Portland Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 16

BWW Review: Margie Boule is Glorious as the Empress of Fashion in Triangle Productions' FULL GALLOP
by Krista Garver - September 22, 2016

I'm not that into fashion. In truth, we're barely on speaking terms. So, when I found out that Triangle Productions' first show of the season was FULL GALLOP, a one-woman show about tastemaker and fashion icon Diana Vreeland, I wasn't sure what to expect. On the one hand, I've greatly enjoyed past T...

BWW Review: What TREVOR the Chimpanzee Teaches Us About Being Human, at Artists Rep
by Krista Garver - September 20, 2016

It seems like every time a previously docile animal, like a pet dog or an animal at the zoo, does something unexpectedly awful (usually in the form of harming a person), we hear things like, 'I don't know what happened. He's never been aggressive before.' When it's a person who commits a terrible ac...

BWW Review: CoHo Productions' THE GUN SHOW Challenges Us to Have a Reasonable Conversation About a Divisive Issue
by Krista Garver - September 13, 2016

'Something happened 13 years ago.' That's the first line of E.M. Lewis's stunning one-person play THE GUN SHOW, and from the moment Vin Shambry says it until a little over an hour later when he takes his bow, you should be prepared to laugh, cry, sing, and maybe, just maybe, change your perspective ...

BWW Review: Ancient Greek Drama Meets the Patriot Act in ANTIGONE PROJECT: A PLAY IN 5 PARTS, at Profile Theatre
by Krista Garver - September 12, 2016

In response to the controversial Patriot Act of 2001, which allowed for wiretapping, surveillance, and other measures ostensibly to protect the United States against terrorism, five women wrote adaptations of Sophocles' ANTIGONE, a play about power, resistance, and what happens when we're denied tho...

BWW Review: Love, Hate, Disappointment, Forgiveness -- ANNAPURNA Plumbs the Depths of Human Relationships, at Third Rail
by Krista Garver - August 12, 2016

What would you do if the wife who left you 20 years ago in the middle of the night, and who you've loved and and hated ever since, showed up at your door?...

BWW Review: Get Your Laugh On at A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, at Broadway Rose
by Krista Garver - August 10, 2016

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM is the musical equivalent of the perfect summer beach read -- funny, not too demanding, and everything works right out in the end. The current production at Broadway Rose fulfills all of these expectations and gives you a tune to hum on your way home (I...

BWW Review: When Fantasy Goes Too Far...Public Citizen Theatre's THE MAIDS
by Krista Garver - August 09, 2016

Portland has a new theatre company! Public Citizen Theatre is the mostly crowdfunded passion project of Amanda Mehl and Aaron Filyaw. For their first production they've chosen Jean Genet's 1947 play THE MAIDS, a sadomasochistic look at domestic servitude, based on the true story of the Papin sisters...

BWW Review: Michael Streeter Gives Us a Fresh New Woman-Centered JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, at Post5
by Krista Garver - July 28, 2016

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR had its heyday before I was born. Of course, growing up as a musical lover, I had several Andrew Lloyd Webber compilation CDs, so I got to know the music, which I still think is rates among Webber's best. But, I'd never had the pleasure of seeing the actual musical until last ...

BWW Review: WEST SIDE STORY is Beautiful, Haunting, and Sadly Still Relevant, at Broadway Rose
by Krista Garver - July 06, 2016

Broadway Rose could perhaps not have picked a more fitting time to bring us Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim's WEST SIDE STORY. Right now, our country and several others around the world are in dire need of a reminder that when gangs face off, there is no happy ending. Violen...

BWW Review: The Office Gets Weird in Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble's PROCEDURES FOR SAYING NO
by Krista Garver - June 27, 2016

...

BWW Review: Experience the Punk Angst in AMERICAN IDIOT at Triangle Productions!
by Krista Garver - June 27, 2016

When AMERICAN IDIOT premiered on Broadway in 2010, I must admit I was skeptical. Like every other person of my generation, I started listening to Green Day in high school. But a punk jukebox musical? Really?...

BWW Review: Hope and Humor Spring Eternal in THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH at Artists Rep
by Krista Garver - June 08, 2016

If you've been wondering whether you should see THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH at Artists Rep, the answer is yes. Here's why....

BWW Review: Feel the Heat in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE at Portland Center Stage
by Krista Garver - May 31, 2016

As soon as you walk into the theatre at Portland Center Stage, you'll start to feel overheated and a little claustrophobic. No, nothing's wrong with the air conditioning. It's because of G.W. Mercier's set, which features an authentic New Orleans second-story balcony jutting out over the two cramp...

BWW Review: GRAND CONCOURSE Considers the Benefits and Costs of Compassion, at Artists Rep
by Krista Garver - May 13, 2016

You know those shows that won't quite let you go? Heidi Schreck's GRAND CONCOURSE, now playing at Artists Repertory Theatre, is one of them. I saw the show with 10 people. We all had a slightly different take on it, and we have continued to talk about it -- both online and off. I take that a sign ...

BWW Review: Human Relationships Go Bite-Sized (or Is It Byte-Sized) in LOVE AND INFORMATION, at Theatre Vertigo
by Krista Garver - April 19, 2016

If you were to google 'information about love,' randomly click on 57 of the results, and then skim each page starting in the middle, you'd experience the digital equivalent of watching Caryl Churchill's LOVE AND INFORMATION, currently playing at Theatre Vertigo....

BWW Review: Ancestry, Identity Collide in BLUE DOOR, at Profile Theatre
by Krista Garver - April 14, 2016

Are we the products of our cultural history? Or can we create ourselves from scratch as something new?...

BWW Review: THE PIANIST OF WILLESDEN LANE Melds Music, Storytelling, and Inspiration, at Portland Center Stage
by Krista Garver - April 13, 2016

Chalk up another winner for Portland Center Stage this season -- THE PIANIST OF WILLESDEN LANE is one you don't want to miss! Mona Golabek's one-woman show about her own mother's escape from Nazi-controlled Austria on the Kindertransport is part-concert, part-storytelling, and all magic....

BWW Review: Love, Loss, Loneliness, and Figuring Out How to Be a Person in THE FEW at CoHo Productions
by Krista Garver - April 05, 2016

In the middle of Samuel D. Hunter's THE FEW, Brian - a long-haul truck driver recently returned home after a four-year absence - slumps in a chair and says: 'I'm really terrible at being a person.' That statement perfectly encapsulates the struggle at the center of this play, which is about people t...

BWW Review: triangle productions! and Staged! Bring Us a Very Very HEATHERS...THE MUSICAL!
by Krista Garver - March 20, 2016

You remember Heathers, right? The 1988 cult classic movie starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater that gave the high school lexicon such classics as 'What's your damage?' 'That's so very!' and 'F**k me gently with a chainsaw.' (I wasn't allowed to see it, but I had a friend whose mom let us watch...

BWW Review: This is Why We Need Theatre: WE ARE PROUD TO PRESENT… at Artists Rep
by Krista Garver - March 18, 2016

When Jackie Sibblies Drury wrote WE ARE PROUD TO PRESENT A PRESENTATION ABOUT THE HERERO OF NAMIBIA, FORMERLY KNOWN AS SOUTHWEST AFRICA, FROM THE GERMAN SUDWESTAFRIKA, BETWEEN THE YEARS 1884-1915 (yes, that's the complete title), in 2012, she couldn't have known the maelstrom that would be upon us i...

BWW Review: Don't Judge! Do Go See STUPID F**KING BIRD at Portland Center Stage
by Krista Garver - March 11, 2016

In Chekov's THE SEAGULL, writer Constantin Treplev says: 'We need new forms of expression. We need new forms, and if we can't have them we had better have nothing.' And, with THE SEAGULL, the first of his four great plays, Chekov did indeed introduce a new form of theatre -- one that replaced the me...

BWW Review: Well Arts' BREAKING RANK Brings Women Veterans' Stories Powerfully to Life
by Krista Garver - February 29, 2016

Women have served on U.S. battlefields since our country's beginning. Women were nurses, cooks, and even saboteurs in the American Revolutionary War. In the Civil War, women disguised as men were soldiers. In 1866, Dr. Mary Walker was awarded the Medal of Honor, becoming the first and only woman e...

BWW Review: (Re)Discover the Joy of Real Live Human Relationships in EACH AND EVERY THING at Portland Center Stage
by Krista Garver - February 26, 2016

At the beginning of his one-man show, EACH AND EVERY THING, when Dan Hoyle makes the mandatory 'turn off your cell phone' announcement, he jokes that by the end of the show you might want to just throw the darn thing away. You may scoff. But he's right. After 80ish minutes of watching Hoyle tell his...

BWW Review: Keeping Up Appearances in 1950s Cuba: CONTIGO PAN Y CEBOLLA at Milagro Theatre
by Krista Garver - February 22, 2016

Covering up the dinner table to hide the modest meal, talking about buying a piano, insisting that her son goes to art school -- these are just a few of the things Lala does to hide her family's dire financial straits in award-winning Cuban playwright Hector Quintero's 1962 comedy CONTIGO PAN Y CEBO...

BWW Review: MOTHERS AND SONS Celebrates 20 Years of Progress on LGBT Rights, at Artists Rep
by Krista Garver - February 17, 2016

Twenty or so years ago, gay Americans were second-class citizens and gay men were dying of AIDS. Today, members of the LGBT community can get married and adopt children, and AIDS is a controllable disease. That's a heck of a lot of change for one generation, and not everyone has accepted it....