cinder doubles the bounty on them because he doesn't want his involvement in the organization to come to light and ruin his chances of becoming Secretary General (does such a position even exist?) of the G7 (or it might be because he is in love with Kyrah and is bitter that she rejected him).  They go on the run to evade all of the other operatives now chasing them but they are helped by the spies "Auntie" (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) and "Unc" (Clifford "Method Man" Smith), who have some sort of unexplained connection to them.  Eventually, everyone involved ends up on an island off the coast of Colombia for a final confrontation (that lasts forever).  The script is an absolute mess because it relies on having the characters, who are supposed to be the most elite and highly trained covert assassins in the world, make one incomprehensible decision after another in order to sustain the action.  At one point, Kyrah has all five of the operatives she has been chasing for the past four years in her sights (they are literally standing in a row) but she just walks away from them.  At least this afforded us many opportunities to yell at the screen ("Take the shot!") and that was somewhat entertaining.  There are a lot of (unnamed) characters to keep track of and one's betrayal is telegraphed almost from his first appearance and another one's assistance comes out of nowhere (it made me laugh out loud).  With the exception of Kamara, who is adorable, and Sy, who has a few touching moments with Kamara, the acting is incredibly melodramatic (Washington has several monologues that are meant to be poignant but they made my nephew laugh out loud because they are so cheesy).  All of this might be forgiven if the action sequences were exciting but they are edited in such a scattershot way that it is difficult to see what is going on most of the time.  My nephew said that he wasn't expecting this to be great but he also wasn't expecting it to be so bad.

Utah Opera's Madame Butterfly

I really love Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly (Utah Opera's 2014 production is one of my very favorites by the company) so it was with a bit of trepidation that I went to see a bold new version last night at Capitol Theatre.  I tend to be a purist and I usually dislike it when classics, especially classics that I love, are reimagined.  However, much to my surprise, I really enjoyed it because it retains the story and, more importantly, the incomparable music but adds a framing device to emphasize the fact that the character of Butterfly is Pinkerton's stereotyped version of a Japanese woman and not reality.  It is very effective!  Act I begins when a young man named B.F. Pinkerton (Eric Taylor) enters his sleek and modern apartment, which is decorated with posters depicting Japanese anime characters, and, using a VR headset, joins a game set in Japan at the turn of the century using the avatar of a U.S. naval officer.  The alternate world he enters is a fantastical one.  He is wearing a uniform but the cut is exaggerated and it is without adornment, his house features shoji screens, lanterns, and cherry blossoms but everything is bright and stylized, and the Japanese people he interacts with are dressed traditionally but the colors are vivid and bold and the hairstyles reflect the cuts and colors you would find in Japanese anime.  Pinkerton is an interactive player in the game and he soon requests that Sharpless (Nmon Ford), the U.S. Consul, allow him to wed a Japanese geisha named Cio-Cio San (Hiromi Omura), or Butterfly, for convenience.  Sharpless agrees but warns him to treat her carefully because she loves him.  After they are married, Butterfly confesses that she has secretly converted to Christianity, which causes her uncle the Bonze (Zaikuan Song) to disown her, so he comforts her before they spend a blissful night together.  Act II begins three years later and Pinkerton, who is now married to Kate (Sarah Scofield), is a passive observer in the game.  Butterfly eagerly awaits Pinkerton's return and she chastises her maid Suzuki (Nina Yoshida Nelsen) for saying that he is not coming back, refuses a marriage proposal from Prince Yamadori (Kevin Nakatani), and dismisses Sharpless when he attempts to read her a goodbye letter from Pinkerton.  Butterfly eventually sees Pinkerton's ship in the harbor and keeps vigil all night waiting for him to come to her and their son.  In Act III, Pinkerton, an active participant once again, reaches a new level in the game and is allowed to pick a wife but, when he chooses Kate's avatar rather than Butterfly's, he sees how his actions have impacted Butterfly.  She decides that her child will have a better life with Pinkerton and Kate but this drives her to a desperate act that abruptly ends the game leaving present-day Pinkerton in despair.  This particular narrative is absolutely brilliant and I was mesmerized by the staging but I was most impressed by the cast!  Omura gives an incredibly passionate performance.  The love duet between Butterfly and Pinkerton after their wedding ("Love me, please") is beautiful and filled with longing while the aria she sings insisting that Pinkerton will return to her ("One fine day we shall see") is so emotional that I had tears in my eyes (the audience burst into spontaneous applause).  Taylor has an expressive voice but I especially enjoyed the transformation in Pinkerton as he silently observes Butterfly's love for him in Act II.  I also loved Ford's voice in the duet between Sharpless and Butterfly ("Now for us") because it is filled with compassion knowing that the truth will devastate her.  Finally, my favorite moment features the "Humming Chorus" because it is so haunting and I was very moved hearing the Utah Opera Chorus sing it last night.  I did not expect to love this thought-provoking production as much as I did and I highly recommend it!  There are two more performances but act quickly (go here) because there are not many tickets left.

Waitress at PTC

I really love the musical Waitress so I was thrilled when it was announced as the final show this season at PTC. I went to see it last night and it exceeded my expectations in every way! Jenna (Claire Saunders) uses baking to cope with her dead-end job as a waitress and her unhappy marriage to an abusive husband (Brent Thiessen). When she learns that she is unexpectedly pregnant and begins an ill-advised affair with her gynecologist (Ben Jacoby), she expresses her hopes, dreams, fears, and frustrations by telling the audience the ingredients for a pie that will help her current situation (play close attention to the specials board), always beginning with "Sugar. Butter. Flour." Eventually she realizes that the one ingredient she is missing is courage! I think all of the songs in this show are incredibly clever, especially "What's Inside," "Opening Up," and "It Only Takes a Taste," because, while they are ostensibly about baking, they are also great metaphors for life. However, my favorite song is "She Used to Be Mine" because it is such a powerful turning point for Jenna. I have been lucky enough to see Jessie Mueller, who originated the role of Jenna, perform it on Broadway and Sara Bareilles, who wrote the music and lyrics, perform it in concert and, in my opinion, Saunders is on par with both of them because her rendition is incredibly raw and emotional (I had tears in my eyes during the entire performance). The rest of the cast is also outstanding and I was very moved by the beautiful harmonies between Saunders and Candace Marie Woods as Becky and Lexi Rabadi as Dawn in "A Soft Place to Land" and "Everything Changes" as well as between Saunders and Jacoby in "You Matter to Me." In addition to the poignant messages about finding your inner strength, this show is also really funny and the cast does a great job with the witty one-liners and physical comedy, particularly in the songs "Never Ever Getting Rid of Me" and "Bad Idea" (they were definitely big crowd-pleasers last night). The use of the ensemble is brilliant because they are all distinct characters within the diner but they also come together to act out what is happening in the narrative of the songs (this is especially effective in "Bad Idea") and they assist Jenna whenever she makes the pies. I've seen this iconic show several times and I really appreciated all of the subtle touches used to differentiate it from other well-known productions, including the yellow gingham fabric used for the uniforms and the neon used throughout the diner. If you have seen this on Broadway or on tour, you will definitely not be disappointed with PTC's version and, if you have never seen it before, you are in for an amazing evening of laughter and tears! It runs through May 17 and tickets may be purchased here.