MAINE THEATER REVIEWS

Portland's Good Theater is closing, what has been a highly adventurous and challenging fourteenth season, with a triumphant production of Act One, James Lapine's play based on the autobiography of Moss Hart. This nostalgic, subtly comic, and warmly touching work tells the story of a young Hart, lear...

A full house of children and adults greeted the Disney musical Mary Poppins with exuberant delight at the historic Waterville Opera House this weekend. And, indeed, the elaborate production of the familiar classic had many pleasures to offer. Directed by Debra Susi with choreography by Adam P. Bl...

Portland Stage's latest production of Aaron Posner's 2014 adaptation of Chaim Potok's novel, My Name Is Asher Lev, is a touching account of a young Jewish man's quest to become an artist and to reconcile his vocation with the traditions and expectations of his Orthodox family and community. Portland...

Choosing to mount Arthur Miller's enduring classic, The Crucible, can be tricky business. The timeless masterpiece is a well-known, beloved staple of the stage and literature, though its very familiarity often makes it difficult to bring any new insights to the piece. Nonetheless, Portland Players t...

Mad Horse Theatre company has mounted a full production of Brent Askari's savvy, subtle, sometimes serious comedy, Digby's Home as its third main stage production of the 2015-2016 season, having first been introduced the work to Portland audience's at the company's BY LOCAL series. The play, whic...

Portland's Lyric Music Theater has mounted a sweetly sad production of the Marsha Norman-Lucy Simon musical version of the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel, The Secret Garden, that is sure to touch the hearts of young and old alike. Directed by Joshua Chard, the production showcases the versatility of ...

Attempting a production of the complex and heart-wrenching Pulitzer Prize winning musical, Next To Normal, in a small theatre in Maine is in itself a bold bit of programming, but to pull it off with such dazzling aplomb is absolutely extraordinary! This is precisely what Biddeford City Theater's Ar...

Portland Stage's latest production of Tammy Ryan's 2009 play, Lost Boy in Whole Foods, offers a thought-provoking encounter with several extremely topical issues, among them the impact of immigration, the obligation to refugees, the clash of cultures, and the meaning and motives for good deeds. Moun...

The tiny Footlights Theatre in Falmouth, ME, has a hit on its hands with the endearing new comedy, Leonora Rabinowitz, I Love You, by local writers Hal J. Cohen and Amanda Painter, a sweet, funny, and often moving play about a widow and her daughter's exploration of their troubled sexual experience...

Portland Stage's gleeful, wickedly funny send-up of the Sherlock Holmes classic, Hound of the Baskervilles, as adapted by Steven Canny and John Nicholson, makes for a perfect antidote to the winter blues! Mounted with breathless energy by director Daniel Burson and brought to life by an agile, inven...

Brunswick's Theater Project has mounted a sparkling production of David Ives' version of Pierre Corneille's The Liar, offering the audience a rare treat to be able to enjoy this seventeenth century comedy in Ives' witty, linguistically rich "translaptation." Not only is the choice of such a sophisti...

Another chapter in the thirty-seven year history of Paul Portner's interactive comedy, Shear Madness, has opened on the stage of Portland's Good Theater, and the side-splittingly funny, quick-paced murder mystery which Brian P. Allen and his excellent cast serve up is not to be missed!...

Golf is a game which requires patience and strategy, and in many ways, so does Norm Foster's 2014 comedy, The Ladies Foursome, mounted by Lewiston's Public Theatre. Directed by Judith Ivey and cast with a fine ensemble the four-character play about the secrets and sharing of a quartet of friends yie...

Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd with its complex through-composed score and dark ironies is an ambitious undertaking for any company, but South Portland's Lyric Music Theater rises to the challenge in an economical and electrifying performance that keeps the audience riveted to its seats....

The annual Christmastime musical revue which the Good Theater presents has grown incrementally bigger, more complex, more sparkling, and more striking each season. This year's two-hour songfest, written and directed by Brian P. Allen, is dedicated to the musicals of the 1930s and with some dozen per...

The theatrical scene continued to be lively in Maine this year, with the Portland-area theatres presenting a number of stunning world premieres and the musical theatre scene gloriously vibrant. These are my personal choices of the best in Maine, grouped by theatre company and show: Because their ...

South Portland's venerable community theatre consistently presents ambitious and stylish productions of the standard Broadway canon, but in undertaking that most iconic of American musicals, The Music Man, it has demonstrated its extraordinary mettle and risen to the challenge with excellence. Mo...

Revisiting the traumas of the 1960s has been the subject of two recent plays which have debuted in Portland. After Rob Urbinati's monumental Mama's Boy at the Good, Portland stage is now presenting Katori Hall's poetic play about Martin Luther King, To the Mountaintop....

In mounting the world premiere of Rob Urbinati's new play, Mama's Boy, Good Theater's Artistic Director Brian P. Allen has given Maine a great gift - one of the company's finest productions - some two hours of searing psychological drama, tautly directed and brought to life by a stellar cast. Urb...

Lewiston's Public Theatre opened its twenty-fifth season with a finely tuned, engrossing production of Frederick Knott's classic thriller, Wait Until Dark. Presented in a well-crafted adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher which moves the action to the film noir world of the 1940s and directed by Janet Mitch...

Portland Stage opened its 2015-2016 season with a thought-provoking production of Irish playwright Brian Friel's award-winning drama Dancing at Lughnasa, a wistful memory play about a matriarchal family in County Donegal in 1936. Commonly considered Friel's masterpiece, the drama examines the narrow...

Portland's Good Theater opened its 2015-2016 season with No Biz Like Show Biz, a stylish tribute to two legends of the Broadway stage, Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, created and directed by the company's artistic director, Brian P. Allen. The one-hundred-minute arrangement of songs associated with th...

Lyric Music Theater of South Portland opened its 2015-16 season with the wacky musical The Addams Family, which examines the flip side of normal in the zany antics of a ghoulish family made famous by the Charles Addams comic strip, as well as various television and screen incarnations. The show, wit...

The songs of the early rock and roll awakening, still rock and roll in Ogunquit Playhouse's newest production of Million Dollar Quartet....

'The show is chocked full of camp and kitschy humor, making for a perfect date night or family outing.'...