Tina Collins - Page 3

Anyone fascinated by the creative process knows that a work-in-progress is a beautiful thing to behold. The birth and maturation of a play is such a long and collaborative effort, it seems a miracle that any production ever reaches fruition.

If your dysfunctional family doesn't provide enough entertainment for you, then come visit the Grunman clan currently residing at Baltimore's Strand Theater. The world premiere of Dylan Brody's MOTHER, MAY I opens the door on one family's skewered life.

Cursed by the Gods and their own need for retribution, two siblings in Ancient Greece live out their tragic destiny.

Will Charlie Brown ever win a baseball game or the love of a certain red-haired girl? Will Linus let go fo his blanket or Sally find her philosophy? Will Lucy become queen and Schroeder the next Beethoven? Will suppertime ever come soon enough for Snoopy?

"This play is not about my mother and me," says Lisa Kron at the beginning of her autobiographical play, WELL . Of course,WELL is all about the playwright and her long-suffering mother. It's a funny and sad examination of the intensely complicated relationship of mothers and daughters where love and hostility co-exist as the past clashes with the present.

If you're in the mood for entertainment both magical and meaningful, step Into the Woods with Centerstage. The play, co-produced with the Westport Country Playhouse and directed by Mark Lamos, is beautifully staged as it trips lightly through a mix of classic stories before turning down a different and darker path.

Have you ever woken up and just known it was going to be one of those difficult days? Then you'll sympathize with poor Alexander who endures a day of trials and tribulations. But even this irascible eight-year-old learns you don't have to let a bad day get you down.

The Pumpkin Theatre is making magic with its charming production of Rapunzel. Its colorful sets, elaborate costumes and lively performances pull the audience into a fantasy land of vengeful witches, damsels in distress and princes on heroic quests.

A Little Night Music with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim sits among the pantheon of sophisticated Broadway classics. Based on the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it captures the passions and pathos of a group of couples who waltz their way in and out of relationships in turn-of-the-century Sweden.

In the Greek myth of the same name, the sculptor Pygmalion creates his vision of the perfect woman, Galatea, and breathes life into the statue with the help of the gods. In George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, Professor Henry Higgins changes the life of a cockney flower girl through the magic of language and a good makeover. At the Everyman Theatre, director Eleanor Holdridge breathes new life into this timeless story which has been told and retold in many times and many ways since its publication in 1913.

If you never cracked the incredibly thick binding of Crime and Punishment' in literature class, here's your chance to experience Dostoevsky's masterpiece of madness and murder stripped down to its essential elements.

Like the two-sided Kandinsky painting that hovers over the play, truth and illusion spin and blend in this depiction of the tenuous connections we seek to form in the modern world.