Roy Berko - Page 28

Last season over twenty performers with Cleveland area connections played on Broadway. So far this season, the trend continues. Chris McCarrell is in LES MISERABLES, Cassie Okenka will be in SCHOOL OF ROCK, Steel Burkhart appears in ALADDIN, Jill Paice stars in AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, Kyle Post kicks up his heels in KINKY BOOTS and Alex Wyse has a major role in SPRING AWAKENING.

Theater Ninjas, which bills itself as 'the Food Truck of Cleveland Theater' due to its having no permanent home, but relishes its nomadic pattern of trying out 'new and exciting spaces to perform,' is noted for rethinking what theater can be. According to its Artistic Director, Jeremy Paul, the theater is 'committed to making our region and our home a better place to live.' The theater's newest attempt to achieve its goal is a production of Cleveland native Caroline V. McGraw's TALL SKINNY CRUEL CRUEL BOYS.

Tanya Barfield, author of THE CALL, which is now on stage at Dobama Theatre, didn't want to write the play. She stated in a December, 2012 interview, 'Without realizing what I was doing, I pointedly and stubbornly refused. . . What I knew-what I was known for-were plays about the African-American experience through history. I did not want to write a contemporary play, a play close to me, a play about adoption.'

Tyson Douglas Rand, director of THE HAPPY SAD now in production at convergence-continuum, in his program notes for the show, states, 'What is THE HAPPY SAD? Well...it's a play with music - but it's not a musical. It's a funny play about romance and relationships - but it's NOT a romantic comedy.' He goes on to state, 'It's not a series of problems and solutions. It is a journey of discovery.'

In June 23, 1992, if you believed the supermarket tabloid, 'Weekly World News,' you'd have accepted that a 'large-eyed, fanged human child' was found in a southern West Virginia cave.

As the actors lined up for the curtain call of Cesear's Forum's THE INVESTIGATION, Peter Weiss's play about the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963-65, I was on an emotional trip far, far way.

Arthur Miller, the author of THE CRUCIBLE, which is now in production at the Cleveland Play House's Outcalt Theatre, was one of the most important modern American playwrights. Credited with being the developer of the contemporary definition of the American tragedy, he would have been 100 this year. Ironically, this is CPH's one-hundreth birthday, as well.

In his program notes for Great Lakes Theater's production, director Joseph Hanreddy states, 'KING LEAR, with its titanic range of emotional, vast physical landscape, dark ironic humor and snarl of mysteries, contradictions, ambiguity and paradoxes, render it one of the theater's greatest challenges to realize in performance.' To his credit, Hanreddy creates a production which lives up to the challenge.

Every once in a while a theater-goer is privileged to participate in a staged production that aesthetically enfolds them. Under the creative direction of Victoria Bussert, Great Lakes Theater's THE SECRET GARDEN, is such a creation.

In her directorial notes for the Beck Center's production of Terrance McNally's MOTHERS AND SONS, Sarah May states, 'I was so struck by this play when I saw it on Broadway. Here was an unwritten chapter of the terrible AIDS Crisis!'

Edward Albee, author of WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, now in production at The Lakeland Civic Theatre, is one of the best known Theatre of the Absurd American writers. This form of theatre, which was at its apex shortly following World War II is based, in part on existentialism, and asks 'what is the purpose of existence?'

Arthur Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning drama, now on stage at Ensemble Theatre, is universally recognized as one of, if not the greatest modern American play. Others that are recognized as top classic plays are LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (Eugene O'Neil), STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE (Tennessee Williams), OUR TOWN (Thornton Wilder), and WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF (Edward Albee).

Opening night of THE SPITFIRE GRILL was a special evening for the Beck Center for the Arts. It was the start of the organization's 82nd season and Scott Spence's 25th anniversary as Artistic Director.

Liza Minnelli once said, 'The greatest thing about [John] Kander and [Fred] Ebb is you sing their songs and you feel good.' She was referring to the multi-award winning Broadway writing team who gave the world such songs as, 'How Lucky Can You Get?,' 'Maybe This Time,' 'All That Jazz,' 'Cabaret,' and 'But The World Goes Round.'

The Cleveland Play House opened its 100th season in a lavish and theatrically exciting way. An invitation only group of CPH financial supporters, politicians, and theatre enthusiasts, draped in tuxedos and high fashioned gowns, entered the beautiful Allen theatre lobby to have their pictures taken with the 2015 Best Regional Theatre Tony Award statue. Guests were then escorted into the inner lobby where a cocktail party was in full swing.

Dobama Theatre's mission statement indicates that it is its purpose to 'premiere the best contemporary plays by established or emerging playwrights.' Why, then, are they opening their 2015-16 season with a play set in 1666-1670?

What could be more appropriate in this year, which leads up to a presidential election, than to examine the political hacks who run the campaigns. Voila, for the start of its 36th season, Ensemble Theatre has chosen Beau Willimon's 2008 drama, FARRAGUT NORTH, which examines the lust for power among political hacks.

Book buyers spend an estimated $1.08 billion dollars each year purchasing romance novels. Since 1972 when Avon printed Kathleen Woodiwiss's 'The Flame And The Flower,' supposedly the first U.S. published book of that genre, almost 55% of all paperbacks sold in the U.S. have centered on romantic relationships with optimistic endings, whose covers usually feature a handsome buff man saving a helpless woman. These types of stories also dominate E-book downloads.

I consider OUR TOWN, which is now being performed at Blank Canvas, to be one of the greatest plays of the 20th century. It not only won the Pulitzer Prize in 1938, it has become one of the most performed and studied plays in the English language. It, along with Arthur Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN, Eugene O'Neil's LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, Tennessee Williams' STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, and William Inge's DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS, continue to be listed as the best written modern American plays by theatre experts.