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Profit secrets

Seacoast Rep has the keys to Business success
Considering the current climate of our feelings toward big business, it's kind of a relief to revert from the present to a bygone era, and from dreary reality to colorful stylizations. In Seacoast Repertory's How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying , the clock spins back to 1959.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 24, 2009

Dark secrets

Hidden by The Light in the Piazza
Even the quotidian is lyrical here among Roman columns, lush sunsets, and the bare contours of ancient heroes. In this Florence of 1953, daily life is filled with flowers, fedoras, and waiters transporting girls on beautiful bicycles.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 17, 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

More Bard, please

Lots of Shakespeare for summertime
The sultry season is soon upon us, and as always, it will bring area theater-goers such dependable balms as Shakespeare (both in and out of the park), classic musicals, and giddy misbehavior of various sorts. Between that manna and a few original productions, written and performed by local artists, we've got a rich season line-up.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 10, 2009

Uniquely human

The social underpinnings of A Chorus Line
When A Chorus Line won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1976, America was experiencing what was then the worst economic downturn since the Depression, vibrant women's-lib and gay-rights movements, and such trends in popular psychology as the encounter group.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 03, 2009

History's mysteries

Explore Portland's past with AIRE
Melodrama is a particularly satisfying popular art form for a financial crisis, filled as it is with unambiguous types and tropes — rich ruthless villains, poor but warm-hearted heroes and heroines, music that spiritedly cues our hisses and cheers, and reversals of fortune that reward honest, ordinary people just like us.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 27, 2009

Rise and fall

Naked Shakespeare's Richard II
For years now, the Naked Shakespeare Ensemble has brought its signature fare — stripped-down productions and ravishingly acute attention to the Bard's language — into a slew of non-traditional settings, including the Wine Bar on Wharf Street, SPACE Gallery, and the Sacred and Profane festival.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 20, 2009

Rich power

Pontine lushly retells Jewett's stories
The Maine writer Sarah Orne Jewett, born in South Berwick in 1849, memorably focused her work on the ordinary people of rural nineteenth-century Maine.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 29, 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

True de-Light

Moss Hart and Good Theater send up thespians
It's opening night, and in the leading lady's suite at the Ritz-Carlton, key players are drinking a litany of pre-curtain toasts: Fast-talking financier Sidney Black (Stephen Underwood) blesses his first-ever investment in the theater.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 22, 2009

Farcing facts

Seacoast Rep knows some funny Rumors
The Brocks' posh house in the suburbs of New York is a study in contrasting eras: Its turn-of-the-century architecture is trimmed with gorgeous wood moldings and banister, with austere green and amber stained glass.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 15, 2009

Facing facts

Struggling at the end of a life well lived
The title assumes an evolution of meanings in Trying , an autobiographical drama by Joanna McClelland Glass, based on her experiences with the real-life Judge Biddle.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 08, 2009

All in the timing

Acorn's Maine Playwrights Festival springs eternal
Acorn's Maine Playwrights Festival springs eternal

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 01, 2009

Stage blogging

A chat room sex scandal
The main characters of the play Speech and Debate, three Oregon high school misfits, do a lot of their living among the modern technologies of chat rooms, Google, and personal video blogs.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 01, 2009

Just-so stories

Noel Coward's Fallen Angels wait for love
There's plenty of room for neurotic misbehavior in Noel Coward's Fallen Angels .

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 25, 2009

Divine operas

USM shows off two Puccini one-acts
USM shows off two Puccini one-acts

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 18, 2009

Breaking away

Exploring womanhood at Portland Stage
Out of Sterno is a quirky feminist comedy by Deborah Zoe Laufer, directed by Casey Stangl for Portland Stage Company.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 11, 2009

Review: The Seussification of Romeo and Juliet

In this Verona, small children dwell
For young love, kiss, and star-cross, you're hard-pressed to get/more quintessence than Romeo and Juliet...

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 04, 2009

City of Angels at Lyric Music Theater

Parallel lives: See both in City of Angels at Lyric Music Theater
It's 1940s Hollywood, and we swerve between Stine's reality and Stone's parallel one, in City of Angels , a musical comedy-cum-musical noir , directed by Mary Meserve for South Portland's Lyric Music Theater.

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 25, 2009

Super-curious

A conversation with a Nobel-winning polymath: QED
A conversation with a Nobel-winning polymath: QED

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 11, 2009

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