Review: "When New Ground goes old school with ‘The Good Peaches’"

Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Cleveland Jewish News has published a review of The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Play House's recent world-premiere collaboration, The Good Peaches:

Part of this year’s New Ground Festival, which is CPH’s annual showcase of new theatrical works, is a gorgeous, limited run collaboration with the world-class Cleveland Orchestra called “The Good Peaches.”

The commissioned piece, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes (“Water by the Spoonful,” “In the Heights”), tells a simple folktale of a young girl who is sent by her seamstress mother to deliver a very special wedding dress to the Queen. The girl gets lost in an epic storm along the way and survives on the peaches she plucks out of the water over flooded orchards.

Interwoven with Hudes’ poetic storytelling are stirring excerpts from “Sea Interludes” and “Shaker Loops” by classical music and opera composers Benjamin Britten and John Adams, respectively, as well as modern dance choreographed by GroundWorks’ David Shimotakahara.

Adeptly directed by CPH’s Laura Kepley and The Cleveland Orchestra’s Brett Mitchell, this is the third such collaboration between these two powerhouse institutions....

Although the movements dominated by words and those dominated by music often fought each other for supremacy, “The Good Peaches” was an absolutely beautiful production.

To read the complete review, please click here.