Lauren Yarger - Page 9

Antoinette LaVecchia sparkles like a fine Chianti in Connecticut playwright Jacques Lamarre's stage adaptation of Giulia Melucci's bestselling memoir I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti getting a delectable world premiere at TheatreWorks in Hartford.

AMAZING GRACE is getting a run at Goodspeed Musicals' developmental Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, CT with an eye toward hitting Broadway. This might seem like a lofty goal given the large scale of the production in a struggling economy that has producers holding on tightly to their investment dollars (even smaller musicals can cost tens of millions of dollars to produce in New York). And the material is religious to boot (religious-themed shows have a hard time getting favorable reviews on the Great White Way.) Given the nothing-short-of-miraculous journey of the musical, so far, however, all things may be possible.

Even though the musical depicts events from more than 100 years ago, 'not much has changed.'

Tony nominee Louise Pitre (MAMMA MIA) brings to life a legendary stage persona in an engaging and well staged production of the Jerry Herman musical MAME to open the Goodspeed Opera House's 2012-2013 season.

Mark Lamos directs an impressive kickoff at Westport Country Playhouse with a 25th-anniversary production of Stephen Sondhheim's funny and thought-provoking musical INTO THE WOODS.

Knowing chuckles sputter throughout the audience during the world premiere of Will Eno's THE REALISTIC JONESES at Yale Rep. The story is about everything - and nothing - just like the dialogue, but sooner or later you recognize a character you know, or perhaps yourself, and suddenly the seemingly pointless conversation hits home like it was fired at a bullseye.

A mostly grey-haired matinee audience smiling, bopping heads, tapping feet and singing along with classics like 'Fly Me to the Moon,' Night and Day,' 'That Old Black Magic,' and of course, 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco.'

Cynical, angry artist Mark Rothko (Jonathan Epstein) hires a young idealistic assistant, Ken (Thomas Leverton) to work with him on his newest commission: a series of four murals to hang in the newly constructed Four Seasons Restaurant in Manhattan. A smart dialogue about painting and about American society unfolds with the teacher-student relationship transitioning. Ken's hopes that Rothko might be a friend, or even a mentor to replace the father he discovered murdered at a young age are dashed with every stroke of paint, however. The master's vision for companionship extends only to the relationship between the paintings. The end result is always the same for him: tragedy. Rothko is struggling with the futility of life and with putting his brilliance on the walls of a commercial enterprise where its full meaning of the color red might or might not be comprehended by the capitalists dining beneath it.

A De 'light full' Productions of Shakespeare's tale of love and jealousy.

A bewitchingly beautiful Kate MacCluggage plays Gillian Holroyd, a witch who sets her sights on mortal Shepherd Henderson (Robert Eli) who lives upstairs from her red-swathed, moonlit New York apartment in Long Wharf Theatre;s production of John Van Druten's play with subtle commentary on social issues of the 1950s.

Always Patsy Cline, playing at the Ivoryton Playhouse brings to life the true friendship between Patsy (Jacqueline Petroccia) and one of her biggest fans, Louise Seger (Laurie Dawn). Penned and originally directed by Ted Swindley, the show packs almost 30 tunes around the story of how the women met and continued their friendship through letters in the late 1950s and early '60s until Cline's death in a plane crash at the age of 30.

The idea is a good one -- both in real life, where editor George Davis dreams of running a boarding house for artists in Brooklyn, and and in the theater, where book writer Seth Bockley brings the residents' stories to the stage, but a lack of practical planning in both cases fails to bring the ideas to full fruition.

What does a 47-year-old single guy need to do to get a date with the girl of his dreams? Well, if you're Vincent DiDonato (Lou Martini, Jr.) in Gino DiIorio and Nancy Bleemer's comedy Centennial Casting playing at Seven Angels Theatre in Waterbury, you pretend you are a casting director and pretend to give her an audition for a movie.

'What was that about?' seemed to be the main question theatergoers were asking after experiencing Christina Anderson's play Good Goods receiving its world premiere at Yale Repertory, Well, it's about a family dry goods store, a mysterious factory town, finding love, finding sexual identity, and oh, yeah, possession and excorcism. It's almost enough to make your head spin (pun intended).

Eight short plays with a prologue and epilogue depict folks falling in and out of love in a town called Almost, ME. The action takes place on a Friday evening in front of a rustic cabin-like backdrop.

The multiple Emmy winner, who was honored with a lifetime achievement award by the Writers Guild, East in 2010, talks about having friends like Billy Crystal, Larry David or Gilda Radner and in the same breath, can listen patiently as a wannabe writer runs a really bad idea by him for a TV sitcom. The blend of genius and kindness is a rare combination in this industry.

A mother and daughter struggle with transitions in their life and with living with each other in Philip Hayes Dean's play THE STY OF THE BLIND PIG, getting a rare run on stage at TheaterWorks, Hartford.

Steven Epp and Christopher Bayes are definitely the go-to guys if you want 21st-century audiences laughing at centuries-old plays.

A playwright endeavors to tell the scariest ghost story he's ever heard, but will the real ghost let him?

Avatars appear as the users of an internet support forum for crack addicts sign on to chat, but the action doesn't take place in cyberspace. It unfolds on stage as Hartford Stage presents the world premiere of Quiara Alegria Hudes' moving play WATER BY THE SPOONFUL.