MAINE THEATER REVIEWS

Portland's Good Theater celebrated Christmas with a delightfully conceived and stylishly performed musical revue, Broadway at the Good Theater, created and directed by Brian P. Allen. Devoted to the music of the 60s and showcasing both Broadway show tunes and other iconic popular melodies, this almo...

Once again 2014 was a year to revel in the diversity and accomplishments of the theatrical scene in Maine. The summer and winter seasons yielded a nice balance between adventurous programming and classics. Here is my personal list for 2014, grouped by theatre company and show. 1. MAINE STATE MUSI...

In this season of ubiquitous productions of A Christmas Carol, a production of Lionel Bart's Oliver! comes as a welcome Dickensian alternative. South Portland's Lyric Music Theater has mounted a very respectable revival of Bart's 1960 musical based on Oliver Twist. A curious but catchy melange of da...

Portland Stage's second production of the season, Stephen Temperley's witty and poignant memoire about Florence Foster Jenkins, Souvenir, whisks the audience back and forth between hilarity and heartache. The two-character drama told from the perspective of Mme. Jenkins' longsuffering accompanist, C...

For its fall offering, the New England Regional Theatre Company mounted an ambitious and stirring production of Man of La Mancha at the Orion Performing Arts Center in Topsham, Maine. The sixteen-person cast and twelve-musician ensemble invested this touching revival with passion and intelligence. D...

Portland's Good Theater has mounted the Maine premiere of Jeffrey Thatcher's wacky, wickedly funny comedy, Mrs. Mannerly, a two-character spoof of the obsession with politeness, manners, and surface polish which often disguises truths. Set in the 1960s in Steubenville, OH, Hatcher tells the tale ...

Lewiston's Public Theatre opened its 2014-2015 season with the excellent choice of A.R. Gurney's comedy of manners, The Cocktail Hour. Assembling a fine, experienced cast and creating a tasteful production, this performance reminds us of what an American treasure Gurney is as a playwright....

South Portland's Mad Horse Theatre Company opened its 2024-2015 season with a riveting revival of Arthur Miller's 1955 tragedy, A View from the Bridge, which in the hands of this talented ensemble proves as relevant and wrenching as it was almost sixty years ago. Miller's family drama about an It...

Portland's Good Theater opened its thirteenth season with a radiant revival of N. Richard Nash's 1954 play, The Rainmaker. The production, perfectly cast, sensitively directed and acted, and capped by an attractive physical production, speaks volumes about the virtues of this little company. Nash...

Portland Players takes an adventurous step in opening its season with a grand production of the beloved Boubil-Schonberg classic, LES MISERABLES. Assembling a large cast and mounting an impressive staging, this eighty-six year-old company delivers a performance of passion and heart, if not perfectio...

Portland Stage opened its 2014-2015 season with a probing and poignant production of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, the first of Simon's so-called 'Eugene Trilogy.' The 1983 autobiographical reminiscence tells the story of a Jewish boy growing up in a colorful, often dysfunctional extended fam...

South Portland's Lyric Music Theater opened its 2014-2015 season with a stylish, saucy production of the 2003 Tony award-winning musical Avenue Q. The Lopez-Marx-Whitty show is an unconventional, politically incorrect parody - a parable which chronicles the coming of age of eleven Sesame Street gene...

As has been the tradition for quite a few seasons, Theater at Monmouth ends its season with a production of one of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operettas. This year's choice, The Sorcerer, is a frothy, pleasant entertainment enhanced by the strong vocal merits of much of the cast. The pristine neo- ...

There are hot, sassy witches flying about the Ogunquit Playhouse in a production of The Witches of Eastwick, a musical comedy that has some memorable characters, high energy music and a fabulous set design....

The new production of Cabaret mounted by South Portland's Mad Horse Theatre together with Razer Entertainment, sizzles with tension and sears with emotion. The dark,edgy Kander-Ebb musical presented in this intimate space allows the audience identification in a manner so powerful as to make one feel...

Early in the first act of the Tom Snow - Dean Pitchford 1998 musical Footloose, Ren declares his passion for dancing - 'I can't sit still' - and, indeed, by the end of the evening at the Pickard Theatre, the audience for Maine State Music Theatre echoes his mantra. They are cheering, swaying, and sh...

The Banks family at 17 Cherry Tree Lane is creating their own reality television show in the current production of Mary Poppins at the Ogunquit Playhouse....

Doing justice to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, one of the most beloved and most often quoted plays in the repertoire, can be a daunting task, but the Theater at Monmouth has assembled a youthful cast and given the Bard's tragedy an honest reading - one which compensates for what it may lack in pas...

The intern program at Maine State Music Theatre is one of the company's finest features, and what better way to showcase these talented 2014 performers than as the youthful, energetic ensemble in the Steven Schwartz/John-Michael Tebelak rock musical, GODSPELL. Billed as a concert performance, thi...

For its third production of the season, Maine State Music Theatre has staged a dazzling revival of the beloved 1954 classic, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The company, under the direction of Patti Colombo, delivers a joyous, heartwarming, foot stomping, breathtaking extravaganza of brilliant danc...

While you may be primed for seeing the stage version of The Full Monty based on seeing the movie of the same name, you'll be surprised that the stage show presents in depth characters, emotional scenes and true life situations that make great storytelling. The characters boldly face such obstacles a...

'What I love that Patti [Colombo] is doing with this show is that she is not making it a sepia-toned romance,' declares Jarid Faubel, the actor who portrays Adam Pontipee in Maine State Music Theatre's new production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, directed and choreographed by Patti Colombo, wh...

Assembling a stellar cast and creative team, the Ogunquit Playhouse has mounted a powerful production of the Elton John-Lee Hall 2005 musical, Billy Elliot. Based on the 2000 film, both directed by Stephen Daldry with original choreography by Peter Darling, Billy Elliot movingly tells the story of a...

Maine State Music Theatre's second production of the season, a revival of the Knapp-Alper 1996 musical Chamberlain A Civil War Romance, proves to be a grand and glorious theatrical experience, an endeavor of epic proportions that delivers spectacle, emotion, and inspiration in equal measure. Span...

To witness an entire audience on its feet, joyfully clapping, singing, and dancing into the aisles, one might have imagined rocking at Woodstock rather than in picturesque college town of Brunswick, ME. But, indeed, the exuberance and energy that filled the Pickard Theatre on the Bowdoin campus was ...