The Penobscot Theatre Company is in no danger of bringing down its final curtain. In fact, the theater’s future is looking brighter every day, Producing Artistic Director Marc Torres told the opening night audience last week at PTC’s summer production of “The Fantasticks” in the Bangor Opera House. Read More
Mary offers to buy her sister something from the L.L. Bean catalog, but Lili only wants a letter. Such is the nature of relationships in Claire Chafee’s award-winning play “Why We Have a Body.” The four women characters keep offering each other unwanted, unnecessary things… Read More
Bar Harbor Theatre is offering theatergoers a July valentine with a production of “Talley’s Folly” that is sweet without turning saccharine, droll without sinking to cynicism and sensitive without being maudlin. Under the direction of Patricia Riggin, a former member of the theater department at… Read More
The year is 1946 and Harry Brock is in Washington, D.C., to buy himself a senator. He also intends to expand his junk business and collect all the metal strewn across Europe in the just-ended war. On his arm is Billie Dawn, a blond bombshell… Read More
When you think mathematician, you may picture geeky guys with broken eyeglass frames and mismatched clothes. Not so if you’re talking about the characters in David Auburn’s math-heavy drama “Proof,” now at Acadia Repertory Theatre in Somesville. First of all, the central mathematician in the… Read More
When it comes to a Sam Shepard script, you can count on loneliness, misery, menace, family dysfunction, dark humor, perhaps some violence and, for sure, a whole lot of guyness. It’s great stuff. But what I was really missing in the new Ten Bucks Theater… Read More
“Dinner with Friends,” presented by the Belfast Maskers through May 25, is a play about marriage. It’s not about how great marriage is, or how bad marriage is. Donald Margulies’ 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama is about how messy marriage is: good, bad or indifferent – all of which… Read More
One of the best lines in “I Hate Hamlet,” the ditsy comedy running through Sunday at Penobscot Theatre, comes from a surly L.A. producer who sums up the works of Shakespeare as “algebra onstage.” After all, who hasn’t felt at one time or another that the Bard requires… Read More
For a Victorian thriller, Patrick Hamilton’s “Angel Street” offers little mystery to audiences. The plot and villain are revealed almost immediately. The murder takes place 15 years earlier. The missing rubies in the story turn up handily. There’s just no whodunit in this ornate parlor. Read More
ELLSWORTH – He did it in 1994. Then again in 2002. And now, he’s back this spring in the third local production in fewer than 10 years of George Bernard Shaw’s story about a high-strung professor who shapes a flower girl from the street into a lady fit… Read More
ORONO – Just before leaving for Saturday’s performance of “Forbidden Broadway” at the Maine Center for the Arts, a friend who had seen the show in New York City, where it began 20 years ago, asked if a sendup of Broadway musicals could possibly be interesting to a… Read More
There’s a telling line at the opening of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 comedy “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Algernon Montcrieff, a bachelor whose white lies preserve his ability to lead a double life, is playing music. He tells his manservant: “I don’t play accurately – anyone can play accurately… Read More
ORONO – Eldritch is a dying Midwestern town. Most of the inhabitants have been forced to desert it to find jobs and fulfillment. Both are sorely lacking in Eldritch, which derives its name from a Scottish word meaning unnatural, hideous or weird. Yet, what happens… Read More
There’s a new alien in Belfast. Not the kind who sneaks in to buy American gas. This one’s curious, cuddly, gregarious and green. He’s the star of “Resident Alien,” a comic fable that kicks off the Belfast Maskers’ 2003 season. Written by Stuart Spencer, the… Read More
Patience only had to be called upon a few times by the audience attending a production of an operetta with the same name at The Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth Saturday. “Patience,” performed by the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Hancock County, is a love story… Read More
If you ask Dame Edna, the Aussie megastar of Broadway and queen of TV cameos, how she got to be so famous, she will tell you that it’s all a great big accident. Fame fell to her, and she grabbed hold of it with mauve-tinted muscle. A few… Read More
You know the story about Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, the mismatched roommates who share an apartment in New York after their wives kick them out. One is neat. One is messy. They squabble and pout. And, eventually, it’s just like being married all over again. Read More
OK. So I hadn’t been feeling particularly “Christmasy” when I picked up a pair of tickets for the opening night of “A Christmas Carol” at the Bangor Opera House. My outlook had not improved by the time Wednesday evening rolled around. googletag.cmd.push(function () { //… Read More
Anne Frank has been dead almost 60 years, yet the diary she kept during the months she lived in hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam continues to engage and enlighten millions of new readers. Over the years, “Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl” has been published in… Read More
In these oh-so-lean days at the University of Maine department of theater, it takes a war-horse like Sandra Hardy to charge ahead and come up with enough tenacious energy to stage a blockbuster musical. With “The Rocky Horror Show,” which plays through next weekend at Hauck Auditorium, Hardy… Read More
When the leaves change color and a seasonal chill slips into the air, is it nutty to say that graveyards come into their own? Not if you’re Edgar Lee Masters, who wrote 244 short poems based on the gravestones near his home in central Illinois. Serialized in the… Read More
Among the many emotional scenes in the music-world drama “Side Man,” presented through Oct. 27 by the Belfast Maskers, is of three musicians hovering around a cassette player listening to a killer trumpet solo. Their eyes squint, their heads nod, they soulfully snap their fingers. Read More
Ten Buck Theatre is giving audiences a lesson in the history of drama in its latest offering at the Brewer Middle School. The nearly 2-year-old company, founded by some of Greater Bangor’s best actors, is presenting a tandem of one-acts written by the first and last playwrights of… Read More
In the first scene of “Jack and Jill: A Modern Romance,” a man sees a woman reading Sylvia Plath in a bookstore and approaches her. “I, Jack, would like to meet you, female person, for some nonthreatening relating.” To which the woman (Jill) responds: “I am, I think,… Read More
Max, a vaudevillian comic, thinks he’s a funny guy. But his routine is falling short of keeping the audience in stitches. When he sees Maxie, a dancer, he sees the chance to not only develop a new show but to fall in love. Max and Maxie do the… Read More
In Paul Zindel’s 1971 family drama, “And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little,” Anna Reardon, who teaches science, is off her rocker. She may also have molested one of her male students. Her sister Ceil is superintendent of schools and has strong recommendations – and official paperwork – for… Read More
MONMOUTH – The Shakespearean Theater of Maine started down a treacherous road last season when it condensed “Henry IV” Parts I and II into one mangled production. A midcourse correction was desperately needed before the Theater at Monmouth launched “Henry V.” Alas, director Bill Van… Read More
The worst you can say about the Opera House Arts production of “Twelfth Night,” which is playing through next weekend at the Stonington Opera House, is that it is occasionally annoyingly cartoonish and unpleasantly loud. The best is that the show has a vision that is fresh, fun… Read More
“Doors and sardines,” director Lloyd Dallas tells the cast of “Nothing On,” the sex farce at the center of the play-within-a-play “Noises Off.” “That’s what it’s about. That’s farce, that’s theater, that’s life.” And that’s wet-your-pants funny in the hands of the New Surry Theatre… Read More
Watching “Talley’s Folly” at the Theater at Monmouth is like eavesdropping on a seduction. Granted, the audience is invited to watch, but the actors in this two-character play create such an intimate atmosphere that seeing the production is tantamount to invading their privacy. Lanford Wilson… Read More
Philip King’s farce “See How They Run,” which opened this week at Acadia Repertory Theatre in Somesville, draws its title from a singsong children’s rhyme. But the script is more than just a treadmill of laugh lines. It’s fairly meaningless – that is, “lite” – but it’s also… Read More
Last week, under the threat of a rainstorm, the Maine Shakespeare Festival opened with “Richard III,” about the infamous misshapen tyrant and his march across a killing field to claim the crown. During the course of the three-hour bloodbath (most of which, thankfully, takes place offstage), the sky… Read More
L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” has delighted young female readers since her series about the life of an orphan girl on Prince Edward Island first appeared in 1908. Penobscot Theatre Company turned to the P.E.I. native’s work for its summer children’s show. The production,… Read More
With Ken Stack’s production of “Pygmalion,” Acadia Repertory Theatre steps gingerly into classic territory. It’s not just that the story of the pedagogue Henry Higgins and the flower girl Eliza Doolittle is loosely based on Greek legend, or that it is, perhaps, George Bernard Shaw’s most famous stage… Read More
Theatergoers aren’t just an audience in the Belfast Maskers’ latest offering. They are potential backers for a musical extravaganza about the history of the world, budgeted at $83.5 million, with a cast of 318 actors, 6,428 costumes, 1,400 wigs and 302 prosthetic devices. The musical… Read More
‘Woman in Black’ filled with classic thriller spirit Acadia Repertory Theatre takes on British drama
“The Woman in Black,” which opened this week at Acadia Repertory Theatre in Somesville, has all the classic elements of an it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night chiller. There’s a haunted house, a swallowing marsh, a wrathful mother, a town secret, creepy locals and lots of zipped-up English accents. You might say it’s… Read More
If some people around you laugh a little too raucously at Bar Harbor Theatre’s production of “Art,” you can assume that they are the artists, actors and painters in the audience. You can further guess that they recognize something of themselves in the very insider language that Yasmina… Read More
BREWER – Sister Mary Ignatius has an answer for everything. She tends to skip over why God allows evil in the world, but the nun can explain everything else in Ten Bucks Theatre Company’s production of the dark comedy “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You.”… Read More
ELLSWORTH – The Grand Auditorium’s production of the lush musical “The Scarlet Pimpernel” dispels all doubts that amateur performers can conquer complex material often left to professional companies. The stars and supporting cast are the area’s best singers and actors, resulting in one of the most well-rounded and… Read More
BANGOR – The best-known plays often are the hardest to do – especially if they’ve been preserved on film and turned into a hit television series. Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” is one of those plays. The story of two friends recovering from divorce who… Read More
When “Fuddy Meers,” now at Winterport Open Stage, begins with the theme song to “Sesame Street,” it’s a sure sign you’re not in Kansas anymore. You’re in the crazy, mixed-up fun house of David Lindsay-Abaire’s audacious comedy about a wacky family with a few secrets stuffed under the… Read More
The plot of “Betrayal,” now running at Penobscot Theatre, is simple enough. Robert and Jerry are best friends. Robert and Emma are married. Jerry and Emma are lovers. The question of who is the betrayer and who is the betrayee are not, however, so simple to answer. This… Read More
Seventeenth century theatrical conventions can be tough on 21st century audiences used to fast-moving action films with undefined characters and underdeveloped plots. Tartuffe does not appear in the 400-year-old play that bears his name until after intermission – one full hour into the show. The… Read More
It was an evening of new beginnings at the premiere of Bangor Community Theatre’s musical “Jacob’s Folly” on Friday at the Maine Center for the Arts. Written by Machias author and lyricist John Dennis with music composed by John Haskell, the musical explores the consequences… Read More
Before he restored respectability to politics in the hit television series “The West Wing,” Aaron Sorkin wrote a play. He sold the movie rights to “A Few Good Men” before the play opened on Broadway to mixed reviews in 1989. The 1992 film, however, was the first in… Read More
Philip King’s British farce “See How They Run” is about as inane as a script gets. There’s a vicar, a vicar’s wife, a gossipy church lady, an American soldier, an escaped Russian spy, and a maid given to chicanery. In the wrong hands, this show could be an… Read More
Troika Entertainment’s touring production of “Annie Get Your Gun” hit most of the targets it was shooting for Friday night at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono. The exuberant cast kept the sold-out audience at Hutchins Concert Hall enraptured through much of the… Read More
You would think after playing the role of Ebenezer Scrooge 19 times, Ken Stack would show signs of tedium. You might even think that those of us who have seen him do many of those performances could find him tedious in the role. But Stack proves himself an… Read More
When Michael Frayn wrote “Noises Off,” his guiding question surely must have been: How can I make theatergoers laugh long and laugh hard? The answer is the play itself, which is one of the uncontested comedy stage hits of the late 20th century. The University of Maine School… Read More
A new twist on an age-old holiday story was unveiled Saturday night at the Maine Center for the Arts. It just wasn’t different enough. The New Stage Originals presentation of “Scrooge the Musical,” which was also staged Sunday, is, as the title suggests, a musical… Read More
Lettice Douffet, a tour guide at Fustian House in Wiltshire, England, likes to tell stories. Big stories. Tall stories. She can take a small detail – about a historical house whose owner tripped on a step – and turn it into a romantic saga about a woman in… Read More
‘Tis the time of year – right between Thanksgiving and the December holidays – to remember one of the most resounding lines in Neil Simon’s play “Lost in Yonkers.” Uncle Louie, a 1940s gangster who makes an unexpected visit to his mother’s home in Yonkers, turns to his… Read More
You’ve got to love Broadway staple “My Fair Lady,” and patrons at the university’s Maine Center for the Arts in Orono certainly did Friday evening. The audience rose to its feet as Henry Higgins and his protege Eliza Doolittle, put their heads together at the… Read More
Writers and actors – perhaps more than any other artists – have fundamental commonalities. Both interlope. Both steal. Both look to their immediate surroundings for the character, the gesture, the voice that will make a story soar. Each has been known to plow ahead without much regard to… Read More
“A Chorus Line,” which opened in Ellsworth last Friday on the 25th anniversary of the Broadway opening, is one of the most ambitious musicals The Grand Auditorium has mounted in recent years. This has nothing to do with complicated sets because “A Chorus Line” can be as simple… Read More
The Weston Playhouse Theatre Company is one of the most highly regarded summer theaters in Vermont. After seeing the company’s production of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” Sunday at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono, there was no question about why. This… Read More
Steve Martin’s 75-minute play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” which opened to sold-out audiences last weekend at the Cyrus Pavilion Theatre, is a lot like Steve Martin the TV and film actor. When it’s funny, it’s hilarious and smart, and when it’s not, it’s ridiculous and corny. Read More
Conor McPherson’s play “The Weir,” performed by the Belfast Maskers through Sunday, is set in rural Ireland but is a perfect fit for coastal Maine in the blowy month of October. Part ghost story, part community testimony, “The Weir” taps into the connections people make when they live… Read More
Here’s a warning for anyone with tickets to “The Mystery of Irma Vep,” playing through Oct. 14 at Penobscot Theatre in Bangor. Be prepared to laugh. And, after so many days of not laughing, you’ll appreciate this light and witty diversion. Such a response to… Read More
When John Ford Noonan’s two-woman show “A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking,” now being performed by Ten Bucks Theater in Brewer, played in New York City in 1980, it was a runaway hit. Susan Sarandon and Eileen Brennan had rehearsed the piece with the playwright and had… Read More
When you think of Neil Simon, you may think of kitschy, sentimental, comedic sendups of life in New York or Los Angeles, with a lot of one-liners, and a few cheap shots thrown in. Criticize him as fluffy if you’d like, but Simon is one of the most… Read More
If you go to a play by Christopher Durang, you can expect certain hit-you-upside-the-head themes. Urban angst, sexual irreverence, psychobabbling nutsos, the unworkability of religion – this is the stuff of his career, manifested most popularly in “Actor’s Nightmare” and “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You.”… Read More
It takes some guts to use a lobster as a prop in a Shakespeare production in Maine. The effect can be totally mean-spirited, freakishly corny, or sharply insightful and jocular. Julia Whitworth’s production of “The Tempest,” performed this weekend only at the Stonington Opera House, falls into the… Read More
At last week’s opening night of the State Theater of Maine production of “Oliver!” at Lakewood Theatre, there was a surge of energy that’s possible only with townsfolk on a hot August night. It sounds unbearable, really: to come up with vibrancy in the midst of wilting heat… Read More
Mark Torres’ production of “King Lear,” the last of three plays in this year’s Maine Shakespeare Festival on the Bangor waterfront, begins with breathtaking pageantry. To an ominously pounding drumbeat, the actors march onto the stage in a royal procession. The scene is filled with primal, pre-Christian ritual,… Read More
If you think you minded the rainy weather in the early part of July, think of the actors and directors for the Maine Shakespeare Festival. During the bout of rain, rehearsals were trounced by water throughout the much-needed rehearsal time on the outdoor stage on Bangor’s waterfront. The… Read More
“All art is quite useless,” wrote Oscar Wilde in the preface of his novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Nevertheless, there’s a useful lesson about artistic beauty in the story of a man whose face stays youthful and alluring while his portrait uglifies with each expression of his… Read More
You know the feeling when a bell goes off. You wake up. Or class is over. Or the cake is done. Playwright David Ives takes the meaning of the bell to a whole new level of possibility in his collection of six mini plays “All in the Timing,”… Read More
About halfway through Bar Harbor Theatre’s “The Complete History of America (Abridged),” it’s smilingly clear that this overview of 500 years of manifest destiny was developed in conjunction with such primary sources as “Star Trek,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Wizard of Oz” and the Bee Gees. Though perhaps cynical,… Read More
So few people laughed when the comedy “Murder at the Howard Johnson’s” opened on Broadway in 1979, the show closed after four performances. But when Acadia Repertory Theatre in Somesville staged it 10 years later, summer audiences couldn’t get enough of its purposefully mindless humor. If you renounce… Read More
BANGOR – The crackle of the radio wasn’t enough to mask the urgency in the woman’s voice. “KHAQQ calling Ataska. KHAAQ calling Ataska. Fuel running low.” googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var new_slot_sizes = []; var has_banner = false; for… Read More
So vacationing photographer Holly is a little neurotic and lifeguard Leo is a tad uncouth. But you’ll want to know these characters created by Tina Howe, whose “Pride’s Crossing” was a hit last year for the Penobscot Theatre Company. Nina Nevins and Patrick J. Zeller… Read More
It’s one thing to put a play together and perform in the same venue every night – and quite another to use a different stage each day and sometimes have to hit the road at dawn to get there. But it’s worth it to bring… Read More
BELFAST – Lenny Magrath is having a bad day. Her little sister Babe’s in jail for shooting her husband, her singing sister Meg’s somewhere in Hollywood without a phone, her granddaddy’s in the hospital with blood vessels popping in his head and not a one… Read More
ORONO – Elizabeth is taking steps to change her life. So is her husband Roland, her brother Mark, his former fiancee Kitty and Leslie, the motorcycle guy. The trouble is they spend more time running up and down the hundreds of steps in a ramshackle… Read More
“They’re Playing Our Song” proved a predictable but pleasant production Thursday night at the Maine Center for the Arts. The Gateway/Candlewood International touring company production of the musical kept the audience of 875 laughing throughout the performance. googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes… Read More
The main character in “Skylight” is: a) Kira, a young woman who teaches underprivileged youngsters; 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; i++) { if (isMobileDevice())… Read More
ORONO – This wasn’t a show for the purists. Will Shakespeare probably didn’t have vinyl tank tops, pleather pants, a butt-grabbing Beatrice and a newspaper arbor in mind when he wrote “Much Ado About Nothing.” But the Aquila Theatre Company made it seem, well, normal. Read More
BELFAST – “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is the perfect play to show off the Maskers’ renovated theater. The intimacy of the 3/4-round stage puts theatergoers inside the mental hospital where the story takes place. In an odd way, the new configuration makes them inmates, too. Read More
The gecko is a soft-skinned lizard with a short, stout body, large head and long tail. The suction cups on its feet tend to keep the colorful creature earthbound. In the creative hands of dancer Ingrid Schatz and actress Amy Robbins, however, the tropical reptile… Read More
WINTERPORT – The largest room in most houses built before 1960 is the dining room. Before the days of television consoles and rec rooms, before entertainment centers, recliner chairs and TV trays allowed families to huddle together in “the den,” the dining room was the heart of home. Read More
Gwendolen couldn’t possibly love Jack unless his name were Ernest, which she believes it is. And Cecily can bear to be engaged to Algernon only because she believes his name is – Ernest. It all adds up to “The Importance of Being Earnest,” an Oscar… Read More
ORONO – Every musical has a show-stopping moment. For some, it is a big, flashy production number like the title song in “Hello Dolly!” In others, it is one character, standing alone, center stage – Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady” hitting that impossibly high note at the… Read More