The St. Louis Theatre Circle has announced their nominations for their annual awards to be distributed on March 23, 2026, at the Loretto-Hilton Center. 172 theatre artists have been nominated in 34 categories honoring the best in St. Louis Theater in 2025.
The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis leads all companies with a record-breaking 38 nominations for their productions of Athena, Clyde’s, Emma, Ken Ludwig’s Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Brothers Size, and The Cottage. Emma is the most nominated comedy of the season with 11 nominations.
This past season was the year of the comedy in St. Louis Theater. Companies across the city had audiences laughing all season long with slapstick, farce, and satire. There were some wonderful musical productions that really sang, a few hard hitting dramas, but comedies reigned in both quantity and quality. Instead of publishing a Top 10 list this year, I’m going to recognize the Best in St. Louis Theater for 2025. “The Best” is still a shortened list of just 13 shows out of the nearly 90 shows I saw this past year. It took weeks of thought and painstaking consideration to decide which productions would be included in my annual list. Here they are. The productions are listed in alphabetical order, not ranked by favorites:
In The Cottage a woman decides to expose her latest affair to both her husband—and her lover's wife. As secrets unravel and passions collide, the meaning of love, identity, and marriage are all thrown into question, and served in a way only the British can serve it: with tea.
Roaring laughter meets the roaring twenties in The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis’ The Cottage. A dramedy in the classic sense, the company’s 59th season starter offers an endless barrage of scandalous dalliances, clever double entendres, and mistaken identities.
After a brief hiatus for the Labor Day Weekend, the St. Louis Theater scene gets back into full swing with more than twenty shows opening between now and the end of the year. Broadway World critic James Lindhorst picks the six shows opening in September and early October that he thinks cannot be missed, including the local premieres of Sandy Rustin's The Cottage, Tracy Lett's The Minutes, and Anna Ziegler's the Wanderers.
Multi-hyphenate actor, director, composer and educator Jordan Coughtry returns to The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis this season in the regional premiere of Sandy Rustin’s play The Cottage. Coughtry killed audiences last year as the suave and debonair Tony Wendice in The Rep’s Dial M for Murder.
The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis will kick off the 2025/26 Season with the sharp-witted fresh comedy The Cottage by Sandy Rustin, the playwright of Clue. Learn more!
Get a first look at The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis's suspense thriller Dial ‘M’ for Murder by Frederick Knott. Dial ‘M’ for Murder, which inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, combines passion, blackmail and revenge into a breathtaking, edge-of-your-seat murder mystery when a gold-digging husband’s perfect crime misfires, trapping all parties in a sinister and dangerous web of lies.
Playing on themes of injustice, betrayal, class status and greed, this gripping production of Dial M for Murder is a feast for cozy mystery lovers and amateur sleuths alike.
DIAL 'M' FOR MURDER is surely one of the most perfect productions I’ve seen at The Rep in some years. Jordan Coughtry plays Tony, the scheming husband. His performance is from the Realm of Ideal Forms. It is that perfect!
The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis will kick off the 2024/25 Season with the suspense thriller Dial ‘M’ for Murder by Frederick Knott. Learn how to purchase tickets.
The game’s afoot with howling fun! The Cape Playhouse, the longest-running professional summer theatre in the country, will soon wrap up its summer season with Ken Ludwig's Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery. This final production will run from August 30th thru September 9th.
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.
William Shakespeare's magical comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream opens at Theater at Monmouth tonight, July 23 at 7:30 p.m. One of Shakespeare's most popular plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream follows the journey of four young lovers as they find their way through the forest and to each other. But as Lysander says 'the course of true love never did run smooth.' Full of madcap chases and mistaken identities, A Midsummer Night's Dream is an exploration of the mystery and madness of love.
Season 46 continues at TAM with Tom Stoppard's whodunit satire, The Real Inspector Hound opening at Theater at Monmouth Friday, July 30 at 7:30 p.m. A parody of the Agatha Christie-style parlor mystery, The Real Inspector Hound explores the thin line between the audience and the stage, as Stoppard fractures reality and life imitates art. Of the 1968 production The Guardian wrote, "Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound is a witty and delicious parody of the fog bound whodunit.'
Noel Coward's clever comedy Fallen Angels opens at Theater at Monmouth today, July 17 at 7:30 p.m. Smart, stylish, and intoxicatingly witty, Fallen Angels takes you on hilarious ride as two women take on the nature of commitment, the sexual double standard, and each other for the chance to rekindle an old flame. Coward's fast-paced comedy of manners discards social codes and exposes the foibles of the British upper class.
William Shakespeare's magical comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream opens at Theater at Monmouth Friday, July 23 at 7:30 p.m. One of Shakespeare's most popular plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream follows the journey of four young lovers as they find their way through the forest and to each other. But as Lysander says "the course of true love never did run smooth." Full of madcap chases and mistaken identities, A Midsummer Night's Dream is an exploration of the mystery and madness of love.
Noel Coward's clever comedy Fallen Angels opens at Theater at Monmouth Friday, July 17 at 7:30 p.m. Smart, stylish, and intoxicatingly witty, Fallen Angels takes you on hilarious ride as two women take on the nature of commitment, the sexual double standard, and each other for the chance to rekindle an old flame. Coward's fast-paced comedy of manners discards social codes and exposes the foibles of the British upper class.
Olney Theatre Center, a Mid-Atlantic destination for extraordinary theater performance and education, launches its 77th Anniversary season with Steven Schwartz's Tony-nominated classic Godspell running February 4 - March 1, 2015 on the Mainstage. Check out a first look below!
