CLEVELAND THEATER REVIEWS

When the mention of the name Frankenstein is made, the common visual reference is that of Boris Karloff, who was a large green monster with screws in his head, as featured in the 1931 horror film. Karloff, in fact, played Frankenstein's monster, not Henry Frankenstein, the young scientist who create...

Apollo's Fire, Cleveland's 'other' orchestra is credited with having built the largest audience in the nation for 'early-music' (Renaissance, Baroque and early Classical). Headed by Jeannette Sorrell, the orchestra is forging 'a vibrant approach to the re-making of authenticity.'...

How does the musical black comedy LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS fit into the Cleveland Play House's 100th anniversary theme of paying homage to their history? To find the answer requires going back to May, 1916, when the theatre staged THE DEATH OF TINTAGILES. The avant-garde play starred marionettes creat...

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July 18, 1966 is a day that will long be noted in the Cleveland community. That hot, muggy day festered into what is now called 'The Hough Riots.'...

A recent trip to New York included a tour of Carnegie Hall. As we entered the famous auditorium someone asked, 'How are the acoustics?' The seasoned tour guide answered, 'they are good, but not as good as Cleveland's Severance Hall.' He went on to say, 'Though this is a beautiful setting, it doesn't...

Last month the Cleveland area played host to what was a hoped for new Christmas musical that would go to Broadway and be holiday entertainment. Unfortunately, KRIS KRINGLE, with book by Maria Ciampi and music by Tim Janis, lacked clear structure, emotional-generating glee, and joyous songs. It's lea...

Even though the movement may have been slowed down by the recent Ohio election, the march toward legalization of marijuana seems on its way in this country....

World premiere of KRIS KRINGLE THE MUSICAL proves show is a work in progress....

Mention author J. M. Barrie, and the immediate thought is Peter Pan. Peter Pan, the tale of a boy who refused to grow up, has become a cottage industry. Dolls, movies, a musical play, coloring books, cartoons, Halloween costumes, a non-musical play, and books are all available. There is even a psych...

Yes, A CHRISTMAS STORY is again lighting up the stage at the Cleveland Play House. It's a new production, which incites new comments, but the history and my unexpected involvement in the tale is still the same!...

Little did Frank Baum realize in 1900 when he wrote the book, THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ, that he was creating a cottage industry. 'Chachkas' such as snow globes, stuffed Toto dogs and figurines of the characters dot many a household. Clothing, including red crystal shoes, checkered gingham 'Dorothy...

The American Folklore Theatre (AFT), located in Door County, Wisconsin, is a theater company that creates musicals and plays which are based on the populist culture and heritage of the United States. They have developed such works as MULE FOR BREAKFAST AGAIN, LUMBERJACKS IN LOVE, LOOSE LIPS SINK SHI...

It's that time of year when local theatre offerings center on 'peace on earth' and how each of us should be kind and better (e.g., Great Lakes Theater's A CHRISTMAS CAROL), family holiday memories (Cleveland Play House's A CHRISTMAS STORY), and musical escapes (Beck Center's MARY POPPINS and Playhou...

Geoffrey Hoffman, in his directorial notes in the convergence-continuum program for BOB: A LIFE IN FIVE ACTS, states, 'Bob is an everyman . . .He is born with nothing and becomes a passionate adventurer-part myth, part reality, and completely legendary. . . For better or worse, he is the most memora...

It's that time of year when local theatres fill their stages with holiday cheer. Yes, it's the season of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, A CHRISTMAS STORY, A CHRISTMAS STORY: THE MUSICAL, WHITE CHRISTMAS, and ELF THE MUSICAL....

Sam Shepard, the author of AGES OF THE MOON, now on stage at Ensemble Theatre, is noted for writing plays that are frank and often absurd. His language choice is gritty, the setting is the American west, and his characters usually self-destruct. He sometimes includes in his stage directions the requ...

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 ...

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 thea...

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 ex...

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...

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. ...

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 ...