Rosemary Doyle’s Red Sandcastle Theatre holds a lot for a small venue, seating up to 70, and almost every seat was taken on one of the first snowy nights of winter. It’s an unassuming place – and you definitely don’t want to arrive too early, especially on a cold night, because they really mean it […]
I was a full half hour into opening night of The Life when I heard the first not-so-great vocal performance. There wasn’t another in the 2+ hours that followed. There’s very little good acting to be found in this hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold story but, by god, Call It a Day Productions has found some great voices for […]
Bad Hats Theatre’s all-new musical adaptation of Peter Pan is brimming with wonder and enthusiasm. Co-adapters Fiona Sauder and Reanne Spitzer have updated the tale to cure a few of its sorrier gender issues and speed up the pace. The excellent ensemble cast is vibrant and goofy without neglecting their characters’ emotional realities. And Landon […]
Patricide is not a subject many people wish to tackle, especially not in the confines of the theatre. Thebes Land tells the story of a man, who calls himself T, writing a play about a patricide named Martin. The show encompasses both the interviews between Martin and T and the rehearsals leading up to the […]
*spoiler alerts for those of you who haven’t seen the musical, but I haven’t even seen the movie* To start, I understand that Legally Blonde is a comedy. Much of this article reads like someone deliberately missing the joke to discuss a hot-button issue. But remember: any production, before it reaches opening night, goes through […]
Rural Illinois in 1979. A flagging old man wastes away on a couch watching sports on his tiny TV and sneaking swigs of whiskey when alone. This is Dodge (Ed Harris), the moribund, impotent pillar of the play. His wife Halie (Amy Madigan) calls out from above. She can’t get over her all-American son Ansel’s […]
The busiest non-Fringe theatre month of the year is finally over and we’ve got 30+ more reviews under our belt. As we welcome in the holiday season and start turning our attention to best-of lists and award nominations, here’s the final set of reviews of this year’s massive november crop. Comfort (Red Snow Collective) […]
Putting Voltaire on stage is a difficult task: it is easy to think of the philosopher’s work as too sophisticated for musical adaptation. Bernstein and Wheeler’s version of Candide attempts to make the timeless story more approachable—almost too much so. While it follows the original storyline very well, it sometimes fails to have the same […]