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Thoughtful laughs in Wittenberg

Hamlet's salad days
Much has been made of Prince Hamlet's exhausting philosophical indecision. To be or not? To kill or not? He has a hell of a time figuring it out, when he should be happily ensconced in college life back in Wittenberg.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 09, 2013

Twelve Maine plays in Acorn’s festival

Homegrown dozen
It's time once again for Acorn Productions' annual celebration of the playwrights living among us.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 03, 2013

A surreal comedy from Dramatic Rep

Fins to the left, fins to the right
Life is in upheaval for these four friends, and all of them will need to go deep to make sense of things in Swimming in the Shallows , a comedy with a touch of the surreal, by Adam Bock.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 24, 2013

Woolf’s Orlando on stage at USM

Shifting time and gender
Insights into both the masculine and the feminine are at the center of Virginia Woolf's Orlando , a fabulist commentary on the fluidity of gender and sexual identity.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 25, 2013

Carolyn Gage’s new short plays give women voice

Speaking out of silence
Women's experience of slavery, genocide, and cultural oppression, says playwright Carolyn Gage, is very different than men's: Sexual violence and women's ability to give birth makes them subject to a particularly penetrating form of colonization. And even the best-intentioned histories, she adds, often try to "disappear" that difference.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 10, 2013

Looking for Love(1)

In all the right vignettes of Cariani’s new play
A man and a woman in a Walmart-type store are driven into each other's arms by their Obsessive Impulsive disorder. A man has a condition that keeps him from hearing the words "I love you" from his new lover. A woman with a wife and young child searches desperately through the garage for something she's lost — herself.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 04, 2013

AIRE, starring the McCourt brothers

Quite a pair
The autobiographical two-man show they co-wrote and performed, A Couple of Blaguards, is onstage now starring the marvelous Paul Haley and Tony Reilly

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 27, 2013

Gathering together

Finding happiness amid violence
Snowlion exclusively produces works with "cultural, ethical, and spiritual value," and found both complexity and life-affirmation in Vincent Sessa's A Child's Guide to Innocence .

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 20, 2013

Good Theater’s odd-couple age drama

Distance in time
It's been a rough journey that brought 21-year-old Leo (Erik Moody), on a bicycle, all the way from Washington state to the Manhattan apartment of his grandma Vera (Alma Cuervo).

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 13, 2013

Coward’s quiet play at Portland Stage

Just-so stories
The name of Noël Coward is fairly synonymous with the biting, devastating verbal wit of his farces like Blithe Spirit , in which well-off Brits behave badly, having at each other with verbal razors.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 07, 2013

Mattress revival

Lyric doesn’t take these tales lying down
Fairy tales seem to have an enduring appeal — especially when they're tweaked to look just a little bit less rarified.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 27, 2013

Black-box results show success

Test flights
It's an on-stage-off-stage winter in Portland Stage Company's Studio Theater.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 20, 2013

A pair of Albee shorts on show at USM

Make my satire a double
Theatergoers who have been hankering for a shot of satire are in luck this week: The University of Southern Maine is serving up the biting spirits of playwright Edward Albee, and they're making it a double, with his one-act plays The Zoo Story and The American Dream.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 06, 2013

Good Theater premieres Death by Design

A theatrical mash-up
Someone doctors the Scotch early on, but it's brandy that playwright Edward Bennett (Rob Cameron) and his actress wife Sorel (Abigail Killeen) start in on first in Death by Design, by Rob Urbinati.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 06, 2013

Relish in the romp of Conan Doyle’s Hound

Great fare for groundlings
A certain kind of farce distinguishes itself among theatrical forms much as pigs distinguish themselves among the farm animals: by its fondness for playing in the mud, by its grinning, no-nonsense intelligence, and by the tasty saltiness with which it is often served.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 30, 2013