Rousuck's Review: Top Local, National Virtual Theater Offerings

Now, an update on how the American theater world is creatively adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to keep its theaters and community stages dark. Theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck has been watching a steady stream of innovative online "virtual" productions by local and national companies, and she joins Tom on the line to share a few recommendations.Those include The Howard Ashman Celebration, an online documentary by the local Rainbow Sun Productions. The YouTube video pays tribute to the late American playwright and lyricist, whose work with songwriter Alan Menken on Disney animated feature films such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and posthumously, Aladdin, won Ashman a bevy of honors before his death from HIV/AIDS in 1991. From The Public Theater in New York City, What Do We Need to Talk About?, a new, hour-long installment of playwright Richard Nelson's popular series of The Apple Family Plays, in which the characters commune -- about art in the pandemic and other things -- not at a dinner table set, but in an online Zoom chat. Also, a heads up that on July 3, a stage-captured video production of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda's mega-hit Broadway musical, begins streaming exclusively on the Disney-Plus channel.Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.