COUNTRY MUSIC PARODY BETTER THAN COUNTRY MUSIC ITSELF Country music can be whiney, right wing, corny, and macho. In the case of The Doyle and Debbie Show, it is also hilarious. I am no lover of country music, but who can resist a revue that includes numbers like “Stock Car Love,” “Barefoot and Pregnant,” and…

PORTRAYALS BRING BUS STOP TO LIFE William Inge was a hot American playwright during the 1950’s, but in the turbulent 1960’s and beyond, his realistic studies of small town Midwestern life became unfashionable. Lately, Inge has reappeared on the radar of important American playwrights, with theaters and audiences again finding pleasure in his sturdy dramaturgy…

TWO PLAYS IN ONE What is the purpose of theater? Some say that it is to reflect reality while being entertaining, enlightening, and/or educating. Yet when Shakespeare wrote that theatre is designed to “hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to Nature,” his character of Hamlet actually used theatre to shape reality, not merely reflect it….

THE SHADOW OF A GREAT PLAY The birth of the Irish Republic occurred around Dublin in 1916. Aiming to end British rule, Irish Volunteers staged an insurrection known as the Easter Rising, a rebellion many Irishmen did not support. However, after quelling the week-long insurrection, the British Government’s hostile reaction – including conscription (compulsory enlistment)…

WHO IS TO SAY WHAT IS REAL? Tom Stoppard is the thinking person’s playwright. Ever since his breakout hit Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in 1967, the erudite scribe has been earmarked an absurdist, one whose work concentrates on the futility of man’s search for meaning in a meaningless existence. As with all Theatre of…

WHAT WE FIND IN THIS ATTIC IS A CASE OF THE CUTES It was a privilege to witness Snapshots: A Musical Scrapbook at Northlight Theatre, for this reviewer has never seen anything like it before. An omnibus of previously published Stephen Schwartz songs (not trunk songs, mind you, but songs taken from formerly produced shows)…

LITERATURE NOT MEANT TO BE STAGED Halfway through the first act of Brand at Red Tape theatre, it occurred to me that I had no idea what was going on. First of all, it can be argued that Henrik Ibsen’s 1866 dramatic poem (some call it a Verse-Drama) was not written to be staged. The…

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO DYSFUNCTION What becomes a new artistic director? Ambition, with a two-fisted delivery. Timothy Douglas, the new chief of the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, bravely goes bare-knuckles as the director of Mourning Becomes Electra. The production is Gordon Edelstein’s adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s play, which updates the story of Orestes by following…

THIS MUSICAL IS MURDER Dear Drury Lane Theatre: Since your production of Sweeney Todd is closing this week, please allow me to write a love letter to you for giving me the privilege of witnessing the finest production of Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece that this critic has ever seen. My first time was the original Broadway…