CENTRAL VIRGINIA THEATER REVIEWS

A poignant and reflective journey through the celebrated artist's career and personal contemplations on life and mortality. Despite showing signs of vocal aging, Patinkin's mastery in blending song with deeply personal storytelling captivates the audience, making each song a narrative of its own. Th...

Young Jean Lee's 2014 play made it to Broadway in 2018 and now afflicts the comfortable at Conciliation Lab....

A sweet and sentimental Christmas play geared to fans of the classic movie...

This crowd-pleaser is lightweight, fizzy fun—maybe not so much Champagne as sweet sparkling cider, but effervescent nonetheless....

Michael and Lily are an odd couple--they irritate each other, but this play's familiar plot signals that they'll be great friends....

For a change of pace, Richmond Triangle Players’ holiday offering is an original musical, “A Christmas Kaddish.” Using flashback elements from seasonal favorites like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “A Christmas Carol,” the show takes an unusually serious look at life, death and love....

Dominique Morisseau's 2019 play--one of the most-produced plays of that year--hurls the audience into the emotions that surface when schoolteacher Nya's son Omari is threatened with being diverted from his private boarding school into the notorious school-to-prison pipeline....

'The Niceties' is Eleanor Burgess's 2018 drama in which a white professor and a Black undergraduate argue over provocative issues of race and history--an excellent choice for The Conciliation Lab's season opener....

Firehouse Theatre presents a program of four world-premiere one-act plays written by military veterans, taken from their lives in service in different eras....

Philip Ridley's emotional two-character play confronts homophobia and searing loss....

Perkinson Center for the Arts and Education presents Illuminated Stage Theatre Company's one-actor play, showcasing the new facility...

The 1995 revue 'I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change' was to open four days before quarantine shuttered Swift Creek Mill Theatre in 2020, but it's the season opener for 2021....

Marie Lucas gives a lovely performance as the devoted mother of a genderqueer youth...

In true repertory fashion, nine of the ten actors who perform Quill's 'Twelfth Night' are also presenting 'The Bottom Show,' featuring the rude (in this case, very rude) mechanicals from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'....

The reliable Shakespeare comedy is half of a summer repertory season, with a company of ten actors rotating between two plays....

Richmond favorites Desiree Roots and Scott Wichmann, as Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, swing audiences through a delightful selection of beloved songs....

Richmond's Firehouse Theatre, which has presented live theater throughout the pandemic, now presents the world premiere of 'Walled In,' with material from Thoreau's 'Walden'...

Richmond Triangle Players has had occasional live productions going through the pandemic, but its new '4000 Days' is the first in-person show for many newly vaccinated theatergoers. The socially distanced, masked patrons in the audience seemed happy to be in a theater at all, but '4000 Days' is only...

Firehouse Theatre's production of 'Krapp's Last Tape' brings thing too-rarely-produced masterwork to brilliant life with the collaboration of director James Ricks and actor Alan Sader....

Harrison David Rivers' play focuses on a loving partners Neil, a white BLM activist, and Jesse, a black writer....

Richmond's TheatreLAB won ten awards and eight went to Virginia Rep in the 13th annual Artsies, presented virtually for the first time....

Two related selectionsa?"a?oeThe Last Days of Judas Iscariota?? and a?oeCorpus Christi.a?? And one that got awaya?"a?oeGrand Concourse.a??...

Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1935 film, 'The 39 Steps' is a typical Hitchcockian concoction of action, suspense and surprising twists, topped off with a bit of humor for good measure. Patrick Barlow's amusing adaptation ups the ante on the comedy and adds a bit of absurdity (and dozens of recognizable...

In 'Small Mouth Sounds,' a co-production of Virginia Rep and Cadence Theatre Company, six people participate in an extended silent meditation retreat in upstate New York, led by a pompous guru. The character sketches that emerge from the nearly wordless script illuminate individual yearning and pain...

I was lucky to see 'The Cake' at Richmond Triangle Players. It's late in the run of this sold-out hit, with a star turn by Terri Moore, who's made herself a local favorite in a couple iterations of 'Always, Patsy Cline.'...