Krista Garver

What did our critic think of FERTILE GROUND 2026 - REVIEW ROUNDUP #2 at Various?

This year’s Fertile Ground Festival started last Friday. As in years past, I’ll be posting short reviews of everything I see. Here’s the first set.

What did our critic think of APPLE HUNTERS! at Artists Rep?

There's a particular kind of melancholy that settles over you like a damp wool coat: heavy, familiar, not entirely unpleasant, often surprisingly funny. John Patrick Shanley's Tony-nominated play OUTSIDE MULLINGAR, now running at Corrib Theatre under Holly Griffith's direction, is soaked in it.

The 2026 Fertile Ground Festival kicks off on April 10. This annual grab bag of new works is my favorite time in Portland’s theatre calendar because it gives us a chance to see works at various stages of development, from early readings to fully staged world premieres.

DEAR EVAN HANSEN, now running at Broadway Rose, is a multiple Tony Award-winning musical about an anxious, depressed, and profoundly lonely high schooler who gets swept into an extraordinary situation when a classmate named Connor Murphy dies by suicide.

ATHENA, now running at the tiny but mighty 21ten Theatre, is a keenly observed comedy about two high schoolers training for the Junior Olympics. They are, by turns, practice partners, rivals, and almost-friends. Gracie Gardner's play understands that the last of those is by far the most difficult challenge.

When seeing a new-to-me play, I typically try to walk in knowing as little as possible. I love the joy of discovery. That approach has never served me better than it did for A MIRROR, Sam Holcroft's gripping play now running at Third Rail Repertory Theatre.

If you had told me I would cry my eyes out at a musical about a young man with green, scaly skin who only leaves his apartment once a year to go on a Grindr date, I would have given you the side eye. But there I was on opening night of LIZARD BOY at Portland Center Stage, completely undone by this incredibly weird, incredibly wonderful indie rock musical.

As the Trump administration works to erase trans people from public life (literally removing the 'T' from LGBT on the government's website about the Stonewall Uprising, a movement to which trans people were central), it becomes urgent to understand that these events don't happen in a vacuum. They are the culmination of years of effort, danger, and defiance by people whose names most of us never learn. 

Portland Playhouse is not known for playing it safe, so it's fitting that their latest production centers on a woman, Anna Campbell, who built her entire legend on one audacious act.

In Kallan Dana’s RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR, now running at Artists Repertory Theatre, a father (Anthony Green Caloca) and his adult daughter (Jerilyn Armstrong) head off on a cross-country drive from New York to California to clean out a storage unit.

It took about 10 seconds for tears to well up in my eyes during the opening monologue of THE BODY'S MIDNIGHT. They stayed there, occasionally spilling over, for the rest of Tira Palmquist's exquisite play. This show is just the second production by 100 Lives Repertory, but it firmly establishes them as a company that produces work that moves you deeply and refuses to let go.

How do we carry on when everything is falling apart? In YOU STUPID DARKNESS!, Sam Steiner's funny and touching dramedy now running at 21ten Theatre, four volunteers spend their Tuesday nights answering calls at Brightline, a listening service for people who need someone to tell them everything is going to be okay.

For years, I'd written off THE WIZ. My only prior experience with the show had been a disappointing production that left me confused about why the original had swept the Tony Awards in 1975, winning Best Musical and Best Original Score among other honors.

I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard, or heard an entire packed audience laugh so hard. In a world that feels very heavy, Portland Center Stage's production of THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG offers something we desperately need: two hours of pure, unrelenting fun.

There aren't many full-length one-person musicals, which makes IN CLAY particularly intriguing even before you discover how exquisite it is. This fairly new musical by Jack Miles and Rebecca Simmonds excavates the true story of Marie-Berthe Cazin, a French painter and sculptor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose talent was, for a time at least, eclipsed by bigger personalities.

What did our critic think of TIGER STYLE! at Profile Theatre?

Portland Playhouse’s annual production of A CHRISTMAS CAROL continues to be essential holiday viewing. It’s a gorgeous piece of theatre that honors tradition while finding ways to surprise even its most devoted returnees. Consider me among them, already looking forward to next year.

Shakespeare's THE WINTER’S TALE is notoriously difficult to do well. One of the Bard's later 'problem plays,' it essentially presents two different theatrical worlds: the first half is a tragedy driven by King Leontes' sudden, irrational jealousy toward his pregnant wife Hermione and his best friend Polixenes.