Make it through the holidays with these movies, books and music from the past year that are adapted from stage productions or evoke a theatrical spirit.
Thanks to an abundance of film adaptations of stage productions, theater-centric books and a spate of newly released cast albums, there’s enough theater to go around from the comfort of home. (There’s also lot to see on and Off Broadway, and you can read our reviews here and additional theater coverage here.)
Films to Stream
‘The Piano Lesson’
The film adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play tells of an African American family’s multigenerational trauma through a piano, which was once owned by the man who had enslaved their family members. The strong cast includes John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, Samuel L. Jackson and Ray Fisher.
From our review:
When you’re working with Wilson’s material, there’s an inherent richness, and the questions this film raises have never been more potent. What do we do with our past? What does it mean to face the future? And when every ordinary day in a nation is littered with reminders of a history that’s never been resolved, how do we live?
Watch on Netflix. Read the full review.
‘Janet Planet’
The playwright Annie Baker, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her 2013 drama “The Flick,” is known for her use of pauses and silence. “Janet Planet,” her directorial film debut, starring Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler, is a gently funny coming-of-age story that creates the dreamy world of a misfit mother-daughter duo.
From our review:
The genius of “Janet Planet” … is how flawlessly it renders what it’s like to spend the summer being 11 at your home in the woods, when your mother is your whole world and you wish you could just have her to yourself. … It’s so carefully constructed, so loaded with details and emotions and gentle comedy, that it’s impossible to shake once it gets under your skin.
Watch on Max. Read the full review.
‘Ghostlight’
In this tragic drama, whose title comes from the theater tradition of leaving a single light on after all other lights are switched off, a family is roiled by the death of a teenage son, and brought together by a local production of “Romeo and Juliet.” It’s theater as therapy — well-trodden ground for the writer Kelly O’Sullivan, who directed the film with Alex Thompson.
From our review:
It’s a gentle story, full of tender moments, and knowing that the parents and daughter in the main cast are a family in real life increases the warmth. There’s a complexity to their conversations, the way their interactions are never one-note (as parents and teens often are in films), that you can sense has its roots in real life.
Watch on Amazon Prime Video. Read the full review.
‘Mean Girls’
For fans of cliquey drama (and foes of Regina George), “Mean Girls” the movie musical delivers plenty of side eye. The nerds, jocks and villains of the Tina Fey high school universe are back, and theater devotees may recognize the actors in two supporting roles: Jaquel Spivey, a Tony Award nominee for “A Strange Loop,” and Auli’i Cravalho, now starring as Sally Bowles in “Cabaret.” And both the film adaptation and the Broadway musical feature Reneé Rapp as queen bee.
This post was originally published on here
