Peter Brown

Latest Articles

Local musical sends up gay-hating, gay culture

Theatrical exposures
Reverend Jonathan Fisher (Michael Tobin), founder of Straight and Narrow, an evangelical congregation meant to "cure" homosexuals, has a problem.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 12, 2011

With feeling

Mad Horse's latest show has exceptional heart
From the darkness, a hand strikes chalk against a spot-lit blackboard: July 1981 , it writes, and then, 16 .
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 10, 2010

Face the nation

SpeakEasy’s The Great American Trailer Park Musical; Zeitgeist’s Farragut North
White-trash collection has seldom been as hilarious as it is in The Great American Trailer Park Musical , which makes its Brahmin-area debut courtesy of SpeakEasy Stage Company.
By CAROLYN CLAY | May 04, 2010

Love Potion #3

The Maiden’s Prayer at Mad Horse
More people love Taylor than is good for harmony.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 24, 2010

We heart these people

Meet Portland's most influential
We all know Portland is a busy, exciting place to live. It takes a lot of people's amazing energy to keep it going, though. Who's doing the moving and the shaking?
By JEFF INGLIS | February 10, 2010

What is this place?

Participatory performance art at Whitney Art Works
Bertolt Brecht asks, "In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes," he answers, "there will be singing. About the dark times."
By ANNIE LARMON | January 13, 2010

Big starts

2009 was full of newness + energy
I kick off my highlights of 2009 with praise for a theater company that has just finished its inaugural season: The Legacy Theater Company, founded by former City Theater artistic director Steve Burnette.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | December 22, 2009

Dodging death

Reckless, The Salt Girl, and The Overwhelming
Even the sweetest life can shatter in an instant, sending you through the looking glass like Alice. For the euphoric heroine of Craig Lucas's 1988 fable of holiday festivity and arbitrary mayhem, Reckless the moment of reckoning comes when her husband tearfully confesses, on Christmas Eve, that he has taken out a contract on her life.
By CAROLYN CLAY | November 18, 2009

A Dark Night with Mamet and a Mad Horse

Mini-Reviews
Circling the central mystery of The Cryptogram are a camping trip, the provenance of a German pilot's knife, and a young boy's "sleep issues."
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | October 14, 2009

A smooth course

Fenix's breathtaking Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is arguably the Bard's sultriest, silliest, and most gossamer comedy. As such, of course, it is also among the most oft-produced al fresco summer offerings in the whole canon.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | August 12, 2009

Snapping towels

Fenix's Taming of the Shrew gets wet
Through the rest of June, a classic battle of the sexes will be waged at the wading pool of Deering Oaks Park. The Fenix Theatre Co., Portland's premier purveyor of outdoor Shakespeare for the summer, stages a smart, wet, and aggressive Taming of the Shrew as its first summer show.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 17, 2009

Dueling morals

Mad Horse's masterful The History Boys
A battle of pedagogies is raging at an English grammar school for teenage boys.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 29, 2009

Mad Horse starts new midweek theater series

Darkness falls early
This month, Mad Horse Theater Company offers the inaugural installment of a new way to savor theater: in an array of morsels, with no waiting until the weekend.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | October 09, 2008

I sink, therefore I am

Zeitgeist’s expanded Seascape. Plus Gutenberg! The Musical
Seascape , Edward Albee’s 1975 Pulitzer-winning meditation on evolution and mortality, gets all wet at Zeitgeist Stage Company.
By CAROLYN CLAY | October 08, 2008

Winner takes all

The Four of Us at Merrimack Rep; Spin at Zeitgeist Stage Company
Itamar Moses takes the buddy vehicle and twists it early and often in The Four of Us.
By CAROLYN CLAY | April 22, 2008

Center of the universe

Mad Horse moves Hedda Gabler to the ’50s
Triangulations are many and charged in the Tesmans’ circle, and for newlywed Hedda Tesman, née Gabler, it is imperative to be an apex.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 09, 2008

Crucifictions

Not just telling stories
“Once upon a time” is how it starts. Upon this Michal insists.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 13, 2008

History tour

Zeitgeist’s compelling Kentucky Cycle; Double Edge’s Republic of Dreams
Whitewash has floated like a soap scum on the bloodbath of America’s past as told in the history books.
By CAROLYN CLAY | October 09, 2007

So you want to be fair and balanced?

How to cut through the illusions created by the Web and get a clear sense of the political news
To read the politics beat this past week, you’d think something really big took place when Michael Bloomberg announced that he was leaving the Republican Party.
By STEVEN STARK | June 27, 2007

Relative orbits

Mad Horse takes a Long Day's Journey
The gravities of the family Tyrone are many, and relentless.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 18, 2007

Back in the acts

A year in Maine theater
When it comes to dramatics, there’s plenty to toast at this year’s end.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | December 20, 2006

Bunny babies

Plenty of rabbits, but little gimmickry
It seems that mild young Mary Toft, in a twist on the old idiom, is birthing like a bunny.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | December 13, 2006

Lights out

Mad Horse gets Bug -gy
Agnes probably should have known that something wasn’t right about Peter when he started talking about “Them” and “the machines.”
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 01, 2006

Play’s the thing

Mad Horse rouses Stoppard’s finest
On the high-tragedy chessboard of Hamlet , the title characters are pawns, but in Tom Stoppard’s spooky, hilarious, and ingenious Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead , they are, existentially, the stars.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 21, 2008

Fringe benefits

The Maternal Instinct and Rosa
The clock is ticking in The Maternal Instinct (at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre through April 16).
By LIZA WEISSTUCH | April 11, 2006