KENTUCKY THEATER REVIEWS

In biology, evolution is usually defined as '...the change in the characteristics of a species over several generations and relies on the process of natural selection. The theory of evolution is based on the idea that all species are related and gradually change over time.'...

On December 4, 1956, four recording legends dropped by Sam Phillips' famously small Sun Records Studios for various reasons, completely unplanned and coincidental. Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash had both been under contract for some time to Phillips, though Cash's contract would be up soon and he woul...

Intrigue, plots to bring disaster. Humor, handled by a master. Romance, sex presented pastorally. Acting Against Cancer in collaboration with CirqueLouis certainly has magic to do as it opens another season with Pippin. This outright delight of a show hits the mark with tricks, tumbles, and flights ...

In his opening night curtain speech, director Jeff Mangum referenced the Wayward Actors' Company 2018 production of Hand to God, which he also directed. David Ippolito's The Green Room is another unorthodox speculation about the contrast between the more inclusive Christian sects and their more extr...

The Ain't I A Women Playfest is one of the most ambitious theatre initiatives to be birthed in Louisville; a call to women playwrights of color for original short plays that speak, as new plays must, to the time in which they are written....

The Lexington Theatre Company takes it's place as the latest regional theatre to carry the banner....

I have described Baby Horse Theatre as Avant-garde, and while the term is apt, it also is limiting in the way that all such terms prescribe how we approach art. Like all theatre artists, they are storytellers....

Theatre always begins as a mystery. Neutral Positions begins with three scenes that seem unrelated; disparate episodes whose relationship to each other eventually becomes evident. But for a tantalizing few minutes, we don't know. Our mind is working. We are thinking actively in hopes of finding the ...

So much depends on identity during youth and adolescence. How others see you, what music you listen to, what you wear, and what crowd you hang out with. Trivial yet all so important at the time. Vidalia Unwin's fresh, new play, Punk Snot explores a group of outcast teens who find salvation and safet...

David Clark's gods play wants desperately to be a movie, and it could very well be adapted as such with little difficulty. A heady mash-up of the visceral and intellectual, Clark imagines a playwright so full of himself that he declares that not even God could write a play better than his latest wor...

Colton Ryan and Evy Ortiz in West Side Story. Photo courtesy of The Lexington Theatre Company....

Every year, more than 2 million kids in America will face a period of homelessness. This from Covenant House, the largest privately funded provider in the Americas of shelter, food, immediate crisis care, and an array of other services to homeless and runaway youth. That is a pretty sobering statist...

Among the greatest of the plays written by William Shakespeare, there are several titular roles that are each a veritable Mt. Everest for actors; Charlton Heston called them the 'Man-killers', and I doubt they are any easier for women. Of these, the monarch named Lear stands as a particularly daunti...

America since the 2016 election has provoked no small amount of questioning. How could it ever have come to this? Beyond the immediacy of partisanship, the GOP has set about dismantling landmark legislation such as the Voting Rights Act. It has sent us reeling back in time to reexamine modern histor...

Now comes the third chapter in director Amy Attaway's 'Game of Kings' series, which began with Richard II in 2017, followed by Henry IV, Part One a year ago, and will finish with Henry V in the summer of 2020....

Edward Albee has a spurious reputation for writing difficult, inaccessible plays. While the esteemed playwright is usually challenging to mainstream audiences, The Goat Or, Who is Sylvia? functions surprisingly well as domestic farce. It is often flat out funny....

Hamilton is a show whose impact extended well beyond the Great White Way and into the larger culture almost immediately; you have to have literally lived under a rock to have escaped awareness of this revisionist take on early United States history. In 2016, Hamilton received a record-setting 16 Ton...

Sure, the classics and the standard favorites are fun but watching a new work gain footing for the first time is a thrill. Looking for Lilith's current production is a new work by local writer, Eli Keel, simply called Note. Intimate, honest, and real, the play explores mental health issues with inte...

There is something special about this time of year. The school schedule is winding down, the sun shines a bit longer in the day, fireflies come out of their hibernation and the Kentucky Shakespeare Company begins their season. This year will mark the venerable company's 59th Anniversary and they are...

The Derby Dinner Playhouse certainly knows what their audience wants, and as a result, we get another in the long line of Southern-fried comedies from what seems to be their go-to playwriting team, the trio known collectively as Jones Hope Wooten. That's not a dig on the Playhouse; Jones Hope Wooten...

Unless you have lived under a rock or somehow managed to stay asleep since 2016, there is a lot of anger in the air, and rightfully so. Eve Theater's The P***y Grabber Plays takes the point of view of eight survivors of sexual harassment, their struggle, and bravery in the shadow of one of the most ...

Yonkers and Harmonia Gardens swept into town on Tuesday evening to a packed Whitney Hall. This exuberant and big-hearted production of Hello Dolly! leans into its mid-20th origins, with nods to the period staging of the 1880s, while also exploding into the present with contemporary color palettes....

Is Henry V the most accessible of William Shakespeare's History plays? There is a good argument for Richard III, but whatever the political underpinnings of any individual production, King Henry is heroic but complex; the man we want to be....

It was not too long ago that Commonwealth Theatre Center completed the Shakespeare canon of plays. Assuredly, because of the scope and volume of The Bard's works, it doesn't surprise me that it has been a little while since director Charlie Sexton had last brought this fairy tale to life....

That the 1969 riots at the center of Ike Holter's play are identified as 'Stonewall' is a neat metaphorical turn of phrase, even if it is happenstance. It is the turning point for Gays emerging from the shadows and staking a claim for a rightful place in society. And the walls came tumbling down....