Review

Fascinating, engaging parallels in art history: Utah Museum of Fine Arts’ inspired twin bill of Blue Grass, Green Skies, Photo-Secession

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Double exhibitions have become a specialty well mastered at The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) and the latest examples produce one of the most fascinating engagements with art history in a fresh perspective that resonates effectively with contemporary visitors.  Blue Grass, Green Skies: American Impressionism and Realism from the Los Angeles County Museum of … Read more

Salt Lake Acting Company’s 53rd season opens with Chisa Hutchinson’s Whitelisted: A bristling ride of a horror story

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Chisa Hutchinson’s Whitelisted opens not on stage, but in the theater, as Yvette (splendidly played by Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin) rises from a seat and is asking for donations from audience members. Her sincerity is striking. Yvette is mourning the untimely death of her daughter, and is asking for assistance to help with the costs of burying … Read more

Repertory Dance Theatre’s 59th season opener showcasing Noa Zuk choreography wows audience with invigorating, incisive performances

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Outdoors, Noa Zuk, Repertory Dance Theatre. Photo Credit: Sharon Kain.

Invigorated and sharp in every moment of the trio of works by choreographer Noa Zuk, the Repertory Dance Theatre’s (RDT) dancers put on a master class about the Gaga movement language to open the company’s 59th season. This season’s theme is Reflection, as the company paves the path for the forthcoming 60th anniversary celebration in the … Read more

A jewel of chamber theater opens PYGmalion Theatre Company’s 2024-2025 season: Julie Jensen’s Tender Hooks

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It is clear to comprehend why Julie Jensen’s outstanding body of plays have earned her the honor of being Utah’s most widely produced playwright in and out of state. With her exceptional instincts for word economy and layering wholly credible emotional profiles for her characters, Jensen’s plays evoke Utah’s geography while conveying epiphanies that are … Read more

The act of memory as art: Current Utah Museum of Contemporary Art exhibitions offer impressive scope for viewer to absorb

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The act of memory as art, viewed within a far-reaching scope of how it reverberates through human expression, is the dominant theme in the current exhibitions at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA).  The Utah Review summarizes each of the shows:  IN MEMORY: continuing through Feb. 22, 2025 In a review of a rare … Read more

Making a bit of Utah dance history: Audience’s roaring approval propels Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s Re-Play season opener

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Made evident by the consistently enthusiastic response by the audience throughout the 90-minute show, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s 61st season opener, Re-Play, was a roaring successful sampler of the legendary institution’s artistic brand and character. Joining a sharper, more rousing rendition of LajaMartin’s The Bunker (2022), the two world premieres — Purple Sonata 24 by Daniel … Read more

Sting and Honey Company deliver a very smart production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull

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There is always room for Anton Chekhov in the theatrical season. Plays such as Uncle Vanya, Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters remain relevant and timeless. And, The Seagull became the first of the great Chekhov quartet of plays when it premiered in 1896. It stands out for rendering complex psychological profiles of characters — notably … Read more

An exhilarating cavalcade of pop music excellence: Pioneer Theatre’s 63rd season opens with Jersey Boys

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At the end of Jersey Boys, Tommy DeVito says to the audience, “Everyone remembers it how they need to, right?” When the Tony Award-winning musical about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons premiered on Broadway in 2005, it was among a substantial string of biographical musicals that have emerged during the first two decades of … Read more

Plan-B Theatre’s 12th annual Free Elementary School Tour production for 2024-25 academic year features EllaMental by Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin

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Within a few days after third grader Martin Richards from Boston was killed in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, a photo which showed the boy holding a sign he created that read ‘No more hurting people. Peace’ went viral. He made the sign a year before, when an activist who was protesting the handling of … Read more

The compelling political power of remembrance: Fazilat Soukhakian: Under the Same Sky at Material Gallery

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In recent decades, Iranian visual artists — photographers, painters, filmmakers and animators — have communicated through their work how the politics of history and memory are the cogent pivotal driving forces of constructing and preserving identity, which has been under existential threat since the 1978-79 revolution that toppled the Pahlavi dynasty and installed an Islamic … Read more