KENTUCKY THEATER REVIEWS

Louisville Orchestra Performance of Bernstein's Mass is Triumphant...

I am always excited by the opportunity to see an August Wilson play. Only Actors Theatre has managed to deliver them to Louisville audiences, the most recent having been an outstanding production of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom in 2010. Now we have Seven Guitars to feast upon....

Simply and effectively stage the horrific saga of two regular people facing the grand-scale consequences of their actions and you will find something more frightening than any witch....

Amy Attaway and Kentucky Shakespeare may have shown their audience something they have never seen before....

Even more engaging than the dramatic ingredients is the soul of the piece, which Wallace has artfully drawn out to craft a play with a deeply personal reach....

In 2015, it isn't easy to get people into a theatre. Who wants to make the drive and pay the ticket price for a light, late twentieth-century comedy when the entire series of "Friends" and "Everybody Loves Raymond" is on Netflix? "Social Security," written by Andrew Bergman and currently playing at ...

An uneven but entertaining production pulls off a retro charm while asking difficult questions that still resonate today....

The Real Inspector Hound is a classic piece of meta-theatre. Acting Against Cancer has decided to do Stoppard one better....

Actors Theatre of Louisville has devoted a substantial portion of the 39th Humana Festival to examinations of the local landscape. Fo Thomas Merton's birthday, they decided to throw him a party....

In a city as culturally rich and vibrant as Louisville, it's a true shame there aren't more opportunities for local playwrights to showcase their work. Without being spoken aloud by actors, brought to life by directors and ultimately performed in front of an audience, it seems difficult for a playwr...

Jen Silverman's "The Roommate' is as tragic as they come - and it's a tragedy that subtly grows beneath peals of uproarious laughter....

"We're fairly sure they didn't say 'Darn.'"...

The essential experience of "Mr. Burns," written by Anne Washburn and locally produced by Theatre [502]: either feeling as smart as the play for getting it, or smarter than it for not....

'At The Vanishing Point' is a tribute to the drama of struggling to sanctify the ordinary. Iizuka brings together characters and stories that form the tissue of Butchertown's history while observing the awe-inspiring tragedy in how much is missed....

Tarell Alvin McCraney's "The Brothers Size" may be the closest thing the modern stage offers to a drama that approaches the level of ritual, transubstantiating the mythic into flesh, blood, words, and rhythms before our rapt eyes....

Louisvillians have made "A Christmas Carol" a holiday agenda item for two reasons: its quality, and its consistency....

"They may not be perfect, but they're family." This is the affirmation that's just as much a prison sentence at that heart of "Tribes," Nina Raine's socially-charged, densely-layered and devastatingly on-point drama now playing at Actors Theatre of Louisville....

Jason Robert Brown plays a narrative game within the tightly structured form of the musical to probe deep into the depths of a failed relationship....

While it has put on a repertory of shows most professional playhouses would find ambitious - and been successful beyond the wildest dreams of what most theater artists will likely see in their careers - the method has grown to match the mission. Experience, age and passion have turned its into somet...

A few years ago, in a different publication, I gave Actors Theatre's "Dracula" a somewhat mixed review. I didn't get it. Boy, do I get it now....

There is an oh-so-subtle dramatic bed upon which rides one of the funniest evenings of theater I've had the joy to partake of in quite a while....

The best productions of classic plays present them as if they are world premieres. They reveal new details, shine new light upon dramas whose lines you could recite like the names of your children. "Hamlet," the finale of Kentucky Shakespeare's trio of summer stagings in Central Park, is exactly thi...

Kentucky Shakespeare makes a noble, if uneven, go at 'Henry V.'...

This year's final full-length offering, "Steel Hammer" from the world-renowned SITI Company and legendary director Anne Bogart, compares a man to his myth and explores all the dimensions one person's story can develop....

Dorothy Fortenberry's 'Partners' is a strikingly vivid snapshot of a generation that doesn't know what to do with itself....