CLEVELAND THEATER REVIEWS

On the surface, Greg Pierce's SLOWGIRL, which is now on stage at Dobama, is the tale of a teenager who finds herself living a real-life nightmare and her confronting the issues with her reclusive uncle, who has problems of his own....

Brian Zoldessy, one of the area's most awarded actors, seems to be making a career of bringing real people to life. He was Ned Weeks, the AIDS activist in Ensemble's THE NORMAL HEART, Sigmund Freud, the recognized father of Psychoanalysis in Actors' Summit's FREUD'S LAST SESSION, and now he's reinca...

Pat Ciamacco, artistic director at Blank Canvas, has a 'thing' for off-beat musicals. Sure, he produced 'Hair' and 'Godspell,' but it's more likely that what you'll see mounted on his stage are 'Beach Blanket Party,' 'Debbie Does Dallas,' and 'Texas Chainsaw Musical.' I'm surprised he's missed out o...

Like retail stores, local theatres realize that they need a big December holiday season to make enough profits to sustain themselves for rest of the year....

The existentialists ask, 'What does it mean to exist? What is our purpose in being?' 'American Falls,' Miki Johnson's drama which showcases eight people living in a small town-six alive, two dead-is an existentialist exercise....

Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel is noted for crafting play scripts which impact directly on the lives of people. A review of her works illustrates that she writes about issues that need to be expressed (AIDS, sexual abuse, prostitution, degradation of the individual), she favors writing about emot...

The holiday season is upon us. Many local theatres are geared to make your days merry and bright. Curtains have or will shortly go up on the likes of 'A Christmas Carol,' 'A Christmas Story,' and 'Santaland Diaries.' Even The Key Bank Broadway series is ringing in the season with a holiday musical, ...

There's a moor, a diabolical hound, a maiden, a man who dies of a heart attack (well, maybe), a butler who carries around a tray of plastic food and wears an obvious fake beard, an attempt to perform CPR on an obvious stuffed dummy, men in a sauna wearing towels over their suits, men dressed as wome...

From 1981 until about 2000, Cleveland audiences were enchanted with Dennis Nahat, the then artistic-director of Cleveland Ballet, later the Cleveland San Jose Ballet' s version of 'The Nutcracker.' Often starring the wunderkinds of the company, Karen Gabay and Raymond Rodriguez, the production was f...

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'The story is told in verse, densely packed with rhyme, which has to be spoken so that it sounds like natural language.' 'Much of the play concerns a battle between angels and demons.' 'There is little action in the play, just a series of monologues.' The descriptions are vivid, 'fingernails pierce ...

Baldwin Wallace is a powerhouse in providing talent to the Broadway stage. In the past year, over a dozen of the program's grads have listed, 'a proud graduate of Baldwin Wallace' in their Great White Way 'Playbill' resumes....

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New York City is approximately 500 miles from Cleveland. People from the North Coast often make the trek there to partake in the shopping, dining, but most often, the theatre. In order to keep the locals abreast of the Great White Ways offerings, I review some of the shows. Here is a sampling of wha...

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C. Denby Swanson's 'The Norwegians,' now on stage at Dobama Theatre, centers on Tor and Gus, two Minnesota Norwegians, who are hit men who offer to 'whack' individuals who have 'done others wrong.' Olive, a former Texan, has been mistreated by her boyfriend. She meets Betty, who has hired Tor and Gu...

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Families can be interesting to observe. Take for example, the family who is the subject of Sean Grennan's 'Making God Laugh,' the 125th main stage production of Actors' Summit....

Truth, well maybe the truth, can be stranger than fiction. According to the show, itself, the musical '[title of show],' yes, that's the title of the show, which is now appearing on stage at Beck Center's Studio Theater, was conceived when one of the script's authors received an announcement about a...

'LES MISERABLES' is a classic historical novel by Victor Hugo. It is probably one of the most noted literary pieces of the 19th century. 'LES MISERABLES,' Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel's musical adaptation of the novel has become an epic of the musical theatre stage....

The State Theatre in PlayhouseSquare is rocking. Rocking with sounds of the likes of Diana Ross, The Supremes, The Jackson Five, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. Rocking with a full orchestra, a visually stimulating electronically enhanced production, and the story of Berry Gordy....

Dance Cleveland opened its 59th season in spectacular style with a performance of the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet at E. J. Thomas Hall, on the University of Akron Campus. The company, which was founded in 1996, has two official schools, one in Aspen, one in Santa Fe, and a year-round Mexican outreach prog...

'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' a version of which is now on stage at Great Lakes Theatre, is considered by many literary critics to be one of Shakespeare's 'lesser' plays. Not bad, just not up to the dramatic level of the great writer, though its farcical nature is often praised....

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Clyde Simon, Artistic Director of convergence continuum, has a knack for finding off-beat, provocative plays that incite discussion and strong reactions from the theatre's loyal following. That group, and probably many more, will find themselves entranced by Martin McDonagh's black comedy, 'The Pill...