'Runaround Mitch': A song from the distant past repurposed to address the dismal present of health-care "reform"

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Actors Theatre Indiana romps through a farce — unusually, without a founder in the cast

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"Don't you love farce?" runs a memorable rhetorical question in Stephen Sondheim's "Send In the Clowns." There's lots to watch on the screen for characters in "Unnecessary Farce." Desiree's bitter song points to the conditions that underlie farce: Misunderstandings, false assumptions, confused or deceptive identities, upsets, personal disasters. None of that is any fun when you're  living it. If relatively minor, the conditions of farce may seem risible shortly after the dust has settled. If more serious, they will be permanently unsettling. As a literary or dramatic genre, however, most people do indeed love farce. But, frankly, the whole bag may seem unnecessary —  and not just as part of the pun in the last line of Paul Slade Smith's "Unnecessary Farce."  Actors Theatre Indiana opened the show Wednesday night in the Studio Theater at the Center for the Performing Arts . The premise is a police sting operatio
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DK's 'Divas A-New': What's past is prologue (so is what's present)

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  Ensemble exuberance in "Stories from the Corner Bar" Joshua Blake Carter's curtain speech gave Dance Kaleidoscope 's opening-night audience Thursday a concise, graceful indication of how the transition from his illustrious predecessor as artistic director, David Hochoy, is settling in. Before "Divas A-New" took the stage, the audience at Schrott Center for the Arts (a new venue for the company) got brief exposure to DK's educational wing as two student troupes performed. That was a charming showcase for what's been possible since DK moved into a new permanent rehearsal and educational home in 2020. The solidity of the professional company no longer had to pose questions as to whether its growing profile was anything more than a castle in the air.  Setting aside what the hyphen in the program title must mean (since "anew" would seem to convey the idea), it's clear the "divas" idea builds upon the popular focus in earlier pr
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Desperate Prior Walter casts eyes heavenward.  Indy Bard Fest has an ambitious production in "Angels in America," a two-part play by Tony Kushner that has become representative of the fight for sexual identity and respect amid the horrors of the AIDS epidemic. It is a big, baggy monster, and it's fortunate that Indy Bard Fest is up to the task of representing it with the technical and performing elements thoroughly meshed to excellent effect. At Butler University's Schrott Center for the Arts , the audience gets to be drawn in separately, its endurance tested, with the first part roughly in alternation with the second. "Millennium Approaches" is recommended for a full understanding of "Perestroika," and so performances continue through July 1. Kushner stuffs so much into this seven-hour theatrical triumph that he blends two types of focus: analysis and advocacy. The mid-1980s firmly anchors the time and setting of "Angels," and the playw
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