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MEGAN GRUMBLING

Latest Articles

Choosing teams

West Side Story’s powerful reminder of peril
Remember how not too long ago, people were celebrating the United States’ entrance into a “post-racial” era?

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 26, 2010

More Bard, another park

Acorn takes Shakespeare to the Riverbank
Just as fiddleheads and lilacs sprung early this year, so have the urban-pastoral pleasures of al fresco Shakespeare.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 19, 2010

Organic farce

PSC’s fugue-ish Bach at Leipzig
The Thomaskirche church, in Leipzig, is a hub of musical influence in Germany’s booming Baroque arts scene.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 12, 2010

An Irish classic

The strong ensemble of Juno and the Paycock
Matriarch Juno is the only one of the Boyles who brings in any coin: Her husband Jack is a drunken boor who, to avoid working, feigns aches in his legs.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 12, 2010

Running through Acorn’s 24-Hour Play Festival
Around 7 pm last Saturday at the St. Lawrence, a sealed envelope was sliced open and its contents, handwritten on three slips of paper, were revealed to a full house: “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 05, 2010

In search of light

USM’s dreamlike Inuit storytelling
Many of us here in Maine are guilty of having at one time or another harangued the forces of spring to hurry it up already, are guilty of cold-month mopery or worse. Imagine, then, living in the Arctic, where the winter is far darker for far longer, and the sun that much more precious.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 28, 2010

New voices

Acorn’s latest Maine Playwrights Festival
For nearly a decade now, Maine playwrights have had a fine friend and benefactor in Acorn Productions.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 21, 2010

Cooking the books

How long until Love, Sex & the IRS collide?
Tax season got you feeling screwed? How about a little schadenfreude: Chances are Jon (Christian F. Luening) has it a lot worse and more embarrassing than you in Love, Sex & the IRS , the 1979 comedy by William Van Zandt and Jane Milmore.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 14, 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

Lovely luxury

Good Theater's rich, colorful Earnest
"In matters of great importance," observes young Gwendolyn, "style, not sincerity, is the vital thing."

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 17, 2010

Sins of the father

Visiting the son in 'Master Harold'
On a rainy afternoon, Hally, short for Harold, (Michael Littig) comes home from school as usual to his wealthy parents' tea room in apartheid-era South Africa.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 10, 2010

Seeing is believing

The Emperor visits the Children's Theatre
Emperor Fredrick has a wardrobe problem.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 03, 2010

Planting seeds

Acorn tries out four new local plays
For nearly a decade, spring in Portland has heralded the emergence not just of all of us from hibernation, but of playwrights, en masse, from quiet writing rooms.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 24, 2010

Ending violence

It's much more of a struggle than we might think
V-Day is once more upon us, and for those not partial to Hallmark-driven capitalism, the V now also popularly stands for "Vagina" or "Victory," thanks to Eve Ensler's famous monologues about violence against women.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 10, 2010

Campy send-up

Irma Vep mocks show biz
The Mystery of Irma Vep . Portland Stage Company's excellent, giddy production, directed by Christopher Grabowski, stars Tom Ford (who portrayed some dozens of characters in PSC's superlative I Am My Own Wife ) and Steven Strafford.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 03, 2010

Ordinary people

Pontine's latest Jewett adaptation
Born and raised in South Berwick, the writer Sarah Orne Jewett spent her life noticing the lives of ordinary Maine people. Her esteemed 1896 The Country of the Pointed Firs is a series of wise, gentle sketches of the aging folks of several small maritime villages.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 03, 2010

Finding her voice

An ex-con, a village, an opera
"There is a balm in Gilead," an old African-American spiritual has it, and sure enough, Percy Talbott (Kelly Caufield) finds that balm.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 27, 2010

Hedonism at its best

Absurdist mirth and wonder in Ubu Roi
In 1888, a 15-year-old French kid and a couple of his buddies wrote a script, modeling its gross and laughable anti-hero on a school teacher whom they had it in for.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 27, 2010

Open lines

What if the dead could talk?
In our hyper-connected day and age, a woman laments in Dead Man's Cell Phone , there exist only three sanctuaries from the ringing: the theater, the church, and the toilet — and even these havens are ring-less only in principle.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 20, 2010

Greater Tuna in the Texas two-step

Greater Tuna parodies the Lone Star State
Our first introductions to Tuna come over the airwaves on the Wheelis Struvis Report , as hosts Wheelis (Barrasso) and Struvis (Donovan) announce the winning student-essay contest entry ("Human Rights: Why Bother?") and weatherman Harold Dean (Donovan) forecasts the weather (rain, dust, and locusts).

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 13, 2010

Food on stage

Locavores + thespians = understanding
Maine is home to a nationally renowned locavore culinary scene, the oldest organic farming association in the nation (MOFGA), and a plenitude of farms that has increased by nearly 1000 in the past five years — and yet economic pressure to develop acreage remains.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 06, 2010

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