Simon Levy's adaptation is actually a skillful condensation of the events and dialogue of the novel, stitched together with some narration, but this production isn't up to his writing, let alone Fitzgerald's.
One of the most famous quotes regarding Fiddler on the Roof came from the producer of the first Japanese production, who said to the writers, 'Do they understand this show in America? It's so Japanese!' Well, you don't have to be Japanese, or Jewish, or anything else to understand Fiddler.
This is The 39 Steps as filtered through Monty Python or Carol Burnett.
Lucky Stiff is an early project by composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist/librettist Lynn Ahrens, who went on to create Once on This Island, Ragtime, and the underrated A Man of No Importance.
A high point of the first part of the play is when King asks Camae what she would say to the world if she were in his shoes, and she literally puts on his shoes (and coat) and launches into her own oratory, which is surprising and intelligent, if quite different from King's perspective on the confli
The Big Meal is about nothing less than the entire scope of life, played out in a series of meals in a variety of restaurants.
I salute any theater that tries to push itself into new creative directions.
In Licking Batteries, electricity is both literal (in the use of electroshock therapy to treat mental illness) and metaphoric (in the sparks between people), and it gets used in a multitude of ways to tell an engrossing story.
Cole Porter's songs are justifiably classic, both the tunes that relate to the backstage story and the numbers for the show within the show, and this company has the voices to put them over sensationally.
The late Lehman Engel was a conductor for a number of Broadway shows in the 1940s through the 1960s, in addition to writing several masterful books on the creation and construction of musicals, and founding the musical theater workshop that bears his name and has trained many of the top songwriters
We enter the world of Padua, which in director Michael Mendelson's vision takes place in the swinging 1960s.
Is there a more reliably funny performance piece than The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield?
Director-choreographer Lyn Cramer put her cast to work right away, sending them on one by one during the overture, crawling, slinking, and rolling onstage.
I attended Avenue Q at a sold-out Saturday night performance on Pride weekend in Portland, and the house was filled with people who clearly knew the show and were ready to have fun.
The lush music, the period costumes, and Andrew Samonsky's performance kept me involved.
When soldiers go to war, they find themselves in unbearable, life-threatening situations, and terrible things happen.
Here are five upcoming productions in the Portland area that shouldn't be missed this summer.
Catherine Treischmann's play Crooked, now playing at CoHo Productions, is about a fourteen-year-old girl named Laney who is even more confused and angry than most kids her age.
Tommy Tune said it (or sang it) best in Seesaw, to the music of Cy Coleman and the lyrics of Dorothy Fields: "It's not where you start, it's where you finish.
The play looks and feels like a bright, witty comedy, the kind that used to light up Broadway stages year after year.
