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Portland Stage opens its 2016-2017 season with a quietly poignant production of A. R. Gurney's Later Life, the 1993 drama which explores the emotional choices and self-assessments that face people in their retirement years. The four-character piece is subdued, even reticent, and it speaks with the kind of understated wistfulness of so many of Gurney's plays.
'We are the storytellers; we are the musicmakers; we are the dreamers of dreams.' With these words the cast of Frank McCourt's The Irish and How They Got That Way brings to a close a spellbinding evening of story and song that has the audience clapping, foot-tapping, weeping, and laughing in one of the most vibrant theatrical experiences in recent memory. The co-production of Pulitzer Prize winning author Frank McCourt's 1997 play with music marks a stunningly successful collaboration between Maine State Music Theatre and Portland Stage and promises to be a major hit for its brief four-week engagement. McCourt's one-hundred-minute drama tells the story of several centuries of the Irish experience on both sides of the Atlantic. No mere history lesson, however, as much knowledge as the play does impart, rather The Irish is a poetic, saucy, irreverent, and exquisitely beautiful tapestry of music, language, narrative, peopled with colorful characters and showcased in compelling song and dance.
'There are two kinds of people in the world, as ye very well know,' Peter Cormican asserts in a lilting accent, 'those that are Irish and those that want to be.' The English-born actor, son Irish parents - a Protestant mother from Belfast and a Catholic father from Galway - is currently in Maine to make his Maine State Music Theatre/Portland Stage debut in Frank McCourt's play The Irish and How They Got That Way, directed by Marc Robin, which opens in Portland August 19th. The production, a bold new collaboration between two of Maine leading Equity companies, marks an exciting new chapter for both theatres and promises to be one of the season's biggest hits, as it has been in every town its played. Cormican is joined in our conversation by two of the other four principals from the a small cast that also stars Curt Dale Clark [see BWW interview 5/24/16], Charis Leos and Cary Michele Miller, (and features Cameron Wright and Emily Davis, Ernest Sauceda (fiddler) and two other musicians). Both Leos and Miller are MSMT veterans, but new to McCourt's play. 'This is my debut at Portland Stage,' Miller says with anticipation. 'I always look forward to working with Curt and Charis and Marc, and I am enjoying getting to know Peter. And I am always excited to learn new material and new music.'
'We are all Irish. Everyone loves the free, spirited, easy come-easy go air of the Irish, and this show makes everyone want to be Irish all the time - not just on St. Patrick's Day.' There is a twinkle in his eye, as Maine State Music Theatre's Artistic Director, Curt Dale Clark, utters those words. Immediately his sentiments are seconded by the show's director/choreographer, Marc Robin, and Portland Stage's Artistic Director, Anita Stewart, all three of whom will be joining forces to create Frank McCourt's play with music, The Irish and How They Got That Way, from August 16- September 4, 2016, at Portland Stage.
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. Mounted with the company's customary excellent production values and cast from strength, Ryan's play delivers a number of stirring theatrical moments.
From August 16 - September 4 this summer, two of greater Portland's leading theatre companies will combine forces in an exciting and news-making endeavor that is sure to enrich Maine's arts landscape. Both prestigious Equity companies, Maine State Music Theatre and Portland Stage Company, have announced a co-production of Frank McCourt's runaway hit, The Irish and How They Got That Way, at Portland Stage in the weeks following MSMT's regular summer season in Brunswick and before the opening of Portland Stage's 2016-2017 season in late September. The 1997 play with music chronicles the emotional and spiritual journey of the Irish on both sides of the Atlantic and features melodies, originally arranged by Rusty Magee, that range from traditional Celtic folk tunes to Thomas Moore ballads, George M. Cohen favorites, and the more contemporary sounds of U-2.
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 repertoires are so vastly different, and because both companies produced outstanding seasons, my vote for highest honors goes to both Maine State Music Theatre and the Good Theater.
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.
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, restricted lives of the Mundy sisters, constrained by poverty, unfulfilled dreams, and the conventions of Catholicism, as recounted by Michael, the 'love child' of one of the sisters, Christina, who tells the story from the dual perspective of a seven-year-old child and a grown man three decades later.
Portland Stage closes its season with the world premiere of award-winning Maine novelist, Monica Wood's touching first play, Papermaker. Set during the papermill strike of 1989 in the fictional town of Abbott Falls, Maine, the work probes the perceptions, conflicts, and interactions of individuals on both sides of the painful controversy. Handling material already familiar to her readers from her memoir, When We Were the Kennedys, Wood brings to the stage a compassionate grasp of character, a poetic sense of metaphor, and just enough sharp wit and turn of phrase to add spice to this all-too-human drama about ordinary folks whose lives and identities are turned upside down by the bitter labor dispute.
Frigid New York presents A PowerOut production: Let's Play Play, written by Ben Ferber and directed by Todd Brian Backus. The production plays tonight, Feb 18th - Mar 7th, 2015.
Frigid New York presents A PowerOut production: Let's Play Play, written by Ben Ferber and directed by Todd Brian Backus. The production plays Feb 18th - Mar 7th, 2015.
It's your last week to vote for the 2014 BroadwayWorld Maine Regional Awards! Check out the latest live stats as of December 26th. Voting closes at the end of the year, in under one week!
Time is ticking on your last chance to vote for the 2014 BroadwayWorld Maine Regional Awards! Check out the latest live stats as of December 19th. Voting closes at the end of the year!
Voting has now opened for the 2014 BroadwayWorld Maine Regional Awards! Check out the latest live stats as of December 4th.
Voting has now opened for the 2014 BroadwayWorld Maine Regional Awards! Check out the latest live stats as of December 4th.
Voting has now opened for the 2014 BroadwayWorld Maine Regional Awards! Check out the latest live stats as of November 25th.
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, Cosme McMoon, traces the collaboration between the pianist and New York socialite and would-be opera diva, Florence Foster Jenkins, who delighted audiences -for all the wrong reasons - with her colorful recitals from 1932-1944.
In presenting the world premiere of Tom Coash's play, Veils, the winner of the 2012 Clauder Competition for New England playwrights, Portland Stage has introduced audiences to a brave new work which addresses the thorny crosscurrents of cultural identity. The company, as always, has mounted this moving piece about two college students at the outbreak of the Arab Spring revolution in Cairo with bold conviction.
Portland Stage's stylish and stirring production of Words by Ira Gershwin and the Great American Songbook offers fascinating insight into the alchemy of a song. Joseph Vass' 2013 play examines the professional life and art of "the other Gershwin," George's brother, his lyricist, and the creator of hundreds of popular standards, which have come to be part of The Great American Songbook.
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