Good Theater Artistic Director Brian P. Allen chose to close the season with a lovely, lyrical production of Horton Foote's platy, The Trip to Bountiful, in which Louisa Flaningam's luminous interpretation of Carrie Watts is surely one of the Portland theatre calendar's highlights.
Good Theater, the professional theater in residence at the St. Lawrence Arts Center, is pleased to present Horton Foote's multi-award-winning The Trip to Bountiful starring Broadway veteran Louisa Flaningam. Bountiful opens March 29 and plays through April 30.
Good Theater the professional theater in residence at the St. Lawrence Arts Centers has announced its 16th season opening in the fall of 2017. This will be the biggest season the company has produced yet.
Good Theater's Executive/Artistic Director Brian P. Allen has a remarkable sixth sense about choosing plays whose situations and characters resonate with originality and empathy. The latest production, Molly Smith Metzler's The May Queen, is an engaging portrait of five small town characters who all work in the local insurance agency and whose lives and paths remain interconnected because of their shared high school past. Metzler's comedy explores the surface banality of these characters, as it slowly and skillfully makes its way toward revealing some deeper poetic truths.
Good Theater the professional company in residence at the St. Lawrence Arts Center, 76 Congress Street, Portland, will open its next main stage production, THE MAY QUEEN on January 25. In addition the company will present three performances per week of A.R. Gurney's LOVE LETTERS. From January 25-February 26, the company will offer 33 days of continuous theater giving nine performances per week.
Love Letters by A.R. Gurney directed by Brian P. Allen, and presented by Good Theater January 29 - February 21.
A two character play in which the actors sit behind a desk and read from letters for eighty minutes poses a series of challenges to any director. What is it then that makes Brian P. Allen's new production of A.R. Gurney's 1989 drama, Love Letters, so completely mesmerizing? Not only is Gurney's writing poetic and poignant, but the production, which opened at Portland's Good Theater this past week starring Kathleen Kimball and Brian Allen (his role later assumed by Tony Reilly and then Steve Underwood), is so perfectly calibrated, so subtly interiorized that it resembles a fine chamber music performance.
Portland's Good Theater performs its annual musical revue, Broadway at the Good Theater this weekend bringing warmth, cheer, and an array of musical treats to mark the holiday season. Conceived, written, and directed by Brian P. Allen, this year's two hours of song and dance was devoted to the musicals of the 1970s.
Having had the privilege to serve as Broadway World's Maine Editor for more than three years now, I can say with pride that the state, though remote as it may seem from the epicenter of the theatre world, Broadway, is blessed to be home to so many thriving theatre companies who produce exciting, vibrant seasons. As I compiled my list for 2016 with many familiar names, I was also struck by the extraordinary consistency of excellence these companies maintain. Here are my personal choices of the best in Maine, grouped by theatre and show.
The thirteenth edition of the Broadway at Good Theater concerts will be presented November 30 - December 4 for six performances. This year will be a tribute to Broadway of the 1970s.
Following the first installment of my Theatre Miniature series - a profile of Curt Dale Clark - this second mini-video takes a look at the indefatigable Executive and Artistic Director of Portland's Good Theater, Brian P. Allen.
During the first act of Christopher Durang's Tony award-winning 2013 play, Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike, the characters muse that 'if everyone were on anti-depressants, there would be no Chekhov.' Happily for Portland theatre goers, it seems that none of the six colorful, endearing, eccentric personages in Durang's contemporary comedy appears to be on any medication. Rather they squabble and moan and rant about their lives in absurdly clever and humorous dialogue as they struggle to find some happiness in the human bonds which connect them.
When the now embattled Wells Fargo recently ran a series of ads suggesting that young people grow up and 'out of careers in the arts' and into 'mature choices of professions like the sciences and business,' the implications of the spots seriously irritated and alarmed most of us in the theatre community. A dancer yesterday, an engineer today….what message is that sending to our young people, many of whom are already deprived of arts education in their schools? It was then that the idea occurred to me and our Broadway World editors that a series of short video profiles asking successful theatre people why they had chosen a life in performance and what the rewards have been for them might be just the antidote.
Good Theater, the professional theater company in residence at the St. Lawrence Arts Center, will kick off its 15th Anniversary Season with the Portland premiere of the 2013 Tony Award winning Best Play, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang and directed by Good Theater's Artistic Director, Brian P. Allen The show will begin on Wednesday October 19 and play for five weeks through Sunday November 20 for a total of 30 performances.
History- actual 20th century events and the theatre's own story and legacy - became the joint focus of Maine State Music Theatre's second Peek Behind the Curtain talkback, held on July 7 at the Curtis Memorial Library. The panel examined the characters and forces that formed the basis for MSMT"s thrilling production of Evita, now playing at the Pickard until July 16, and also took several excursions into MSMT's history, which forms the basis of a new retrospective exhibition, MSMT Past, Present, and Future, which serendipitously celebrated a gala opening that same date. Moderated by Broadway World's Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold, the panel featured the three stars of the Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical, Kate Fahrner, Matt Farcher, and Nat Chandler, as well as the Artistic Directors of two of the areas leading theatres, MSMT's own Curt Dale Clark and the Good Theater's Brian P. Allen.
This week, we go around our Broadway World to feature stories in Boston, Chicago, Singapore and more. Check out our top 10 stories around our Broadway World below, which include ARCADIA in Boston, Victory Gardens Theater's World Premiere of HILLARY AND CLINTON, and a special feature on LES MIS in Singapore, just to name a few.
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, learning to navigate the complex currents of writing a Broadway show in the 1930s. Told by two narrators, Lapine's play brings to life not only the Hart-George S. Kaufmann partnership, but a host of other colorful historical characters who helped to shape this golden age of the stage.
Good Theater the professional theater company in residence at the St. Lawrence Arts Center, 76 Congress Street, Portland will close its 14th season with the regional theater premiere of ACT ONE by James Lapine from the autobiography by Moss Hart. Good Theater is the first company to do ACT ONE since its Broadway debut in 2014. The production opens April 6 and runs through May 1. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!
Laurel Casillo made her Broadway debut in Act One in 2014. Since then she has starred in two Good Theater productions: The Rainmaker as Lizzie in the fall of 2014, and as Marina Oswald in the world premiere of Mama's Boy this past fall in 2015.
Good Theater the professional theater company in residence at the St. Lawrence Arts Center, 76 Congress Street, Portland will close its 14th season with the regional theater premiere of ACT ONE by James Lapine from the autobiography by Moss Hart. Good Theater is the first company to do ACT ONE since its Broadway debut in 2014. The production opens April 6 and runs through May 1. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!
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