From time to time, to quote my favorite song from Dear Evan Hansen, “words fail.” At the moment, words fail as I search for a way to describe (and adequately praise) a show whose gentle beauty and emotional force defy description, and which, ironical …Read more
If you’re a Shakespeare aficionado who wants to laugh out loud for two hours straight and doesn’t mind a touch of bawdy humor, then Jane Anger is for you. The Jennifer Campos Production, currently playing at the New Ohio Theatre, reimagines what migh …Read more
In my experience, any production that includes Steve Earle on its creative team is sure to have at least a few good things going for it. In the case of Coal Country, Audible Theater’s new limited engagement of The Public Theater production at Cherry …Read more
In 1927, my great-great grandfather wrote a letter home from Germany. With admirable wit and evident pleasure, Nathan Low writes about visiting his father’s cousins in Ludwigshafen. Though, knowing nothing about this other family, he initially worrie …Read more
Anyone who’s a fan of the Oxford comma has my approval, but even if Faith Salie hadn’t mentioned this in her delightful show Approval Junkie, based on her memoir of the same name, her whip-smart jokes, engaging presence, and achingly beautiful turn o …Read more
For 13-year-old Trevor (Holden William Hagelberger), the annual Lakeview Junior High talent show isn’t just a talent show: it’s a launch pad for his showbiz career. When his one-man production of Fame fails to get in, he hits on a new scheme: choreog …Read more
If you haven’t heard of Solea Pfeiffer, you will soon. With powerhouse vocals, a virtuosic range, and a natural stage rapport, she has all the ingredients for stardom. And did I mention she’s gorgeous? Ahead of starring in the upcoming Tyler Perry fi …Read more
He did warn us. When his family asks him for a ghost story, Arthur Kipps declines, on the grounds that the story he has to tell is not the type of entertaining thriller they want to hear. It’s dark, upsetting, evil. And yet, determined to finally mov …Read more
“This play is hard to watch as a socialist.” Said the young man sitting next to me at Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band: a play about the Khmer Rouge regime. That performance seems ages ago now; it was the last I saw before the theatre shutdown. But I …Read more
“Do you remember those things we used to go to? They were in expensive a** buildings? What were they called?” Ngozi Anyanwu’s new play The Last of the Love Letters, directed by Patricia McGregor at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater, is a …Read more