Northwestern Press

“Disney Beauty And The Beast: The Broadway Musical” is the Disney version of the beloved fairytale about the bookish Belle who looks beyond the cover of the Beast to discover a Prince of a person inside.

The Muhlenberg Summer Music Theatre (MSMT) version is satisfying, fun and entertaining for the whole family. It’s really the kind of musical you can, and should, take your child, grandchild or a young family relative to see.

“Ragtime” is a sprawling musical that defies description. By turns, it’s three musicals in one, with interlocking storylines that mix historical figures with fictional characters.

It’s big. It’s brash. It’s bold.

“Ragtime” is also profoundly relevant to contemporary societal problems in the United States.

“RBG” is one of the most memorable documentary feature films of 2018 so far.

It deserves to be in the early running for the short-list of feature documentary film Academy Award nominees.

“RBG” is the initials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, United States Supreme Court Justice, 84. who exercises with a fitness trainer.

“Solo: A Star Wars Story” takes us back to the halcyon days of Hollywood science-fiction film-making: You know, the days when characters, stories and plot development meant something.

“Solo” tells the story of the young Han Solo (played with astonishing alacrity by handsome and fresh-faced Alden Ehrenreich) and how he met his compatriots Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) and Lando Calrissian (the wonderful and compelling Donald Glover of Childish Gambino music video fame).

House sales in the Lehigh Valley declined for a third-straight month, this time in double-digits for April, putting house sales for the year-to-date in negative territory.

Closed sales were down 10.6 percent with 591 houses sold in April, compared to 661 houses sold in April 2017, according to the Greater Lehigh Valley Realtors (GLVR) April report.

Closed sales for 2018 are down 3.2 percent, with 2,118 houses sold, down from 2,189 houses sold year-to-date or 2017.

Whether playwrights will be writing musicals about the internet and social media only time time will tell.

The media, and newspapers, in particular, have long been the subject of stage dramas and movies, going back at least to “The Front Page” (1931) and up to and including “The Social Network “ (2010) and “The Post” (2017).

Usually, the protagonist is an overly-enthusiastic reporter, hard-driving editor, or wise-cracking femme fatale. You don’t often find a musical entirely about singing and dancing reporters, say, a Bernstein and Woodward, or an editor, say, a Ben Bradlee.

The Crowded Kitchen Players (CKP), noted for antic productions of orginal comedies, is presenting the world premiere of a serious drama, “A Softening Of Her Eyes,” written and directed by CKP co-founder Ara Barlieb.

The two-act play, featuring many of the CKP stable of players, continues at 8 p.m. June 15, 16 and 2 p.m. June 17 on the main stage of the Charles A. Brown IceHouse, Bethlehem.

The “Luminosity” Gala, capstone of fund-raisers in the Lehigh Valley, heralds the start of The Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival.

An estimated 500 attended the annual gala June 2 at University Center, DeSales University, Center Valley. The theme of the gala was the red rose, a reference to the 2018 PSF season play, William Shakespeare’s “King Richard II,” July 19-Aug. 5, in repertoire with “Shakespeare in Love,” July 11-Aug. 5, Labuda Center for the Performing Arts, DeSales University.

It’s a benchmark year for the SouthSide Film Festival.

You might say, the Lehigh Valley’s oldest film festival that unreels June 12-16 on the south side of Bethlehem is documenting its 15th annual year.

“We are pretty documentary-heavy this year,” says SouthSide Film Festival Director Glenn Koehler, adding, “We ended up with a lot of really good feature-length documentaries this year.”

Movie Review: Back to the ‘Star Wars’

“Solo: A Star Wars Story” takes us back to the halcyon days of Hollywood science-fiction film-making: You know, the days when characters, stories and plot development meant something.

“Solo” tells the story of the young Han Solo (played with astonishing alacrity by handsome and fresh-faced Alden Ehrenreich) and how he met his compatriots Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) and Lando Calrissian (the wonderful and compelling Donald Glover of Childish Gambino music video fame).