KENTUCKY THEATER REVIEWS

Tradition is on tour!...

Louisville is going back to the Renaissance!...

Something Rotten! roared into town this week. And judging from the high-energy opening night, audiences won't be lifting their noses at this hybrid Shakespeare/Musical production. The title itself is a quotation from one of Shakespeare's best-known plays and includes the ubiquitous use of exclamatio...

Marriages fail for many reasons, or perhaps, more often than not, it boils down to the fear that you have sacrificed something for that commitment, and you want another chance to get it back. And if you have children, the weight is much greater....

If Actors Theatre were to make an annual tradition of producing the latest Dominique Morisseau play every January, it would be a reason to rejoice. One year after the indelible Skeleton Crew, director Steve H. Broadnax III, and actor Patrese D. McClain have returned with Pipeline, an even stronger p...

This week's Broadway Series production ushers in the holiday season with the stage adaptation of the 1983 movie, A Christmas Story. It took almost three decades for the musical to come into being, hitting Broadway November 2012. The perennial television favorite is a nostalgic stroll through small-t...

If you have been even remotely close to a mall and/or department store during the Holiday season, you know well the Scene. Often found within the center of the shopping hub-bub and cleverly placed near the toys, an onslaught of seasonal scenery is in sight: adorable gingerbread houses, cotton-candy ...

As a kid, I remember watching White Christmas (1954) every year with my family. When I got a little older I came across Holiday Inn, the 1941 precursor that also starred Bing Crosby, but paired with Fred Astaire, and introducing the song 'White Christmas'. There was a widely held opinion among some ...

This review includes a longer than usual list of credits in the header, and that may point to a deficiency in the posting of other reviews, but the exception made here is to indicate the particularly balanced collaboration among the team members....

Poets have been seeking the truth about love for centuries. As elusive as the breeze and as prolific as the butterfly....

I'm not sure how many have read Mary Shelley's classic novel, so familiar is the creature from countless generations of the story that have moved further and further from the source. It seems likely that there might be a good number of people who have never read or seen any of these, and only know t...

Walking to my car after seeing Bunbury Theatre's current show at The Henry Clay, I had to return a phone call to my sister....

After 15 years, Nora is back, and she's got a lot to say....

As many theatre fans know, Disney isn't short of staged adaptions based on their beloved family films. Starting in the 90s with Beauty and the Beast, Disney has gone on to produce shows such as The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Tarzan, Mary Poppins, Frozen, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Freaky F...

I think I speak for the majority of liberal America when I say that the times we live in are exhausting. More than that, they are disheartening in a way that embitters us to the victories and further dampens the tragedies of our nation's storied past. It is difficult to believe that there will ever ...

After the disappointment of canceling Waitress following the June 13 fire at the Kentucky Center, Broadway in Louisville kicks off the current season in spectacular style. The 2014 Broadway production of Disney's Aladdin flew into Louisville this week for an extended run....

On October 30, 1938, just before 8:00 pm, Americans gathered around the radio to listen to Mercury Theatre On The Air, an anthology series produced and hosted by Orson Welles. That evening's program, scripted by Howard Koch, was a modern-day adaptation of H.G. Well's The War of the Worlds, one of th...

Lucas Hnath's A Doll's House Part 2 opens with a knock on a door. Reid Thompson's haunting set design stretches across the Victor Jory Theatre with purpose, making the smallest ATL performance space feel somehow like the largest, and in in the center stands a door, tall, purple, and foreboding. The ...

If you were fortunate to be in the opening night audience of Commonwealth Theater Company's (CTC) production of Blue Stockings, you had the privilege to witness not only a brilliant performance but also a pre-show panel discussion entitled 'Leadership, Representation, and the Impact of Women in High...

Not so many years ago, a person diagnosed with a behavioral and/or learning disability would have been sent to a 'special' school or home where, most of the time, just their basic needs were met, with little human interaction or development....

'In here, life is beautiful...' a phrase repeated by the Emcee of the Kit-Kat Club in Berlin. This emcee invites his audience to forget and ignore their troubles and hardship and indulge in a world full of dancing girls, flirtations, and decadence. Gritty, powerful and raw, Pandora Productions curre...

Nineteenth-century mansions always put me in a good mood on a cool September night. If there is a good story to go along with said mansion, all the better. Actors Theatre of Louisville kicks off the fall and its New Play Project with A. Rey Pamatmat's The Electric Harvest, a site-specific one-act se...

Let's return to the farmlands of Minnesota and visit some of the funniest Lutheran ladies that have ever graced a stage: the Church Basement Ladies. 'Rise Up, O Men' is the fifth musical addition to the continuing stories inspired from a book by Janet Letnes Martin and Suzann Nelson, entitled Growin...

The wild and raunchy Tony Nominated comedy by Robert Askins makes it's Louisville premiere with Wayward Actors!...

Bust A Move With the Good NewsAltar Boyz is one of the craziest, funniest things I have seen lately. A tongue-in-cheek satire not of God or organized religion per se, but of a particular type of hyperactive, relentlessly upbeat Christian entertainment that is pure, irresistible showbiz. The title is...