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KISS ME, KATE UCLA's Frued Playhouse “It’s entertaining, vivacious and calculated to appeal to the discriminating theatergoer.” So declares one of the thugs who invade the leading man’s dressing room to collect on a gambling debt during a the play-within-the play in “Kiss Me, Kate.” I could use the same line to describe Reprise Theatre Company's revival of the musical, by Cole Porter, William Shakespeare, and Sam and Bella Spewack, which opened Wednesday at UCLA's Freud Playhouse. Except that critique is too subdued to convey the nonstop delights of this production. Seán Martin Hingston as Lucentio/ne’er-do-well hoofer Bill Calhoun until Act II... pulled out a jaw-dropping Gene Kelly-esque dance solo." "The Reprise Theater Company fulfills its artistic mandate admirably with its production of "Kiss Me, Kate," polishing up a classic tuner to reveal its virtues anew. If the dance numbers seem long and only tenuously related to the main plot, so what? They're gloriously performed and choreographed. Director Michael Michetti pulls all of the disparate elements together with aplomb, and the result is a rich confection musical lovers will savor...Meg Gillentine and Sean Martin Hingston both demonstrate superb singing and dancing skills in "Always True to You in My Fashion" and "Bianca," respectively." Kristin Chenoweth: Live at the Met "To help relive Kristin's high
school days in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, David Elder and Seán Martin
Hingston joined in as a pair of dancing cowboys for Goin' To The Dance
With You. Hingston returned as her good-for-nothing boyfriend in a
hilariously staged presentation of If, where his freshly murdered
limp body was flopped about as she vented her lyrical rage. The two fellas
competed for her attention in Irving Berlin’s You're Easy To Dance With
in a clever arrangement that nearly transpired into a rumble of West
Side Story proportions." THE PIRATE "But the show's true revelation
is Hingston. A highly athletic dancer who has proved his terpsichorean
prowess in such shows as Contact, he truly comes into his own here as a
fine comedian and singer. Like a good pirate, he steals everything in
sight and gets away with it." BROADWAY BY THE YEAR: 1930 "Choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler offered an especially neat treat,
putting Seán Martin Hingston and Shannon Lewis in a flirty acrobatic tango
that brought the house down." YANKEE DOODLE DANDY "Hingston’s performance as Cohan is inspired, maybe even evangelical.
He has all the charm of a prototypical Broadway wheeler dealer and could
sell a song to a tone deaf man. Best of all he’s an old school tap
dancer-swaggering, nearly pugilistic- and this act is propelled by the
kind of vintage hoofing (choreographed by Jamie Rocco ) that built
Broadway." THE LONG CHRISTMAS RIDE HOME "…There is genuine wonder as Ms. Vogel, Mr. Eustis and the production's
technical team summon moments in which time seems to stop and reconfigure
itself. These scenes include an enchanting Christmas reverie in which the
puppet children rise into the air and an extraordinary dance of
resurrection, performed by Seán Martin Hingston (''Contact'') and
choreographed by Donna Uchizono." A CONNECTICUT YANKEE
"Mr. Ashford has come up with two saucy pas de deux for Seán Martin
Hingston and Nancy Lemenager, who play the virtuous Sir Galahad and the
vixenish Dame Evelyn. In them, these agile young singer-dancers get a
chance to make like a sexed-up Fred and Ginger, and you can feel the buzz
of their exhilaration from doing so. ''Yankee'' could use much more of
that." The best way to describe him would be that he is a better looking, taller, and more macho guy than Gene Kelly but has the same combination of strength and airiness. He has three numbers, in two of which he danced with Nancy Lemenager, whose own combination of sexiness and humor make their dances the hit of the show. At curtain call Hingston received the most bravos- and that says
something considering the competition he from such a fun and talented
troupe including Judith Blazer ,Christine Ebersole, Peter Bartlett and
Henry Gibson." CONTACT "Inhabiting Mr. Lynch's and Mr. Long's sumptuous re-creation of Fragonard's painting ''The Swing,'' an aristocratic young man and woman (Scott Taylor and Stephanie Michels) and a studly servant (Seán Martin Hingston) perform a rococo mating ritual in which all involved would seem to know their respective moves in advance. Or do they? Without breaking the tempo set by the swing of the title,
variations do occur, including one startling role reversal. ''Swing,''
which is both the evening's iciest and most erotically explicit episode,
is more of a gimmick than the others, but it is executed to sly perfection
by its trio of dancers." STARS IN THE OFF-BROADWAY GALAXY Seán Martin Hingston Everyone makes a fuss about the Girl in the Yellow Dress. But what about the Guy in the Hairnet? Mr. Hingston is one of only two members of the 22-person ensemble who appear in all three of the dance plays that make up ''Contact,'' the hit evening of dance-driven narrative at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (and moving to the Beaumont in March). Can you spot him in all three? In the first, ''Swinging,'' a teasing curtain-raiser inspired by an 18th-century painting, ''The Swing,'' Mr. Hingston is the hunky, poker-faced servant, pushing a sexually available young maid on a swing at her afternoon tryst with another man. In the third piece, ''Contact,'' he plays one of the virile young swing dancers rejected again and again by the woman in yellow (Deborah Yates). The inside joke is apparent in the second piece, ''Did You Move?,'' in which Mr. Hingston is disguised as a cretinous restaurant employee, in glasses and hairnet, dragging Italian foodstuffs across the floor of the Queens restaurant in which Karen Ziemba dances her whimsical dream ballet. The gamut he runs in ''Contact,'' from desirable to repulsive, is in both choreographic and dramatic terms, a leap of imagination. |
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