You’ve been here before. The Innocent Versus the Whore is one of the great well-worn setups in art, from Dumas’ La Dame aux camelias to the romance of Forrest and Jenny Gump, from Verdi’s La Traviata to C. Jay Cox’s Latter Days. The conversation briefly took a new turn in…

In Talk Radio, radio host Barry Champlain has hollowed himself out. Years ago, he was a small-time Akron DJ blessed with the gift of gab and a certain “sixth sense” about people. Once a listener was on the phone, Champlain could get anything out of him — outrage, tears, secrets,…

Once, there were ten suns that orbited the earth. This led to an intemperate climate. So Houyi, an immortal archer who was hanging out in China after having been banished from heaven (long story), was commanded by the Emperor to shoot down nine of them. He did so, and the…

What’s the difference between good corn and bad corn? And anyway, what’s corn? Is it, like pornography, a thing you know only when you see it? One suspects that to declare something “corny” is to say it appeals to a set of desires that need no mediating reason or logic…

There is a thing that occasionally happens in this job, when you run into a production that does more than entertain you or stimulate conversation or make you cry, and those productions are almost worth the whole paycheck. These are the rare productions that actually orient you, in relation to…

What do you get when you grab the Au Pairs, ´80s-era King Crimson, Mungo Jerry, and the guy who mixes the harmonies for The Scissor Sisters, stick them in a blender, and hit “frappe”? Goo. You get goo. It’s disgusting. Never try it. But! If you take those same ingredients,…

The Lieutenant of Inishmore is a lighthearted political satire that features four murders, two toenail-pullings, one near-miss nipple amputation, the brains of two cats, six punctured eyeballs, many severed limbs, and something like nine gallons of blood. It’s a Grand Guignol explosion of death, violence, and body fluids that fuses…

The 1980’s were a decade of death. John Lennon died right there at the beginning. Flared pants died too, though they’d make a comeback a few years later. The Eagles died, and so did Fleetwood Mac. And so, one could argue, did idealism. And that is the subject of This…

You need a musical retrospective about a beloved song-and-dance man from the 1940s! It’ll be great! Just like all those other musical retrospectives about song-and-dance men from the 1940s! Ginger Rogers got one! So did Gene Kelly! They were great! This one’s about Danny Kaye! It’s called The Kid From…

Low-rent musical bioplays — or “celebrations,” as they’re called — are an unavoidable part of regional theater, and I’m glad. They are pleasant, aggressively brainless wastes of time, and I don’t mind their invasion of otherwise vibrant playhouses every four or five months. Why the hell should I? Music is…

There is a certain breed of person out there, somewhere, with a profound yen for period furniture, bizarre hats, costumes, used roller skates, scripts, and 300 upholstered theater seats. Or so think the brave men and women of Caldwell Theatre. They are now vacating their third home, where they’ve diligently…

At first blush, there appears to be something seriously wrong with Sol Theatre’s new production of The MO of MI (The Modus Operandi of Male Intimacy). Sol’s digs are tiny, but MOMI’s characters are large; Sol’s venue is intimate, but MOMI’s story arc is so absurdly broad-stroke (and full of…

Everybody who’s anybody loves The Promethean Theatre. Their last two plays were Two Rooms, Lee Blessing’s emotionally exhausting examination of lives shattered by terrorism, and A Number, Caryl Churchill’s improbably touching play about bad parents and cloning. These were not productions designed to suck in big audiences: They were for…

This is not a review. It is an autopsy. When did Cyrano die, and why? Who killed him? These are the only pertinent questions right now. There is no need to wonder if Cyrano has any redeeming qualities (it doesn’t) or if viewing it in a particular frame of mind…

Whenever a dinosaur of a production like Side by Side by Sondheim bumps its way across a stage, all who see it are forced to make a decision. Should they judge it on its charms — on its music, its singing, its fun factor? Or should they judge it on…

Hello. I´m Brandon, and I am a scared little animal. So are you. Our sales department tells the advertisers otherwise — that you are all Hip, Sophisticated, and Upwardly Mobile; that we are Intelligent, Professional, and Highly Principled. And that might even be true, as far as it goes. But…

That there is a professional theater company in Wellington is weird. That it´s good is even weirder. I´d never been to Wellington before. It´s so northwesterly. If I´m to believe Mapquest (and I never will again), my trip to the Studio Theatre of Wellington involves a drive from Wilton Manors…