Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 novella The Birds put a petrified chill to an atmosphere that was enhanced by Hitchcock’s film adaptation 11 years later. Conor McPherson’s 2009 stage adaptation concentrates less on the plot-driven grisliness of the novella …Read more

The man with whom I share my Lyft ride on the way to Ford’s Theatre tells me and the driver about a former high school classmate he was very fond of, whom he lost contact with years before. One day he saw one of his Facebook friend’s pictures at the …Read more

Playwright J. B. Heaps does theater the old-fashioned way: from the heart. He takes a subject that inspires him, builds a world for it and then shares it with others. From the inception of his idea to the moment he is greeting his audience at the the …Read more

Whenever there’s a group of six or more female characters onstage, they’re either making Guido Contini’s life impossible, or trying to be good wives for their barn-raising, lumberjack husbands, which is why Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, with its all-fe …Read more

The lead characters in Leslye Headland’s Bachelorette are what millennials would refer to as “hot messes”, they are young, single women trapped in the limbo between responsibility and hedonism. Headland’s gift is that she doesn’t push them into choos …Read more

What is the mechanism? This is the question that To-By-For’s Mechanics of Love asks, taking a “How Stuff Works” approach to understanding everything from cars to love. Glen (Sathya Sridharan) lives with a condition that causes him to forget people. W …Read more

The main characters in The Jamb are addicted to something, for man-child Tuffer (Nic Grelli), it’s drugs, alcohol and sex-infused binges that do the trick, for his best friend Roderick (J. Stephen Brantley) it’s trying to fix Tuffer. When we first me …Read more

They’re furry, they can sing, and they’re from outer space. Oh, and they’re bears. These are no ordinary bears, though. They have power issues, unrequited love, and a really annoying talking computer with an attitude problem. 59E59 Theaters is the ho …Read more

Call me old-fashioned, but when it comes to Shakespeare I’m a bit of a purist. I think the texts hold their own just fine, thank you, without the frills and over-the-top gimmicks many modern directors decide to pile on. When I saw that a theater comp …Read more

Ellen McLaughlin’s adaptation of The Trojan Women brings Euripides to a modern audience on The Flea’s stage. The play retains the artfully reflective structure of ancient Greek oration while using contemporary language to translate its antique themes …Read more