Regional

SOLID AS AN 80s ROCK Big hair, short shorts, and tons of Madonnawannabees. It’s hard not to love the spirit of the 80s. A huge part of that was the high-spirited music of the decade. Moving past the 70s folk ballad/disco era but not yet into the angst-y 90s, the 80s were loaded with feel…

HOUSE IS IN ORDER, BUT IS THAT ENOUGH? There is so much that is right about Ike Holter’s clever script of Put Your House in Order. Because of that, it is unfortunate that, in the end, it is just a bit unfulfilling — and challenging to explain why without giving away much of what certainly…

YOU’RE GETTING TO BE A RABBIT WITH ME Whatever happened to all the imaginary friends we had as kids? Did they all end up in some limbo where they started making friends with each other, or, like Peter Pan, did they transfer their affections to a new generation of make-believers? Anyway, they’re no longer there…

MEH BUTTERFLY M. Butterfly asks the audience to accept a love story in which a French career diplomat takes a Chinese opera diva as his mistress for 20 years, unaware that the diva is actually a man. Truth being stranger than fiction, the story is based on a real life affair that David Henry Hwang…

PUTTING CAPITALISM ON THE MAT Which of the following defines yoga to you? A series of gentle exercises meant to relax and invigorate the body; A Hindu spiritual and ascetic discipline using breath control and meditation; An 83 billion-dollar international industry of mats, equipment, clothing, and accessories. All three are true, but for Joan (Jo…

OH MY STAR! Bright Star is a heartwarming musical written by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell inspired by their 2013 bluegrass album Love Has Come for You. The show had a Broadway run in the spring of 2016 with direction by Walter Bobbie, choreography by Josh Rhodes and a set design by Eugene Lee. Now,…

LET THE GOOD TIMES POUR When people say a musical is old-fashioned they usually mean it in a negative way, which is silly. There are bad, good, and brilliant musicals, and  Singin’ in the Rain is brilliant. The stage version of Singin’ in the Rain was adapted from the 1952 MGM movie written by Betty Comden…

SOME, NOT ALL, IS ILLUMINATED Sadly, not everything is illuminated in British playwright Simon Block’s fascinating but problematic adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s best-selling novel about a young American writer who hires a Ukrainian translator to take him to the town where a woman named Augustine saved his grandfather’s life in WWII. Or so Jonathan…

CHAPSCHTICK It’s 1944. The war is raging across the English Channel and the Germans could invade at any moment. Britain needs levity to get through these tough days. Miles (Charles Evans, Jr.) is the station manager for a BBC program and he’s got the solution. BBC has announced that a famous, beloved American country band…