While it has been said that good servants often make good masters, it is a well-known fact that clever slaves with dim-witted owners make great comedy. That is the simple premise behind some of the world’s oldest laughs, including the ones that can be experienced this weekend at… Read More
Steven Dietz’s Count Dracula doesn’t say, “I vant to drink your blood.” He is a minor character, seen far less frequently than he is talked about. Neither is the playwright’s Prince of Darkness a classmate of Buffy the Vampire Slayer who stops off at HBO’s… Read More
Back when the primary season was just beginning, it must have seemed like a great idea to stage the 1946 play “State of the Union” just before the nation was preparing to pick a new president. There’s no way Penobscot Theatre Company’s Producing Artistic Director… Read More
Ten Bucks Theatre is attempting to stave off winter with a trio of one-acts directed by two of its younger members. Simon Ferland, a senior at the University of Maine, directed David Mamet’s “Duck Variations” and “The Attempted Murder of Ms. Peggy Sweetwater,” a spoof… Read More
Every Sam Shepard play is chockfull of testosterone in the same way “Sex and the City” episodes ooze female hormones like lava spewing from an erupting volcano. “True West,” the American playwright’s 1983 story of brotherly love and hate, is the rule, not the exception… Read More
A film is always the same. The images are burned into celluloid or locked onto a computer disc forever unchanged. A play is never the same even when the playwright’s words are recited to the letter. In small ways, a production changes from performance to… Read More
STONINGTON – The highlight of any Maine theatergoer’s summer is the production of one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces at the Stonington Opera House. The company of New York actors takes risks with the Bard few companies in Maine dare try, and pushes the technical limits of the more than… Read More
Lovers of musical theater should hurry down to Northport Music Theater and soak up “Closer Than Ever,” a musical revue about life and love and aging. Not only is the show, directed by Scott R.C. Levy, the producing artistic director of the Penobscot Theatre Company,… Read More
Given the similarities between Maine and Minnesota, it’s a wonder Kevin Kling’s “The Ice Fishing Play” hasn’t become a staple of theater companies in the Pine Tree State. After all, many a Mainer has retreated in the dead of winter to a customized shack on one of the… Read More
What makes William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” a problem play is not the plot, the dialogue or the story structure. It’s the fact that society has changed in the 400-some years since the Bard wrote it. Directors, in various attempts to make the play relevant to modern… Read More
The key to “Twelfth Night” is the pacing. It must start off at a trot, quickly switch to a canter and be moving at a gallop by intermission so that theatergoers barely have time to catch their breaths before they are astride again rushing headlong for the curtain… Read More
Summer, especially summer in Maine, is for laughter. In offering up “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” the New Surry Theatre not only recognizes but also honors this notion in its production that opened Friday and runs weekends through Aug. 16. Read More
STONINGTON – Arlene Hutton’s play “As It Is In Heaven” lovingly brings to life a sliver of history from a Shaker community of the 19th century. That, however, is only what appears on the surface of this onionlike production to be performed tonight at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker… Read More
The Penobscot Theatre Company has not been kind to Tennessee Williams. Most often it has been a poorly cast lead from New York or Boston who has arrived with a preconceived vision for both his character and the show that nobody else shared or understood,… Read More
Penobscot Theatre Company’s latest production ends with a dire warning for the world – “Beware of the plants. They are coming to get you.” “Little Shop of Horrors” isn’t really a “message” show, but it is the most solid production the company, based at the… Read More
Neil Simon wrote one perfect act for “Last of the Red Hot Lovers.” Unfortunately, it’s stuck in the middle of two others that, at least in the Penobscot Theatre Company’s current production, just don’t live up to the faultless hilarity of the one in the middle. Read More
The Penobscot Theatre Company’s invitation to visit Neverland should not be turned down. Its layered and lavish production of J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan” at the Bangor Opera House is a refreshing substitute for “A Christmas Carol.” The show captures all the excitement children experience during… Read More
For theatergoers who just can’t get into the holiday spirit without the Charles Dickens’ classic but may have grown weary of the play, the Wayside Theatre in Dexter has a scrumptious solution – “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol.” This is a one-man tour de force told… Read More
The theater department at the University of Maine is celebrating 100 years of productions at the state’s flagship school of higher learning. How fitting that Sandra Hardy, an associate professor who teaches acting and dramatic literature, chose one of Henrik Ibsen’s more than 100-year-old works to mark the… Read More
Oy vey! Such a family. Meshugeneh, all of them. Except for, maybe, that doorman. He had a head on his shoulders. googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var new_slot_sizes = []; var has_banner = false; for (var i = 0; i… Read More
Sex. Drugs (well, if Claritin counts). Name-dropping. Literature. Philosophy. Marital malaise. Money. And, yes, bathroom humor. It’s all in a play’s work for the cast of Penobscot Theatre Company’s “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife,” an adult comedy that runs through Nov. 4 at the… Read More
BANGOR – Alfred Uhry packed a lot into his 90-minute play “Driving Miss Daisy.” Racism, ageism, sexism and class schisms are all there, but so is the shared humanity that has the potential to bridge all the gaps between the isms. googletag.cmd.push(function () { //… Read More
SOMESVILLE – Agatha Christie wrote a comedy. Who knew the grande dame of mystery writers penned a delightful drawing room play that borders on farce? googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var new_slot_sizes = []; var has_banner = false; for (var… Read More
Northport Music Theater’s latest offering should be seen with a friend. Preferably, your best girlfriend from childhood. The one you cried with when Bambi’s mother died. The one who told you exactly what was anatomically incorrect about Barbie’s boy toy, Ken. The one you spent… Read More
The prospect of sitting through Acadia Repertory Theatre’s new production of the old play “Shirley Valentine” may make you cranky. Another Willy Russell play – the first was “Educating Rita” – about a disenfranchised, working-class British woman? And, worse, a pop-culture piece from the 1980s?… Read More
The Northport Music Theater is the newest performing arts organization in the midcoast area, but the small black-box venue feels very old – in a good way. The building, located about 6 miles south of Belfast on U.S. Route 1, is a refurbished industrial repair shop, and the… Read More
When we first meet Ruby Sunrise, she has run away from home and is alone in her aunt’s dark barn attempting to repair a broken generator. The setting is Indiana in 1927, and she is in a race with science and her own desires. At 17, Ruby has… Read More
Burying a child is perhaps one of the most unnatural occurrences in human life. Parents banish the thought from their conscious minds. Grandparents shiver at the idea. Truly, as a culture, the unthinkable and the unbearable almost always have to do with small children. When we hear about… Read More
The last time “Jesus Christ Superstar” was staged at the Bangor Auditorium, the brash, new rock opera was met with howls of protest from many in the religious community. One local minister even took to the airwaves to block the show from ever coming here. Read More
Being on the road can be boring for actors in a touring show. They play the same roles each night, speak the same lines, wait for the same laughs. So when Peter Meineck, artistic director for Aquila Theatre Company, cast the touring production of “Romeo and Juliet,” he… Read More
“Once Upon a Mattress” isn’t exactly your garden-variety adaptation of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. A domineering drag queen mother, a father under a spell of silence, their wimpy son, a headstrong princess and a lady in waiting who can’t wait to get married (she’s pregnant) drive… Read More
When you first meet Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a feeling of confusion will nudge at you immediately. She will walk through a door, grin and then leave. In that one fleeting moment, before forming any real sense of her personality, you will wonder about her secrets. Two hours later,… Read More
It’s a total anachronism, but Gilbert and Sullivan would love the introduction of cell phones into the fairyland setting of their comic opera “Iolanthe,” which the G&S Society of Hancock County opened last weekend at The Grand in Ellsworth. Initially performed at the Savoy Theatre in 1882, “Iolanthe”… Read More
University theater productions hold a special place in the hearts of hardcore theatergoers. Typically, the stage is pumped with youthful mojo, and the talent tends to be unleashed like a sports event. For the audience, which is also usually rowdy – a nice change from the more subdued… Read More
Only a handful of modern playwrights have produced comedies that return again and again to regional stages. Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” Michael Frayn’s “Noises Off” (now at Portland Stage Company) and anything by Neil Simon all qualify. Theater programmers know audiences flock to these shows. Read More
For many of us, winter is no laughing matter. That’s why Ten Bucks Theatre Company has made an annual tradition out of programming a comedy in the dead of the coldest days of the season. Turns out, Ten Bucks has a particular skill for getting past our parkas… Read More
In the nearly 40 years that have passed since composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice collaborated on “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” I have managed to avoid every production. Community, amateur, professional, American, English or South African – I missed them all. And that’s a… Read More
Christmas is a holiday of traditions. The tree, the gifts, eggnog, red and green, silver and gold. It’s the one time of year when happy Christmas-going crowds want to indulge their memories in yesteryear, days of lore, the past. So it’s safe to say that theatergoers, especially those… Read More
It’s been an incredibly dry year for this court reporter. Last year, I covered half a dozen trials, including a murder trial with a dismembered corpse, a complex environmental dispute over who will pay to clean up pollution in the Penobscot River and the trial… Read More
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who cry when they read Mitch Albom’s mega-hit book “Tuesdays with Morrie,” and those who don’t. I’m in the latter group. In fact, I found the book bland, sentimental and flatly written. Kind of like “The Bridges of… Read More
If any American musical underlines the idea that life is never what you planned, it’s “Falsettos,” which Penobscot Theatre Company is performing through Oct. 1 at the Bangor Opera House. At the opening, Marvin has left his wife, Trina, and 12-year-old son, Jason, to take… Read More
Ten Bucks Theatre production of “Macbeth,” running through July 22 in the woodsy outdoor arena at Indian Trail Park in Brewer, reminds me of Julia Roberts. When she did her first Broadway show this year, everyone knew she brought a big dose of star power and beauty to… Read More
Buy it: Scam artists and love in the library ’20s carpetbagging classic ‘The Music Man’ on UMM stage
In the 1950s, when Meredith Willson wrote “The Music Man,” playing through July 8 at the University of Maine at Machias, he could not have predicted just how relevant his small-town tale of carpetbaggery would be in the 21st century business world. Consider the plot: A salesman comes… Read More
The story of the revered musical “Cats” is a simple one: Members of a particular tribe, the Jellicle Cats, present their candidates deserving of another life, with one chosen in the end. Sunday night’s presentation of the musical by its national touring company at the… Read More
Playwright John Cariani is a hugger. If you made a documentary about him, it could run for an hour by asking just one question to each interviewee: How did Cariani greet you? The answers might sound like this: “A hug.” “He hugged me.” “With a hug.”… Read More
If you think your life is boring, meet the residents of Serebriakov Farm. They take walks. They take naps. They drink large quantities of vodka. They have nothing to do, no real desire to do it and wouldn’t know how even if they did have some miraculous wave… Read More
Few historical figures today are as popular – from the White House to the race-track to the movie screen – as Jesus Christ. So it was only a matter of time before someone revived the 1971 rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar,” which opened last week and runs through… Read More
Although it is a part of our national dialogue, most of us do not find ourselves talking about racism every day in Maine. Maybe that’s because the state is predominantly white. Maybe it’s because we consider ourselves progressive, liberal, enlightened. We’re not racists, we may say, but how… Read More
Geoffrey Shovelton has been singing the words of W.S. Gilbert and music of Arthur Sullivan for 40 years. That’s 10 years longer than the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Hancock County, of which he is artistic director, has been presenting G&S shows Down East. That makes for a… Read More
Think ghosts and you probably conjure images from Halloween. But the most enchanting ghosts of the year come at Christmas in the form of Charles Dickens’ classic story “A Christmas Carol.” The trio of Past, Present and Future is a frightening delight of the holiday season… Read More
The sellout crowd at the Maine Center for the Arts was exposed to a new kind of musical Sunday night. The NETworks Presentations production of “The Full Monty” came to town and stripped musical comedy down to its essentials – song, dance and humor, with… Read More
With a cast of hip, energetic performers and an everything-exposed “backstage” set at the Bangor Opera House, director John Clancy not only presents “The Laramie Project,” he ignites it. The show, which runs through Nov. 13, is set in Laramie, Wyo., in the days and year after the… Read More
You’ve just settled into your seat. The lights haven’t even gone down, and here’s some chatty fellow with a tray of pastries welcoming you to the theater. He’s not doing this because he loves you. He wants your money – and not for the petits fours. He and… Read More
“Beauty and the Beast,” the locally produced musical running through Nov. 6 at The Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth, has such a high once-upon-a-time factor that, even if you grow weary of the score and the cartoonish characters, you have to stay until the end because of the magic… Read More
If you weren’t in Paris in 1904, then you missed one of the richest artistic and cultural moments of the 20th century. Chances are, you did miss it. I did, by more than 50 years. But the Penobscot Theatre Company brings back the turn-of-the-century spirit with “Picasso at… Read More
Conductors seeking fame and fortune do not attend the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors and Orchestra Musicians in Hancock. Rather than endure the rocky Maine coast, frigid Atlantic and unpredictable summer weather, those future maestros settle themselves in the more comfortable rolling hills of the Berkshires at a… Read More
For moments, days and weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many Americans sat helplessly and watched the tragedy unfold on TV. Stomachs were churning, hands wringing and hearts breaking. What could regular citizens – so far away, so unprepared and unskilled for emergencies – do to… Read More
When it comes to proving theories, we tend to think of math or science. But in David Auburn’s drama “Proof,” the heart steps up to validate its own quirky math in which one plus one may not equal two. The heart of this story belongs to Catherine, a… Read More
Maybe you’ve had this experience. The curtain goes up on a Bangor Community Theatre musical, and a dance step is missed here, a line or entrance is missed there, but the singers blow the roof off the house. I’ve been witnessing this phenomenon for more… Read More
Mark Torres’ parting theatrical gift after more than a decade at the helm of the Penobscot Theatre Company is a tried and true play about theater life that last week threw the audience into fits of opening night laughter. Torres cast “Noises Off” with a mix of well-known… Read More
Aquila Theatre Company has become standard fare each season at the Maine Center for the Arts. Its touring productions of literary classics such as “Oedipus Rex,” “The Odyssey,” “Julius Caesar,” and “The Comedy of Errors” have won the group a local following. The works are highly stylized, tightly… Read More
In book form, Eugene O’Neill’s play “Long Day’s Journey into Night” has the feel of a novel. Unlike Shakespeare, who almost never offers stage or extended character notes, O’Neill gives more than a dozen paragraphs of introductory material before the opening scene of Act I – the titles… Read More
People who pass through the village of Anatevka don’t even know they’ve been there. It’s a “blink-and-you-miss-it” kind of place. But Anatevka was the center of the universe on Saturday at the Maine Center for the Arts, where musical lovers brought their children, their memories and their applause… Read More
ORONO – Poor Gulliver. His tales were so tall (literally), and his travels so wild and wondrous that nobody wanted to believe him. But Lilliput’s gentle giant got his due when National Black Light Theatre Prague came to town Thursday night for a performance at… Read More
Molly, Debra and Nicky have been holding the same monthly dinner party with their husbands for nearly 20 years. After eating, they go to the kitchen to clean up, and the guys retreat to the living room to practice their putting. It’s a little suburban, a little Stepford. Read More
Ten Bucks Theatre Company likes to laugh in the winter. “We try to do an outrageous comedy in January because we think it’s unfair to ask an audience to come out in the cold to see something depressing,” said Julie Arnold Lisnet, a founding member of the Brewer-based… Read More
If you think the idea of a series spinoff is a product of the TV generation, think again. Shakespeare got there first with “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” reportedly written on a commission from Queen Elizabeth I, who wanted to see the return of the… Read More
For more than 10 years, Mark Torres has been rendering versions of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” The ghost of Christmas Past has almost always been a woman or a child dressed in flowing white gowns. Christmas Present has been a portly man with a bellowing laugh and… Read More
How can a play written in 1953 about the hysteria of McCarthyism still be cogent today? After seeing Penobscot Theatre Company’s production of “The Crucible,” you might be tempted to say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Arthur Miller crafted… Read More
Anyone who says that Stephen Sondheim’s musicals are not hummable should plan to see “Into the Woods,” his farcical fairy tale playing at The Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth through Oct. 31. It’s true that you may not be able to hit the highest or lowest notes in this… Read More
Some plays can get away with merely good actors. Other plays absolutely require great actors, or they simply fall flat. Hamlet can’t be weak. Blanche Dubois must have pith. “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,” by Paul Zindel, falls into the latter category. The Pulitzer Prize-winning… Read More
On a blustery, cold fall night, hearing the signature song “Summertime” ringing through the Maine Center for the Arts had a bittersweet effect. Bittersweet could also describe the experience of watching the Living Arts touring version of “Porgy and Bess.” While the production was well… Read More
The musical, a theatrical genre associated with Broadway, has in recent years stretched to accommodate a wide range of themes besides boy meets girl. Today, witches, Bombay dancers, vampires, puppets and the city of Brooklyn are all subjects of musicals in New York City. And they are immensely… Read More
One of the most intriguing questions about theater is: What makes it work? A poetic script? Talented actors? Dynamic directing? Intriguing sets, lights, costumes, background music? Or the audience’s willingness to believe? It was hard to know which of these factors was more at work… Read More
Is there any playwright more beloved by summer stock companies and vacationing audiences than Agatha Christie? Murderers, suspects, lawyers, aristocrats and secret-holders – many with British accents – are the very stuff of warm-weather entertainment. Her plays have become the signature August offering and specialty at Acadia Repertory… Read More
At the opening of the two-woman play “Grace and Glorie,” Grace Stiles, a 90-year-old cancer patient, has been sent home from the hospital to die at her family’s farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She is bedridden, and her only relative, a grandson, is inattentive. Grace… Read More
“Speed-the-Plow,” the title of David Mamet’s 90-minute comedy about fast moves in the Hollywood film biz, refers to an old saying that means “good luck.” By the end of the play, which opened last night and runs through Sunday at the Opera House in Bangor, the expression is… Read More
George Bernard Shaw wrote more than 50 plays, and, like Shakespeare who wrote 38, he paid particular attention to his woman characters. Between the two of them, women gained some of the most intriguing and provocative roles written for stage. Shaw, in particular, was clearheaded… Read More
“Stones in His Pockets” is a two-man, 15-character sleight-of-hand tragicomedy about an American film crew storming a small Irish village in County Kerry. Written by Belfast playwright Marie (pronounced MAH-ree) Jones, the show was a surprise hit in London in 1999 and again on Broadway in 2001. It… Read More
He’s back. That is the most celebratory part of last weekend’s opening performances of “The Taming of the Shrew” staged by Ten Bucks Theatre Company at Indian Trail Park in Brewer. Shakespeare, homegrown and more or less on the river again, is back in our midst. We had… Read More
Lanie Robertson’s “Alfred Stieglitz Loves O’Keeffe,” running through July 11 at Acadia Repertory Theatre in Somesville, is a biomemory drama about two of the 20th century’s most documented artists. Photographer, editor and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) changed the direction of American art with his bold exhibitions and… Read More
“Keely and Du,” Jane Martin’s 1993 drama about personal choice and religious fervor, tells a relentlessly argumentative story. The two sides are represented by Keely, a working-class woman who gets pregnant after her former husband rapes her, and Du, a nurse whose biblical beliefs cause her to behave… Read More
BELFAST – Paula Vogel couldn’t take the time for a European trip with her brother Carl in the late 1980s. Nearly two years later, he died from AIDS. At the time of his invitation, she had no idea he was sick. We all know what… Read More
BELFAST – It was the language of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass” that captured the imaginations and tickled the funny bones of children and adults last weekend at the Belfast Maskers’ waterfront theater. Director Aynne Ames cast of more… Read More
If a housebound woman invites a vigorous young actor to her home for an acting lesson, you have to think something is amiss when she pulls out not one, but two guns as props. For some, that would be the first step toward the closest exit. But for… Read More
The cast of “Blue Orphan” slipped onstage and into their cocoons. Encased in their gauze houses, they told tales of their previous manifestations and the rare blue Brazilian butterflies they longed to emulate. They waited for the cataclysmic event that would set off that transformation some of them… Read More
Mark Torres, producing artistic director at Penobscot Theatre, has had his eye on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Art” for several years. In 2000, he tried to mount the show but could not get the rights. Now he – and regional theaters all over the country – have access… Read More
The Belfast Maskers has kicked off its season with a rollicking medley of just about every play and sonnet the Bard ever put down on paper in “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged).” The histories are recounted in a Big Ten bowl game, Othello… Read More
Penobscot Theatre Company bites off a big piece of American theatrical history with its staging of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” While director Mark Torres and his cast manage to chew through the flesh and nibble at the bone of Edward Albee’s three-act masterpiece, they do not get… Read More
Guys and Dolls” is one of those big American musicals that keeps coming back. It opened on Broadway in 1950 and won five Tony Awards. It went to London a few years later, transformed into a film in 1955 and then began the endurance test of revivals. In… Read More
Shows close every day on Broadway. But one musical had nine lives. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats,” based on “Old googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var new_slot_sizes = []; var has_banner = false; for (var i = 0; i < slot_sizes.length;… Read More
Dysfunctional doesn’t begin to describe the family at the center of “Escape from Happiness” and calling Canadian playwright George F. Walker’s play a dark comedy is like labeling Stephen King’s work “a little bit gothic.” As presented by the University of Maine’s School of Performing… Read More
Helen Keller was deaf, blind and mute, but during her lifetime she was one of the most articulate women alive. Mark Twain compared her in importance to Napoleon, Homer and Shakespeare. Winston Churchill called her the “greatest woman of our age.” Her autobiography, “The Story of My Life,”… Read More
“Terra Nova,” Ted Tally’s play about the early 20th-century race between five Englishmen and five Norwegians to reach the South Pole, eventually comes down to this: “Would you like to kill your mates or kill yourself?” In the course of this brutal, ice-bound drama, performed… Read More
Professor Harold Hill brought his 76 trombones to the Maine Center for the Arts on Sunday for a rousing performance of “The Music Man.” Meredith Wilson’s classic musical about the traveling con man who takes an Iowa town by storm and loses his heart to… Read More
“The Gardens of Frau Hess” is a lemon of a play. No matter how the Belfast Maskers shine and polish it with impressive performances or a lovely set and fine technical work, under the hood, it needs a major overhaul before it’s ever going to… Read More
Dear Penobscot Theatre: We’ve known each other for many years, through good times and bad. So I feel emboldened to write this letter to you after last week’s premiere of A.R. Gurney’s two-person romantic drama “Love Letters” at the Opera House. Make no mistake; this… Read More
ORONO – Intrigue. Deception. Lust. Racism. Jealousy. Abuse. Murder. When the Aquila Theatre Company brought its production of “Othello” to the Maine Center for the Arts Wednesday night as part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Shakespeare in American Communities program, it had all… Read More
Acadia Repertory Theatre’s new production of “Relatively Speaking,” Alan Ayckbourn’s mistaken-identity comedy now playing through Aug. 10 at the Masonic Hall in Somesville, is a lesson in first impressions. Usually you can trust them. Not this time. The first scene is a slow-burning and rigid… Read More
The Gibbs girls never wandered far from home. Even in their golden years, they live in each other’s pockets. Except, of course, for Esther. She moved practically across town when she married David, the college professor too good for the rest of the Gibbses. Ida,… Read More