DELAWARE THEATER REVIEWS

While UD Rep Ensemble's general modus operandi is classic plays from the likes of Moliere, Shakespeare and Thornton Wilder, their mission statement includes production of contemporary classics as well. Artistic Director Sandy Robbins is smitten by Theresa Rebeck, a prolific and award-winning America...

HONK! Is a musical adaptation of the Hans Christian Anderson story of "The Ugly Duckling". It embodies a message of tolerance and bullying…and as Director Bud Martin suggests in his program notes…'the discourse in our country today is full of bullying, name-calling, racism and anti-immigration"....

GUYS AND DOLLS, at Candlelight through February 24, opened on Broadway in 1950 and is front and center in the pantheon of American musical theatre. I had forgotten how much I treasure this show....

The parallel musical storytelling of Jamie and Cathy. One of Jason Robert Brown's best works....

There's a reason that the vast majority of parishioners to musical theatre had not seen SHE LOVES ME prior, including Aisle Say. The show, while billed as charming and seasonal with carolers singing "12 Days of Christmas", has as much gravitas as tweets from Tweeter in Chief...

In his liner notes, Artistic Director Sandy Robbins comments that Alan Ackybourne's WOMAN IN MIND (December Bee) was on his short list since the inception of UD Rep ten glorious years back....

Aisle Say is prescient. He can determine where SANCTIONS, the terse and taut production now at DE Theatre Company, will NOT be staged: U of Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan State and Penn State, to name a few. There are hundreds more....

I'm a bit surprised that the News Journal did not report a run on Scottish plaid leading up to Candlelight's opening of BRIGADOON. The tartans from the various clans made for a colorful array by Costumer Tara Bowers and surely enriched the production....

The Walnut Theater opens its 210th season with HOLIDAY INN with music by America's songwriter, Irving Berlin. One is invariably impressed by the institution's lavish sets (Robert Andrew Kovach) and the quality and attention to detail of their entire Creative Crew....

Let's start with a basic misconception - FUN HOME is not a comedy. The word 'fun' is an abbreviation for funeral. FUN HOME is the shortened, more enjoyable characterization of the Bechdel Funeral Home. Even though the young Bechdel children play inside caskets, and make-up silly commercials for the ...

Candlelight's DO BLACK PATENT LEATHER SHOES REALLY REFLECT UP was a revelation to me. I am serious! I began my public-school education in the mid-fifties. Some of my friends went to Catholic school. Now I know why some of them are screwed up....

One wonders what Director Rosanne DellAversano and Music Director James Fuerst talk about at home. Is dinner conversation taken up with zombies, flesh eaters, how to maximize blood flow on the brave guests who sit in the "Splatter Zone" of their present production of EVIL DEAD, THE MUSICAL?...

Shakespearean stars were aligned this season with not one but two TWELFTH NIGHTS, staged earlier in the year at UD Rep Ensemble and presently in the sylvan fields of Arden....

In this #METOO world of Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer and Donald Trump, one might look a bit circumspect at the staging of a 'bedroom' farce. As explained in the program notes, flight attendants in the '60's has to be single, between the ages of 21 and 27 and have a 'neatly proportioned figure' and '...

This year, Bootless Stageworks is using its new home at St. Stephen's Church on Broom Street to re-present shows they had performed in earlier venues. In case you are unfamiliar with it, 'next to normal' is about a suburban family dealing with the effects of mental illness, told through a largely ro...

I always felt that the Beatles' songS of peace and love had as much to do with the fall of communism as much as Pres. Reagan's 1987 Berlin prouncement, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"....

Nine years running, excellence in all aspects of theatre - cast and creative crew - continue to substantiate UD Rep Ensemble as the most professional troupe in Delaware....

Tapper/Singer/Director Maurice Hines and brother Gregory first performed with Ella Fitzgerald at The Flamingo in Vegas. He knew he was in the presence of greatness. Maurice called her 'the greatest singer I have ever heard'....

If memory serves, way back in 1987 the movie DIRTY DANCING sizzled with sexual energy, engendered by the super charged chemistry between the poster boy of charisma, Patrick Swayze and the naive Baby, who liquifies under his charms as quickly as a Rita's water ice in July....

Like DROWSY CHAPERONE, now playing at Candlelight, DIRTY DANCING's origins were counter to novels than generally are the genesis for Broadway productions. It is based in large part on screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein's own childhood, a daughter of a Jewish doctor from New York....

Lerner and Loewe created MY FAIR LADY from Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion". Rodgers and Hammerstein adapted the 1909 Ferenc Molnar play "Liliom" and transplanted the setting from Budapest to the coast of Maine in CAROUSEL. That's generally how musicals are birthed. Not so with THE DROWSY CHAPERONE, which...

There is ofttimes a quality difference from non-equity versus equity tours. The former is comprised of young actors earning their stripes. For many it is their first tour. Any deviation from a highly professional, class A production was not evident with CABARET, at The Playhouse through March 18. Th...

Artistic Director Sandy Robbins comments in the Program Notes that any director would prefer staging KING LEAR rather than A FLEA IN HER EAR....

May December relationships are fraught with peril. We are now informed they function in theoretical physics and the space between notes of music....