Saturday, December 7, 2013
the star of this sugarplum of a Cleveland Play House production is the set by Robert Mark Morgan, built to approximate the nimbleness of film, the medium that first introduced America to lit…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 08:00AMFriday, December 6, 2013
When "Wicked" opened on Oct. 30, 2003, it starred little-known actresses Idina Menzel, as emerald-skinned outcast Elphaba, and Kristin Chenoweth as the helium-voiced, popular and r…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 03:44PMThursday, December 5, 2013
With his genial affect, slender silhouette and genuine delight at working a crowd, Tommy Tune is bottled joy. (He glows a little too, his skin lightly toasted from the South Beach sun where …
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 03:49PMFriday, November 29, 2013
To commemorate the 30th anniversary of Bob Clark’s 1983 cult holiday hit film, the Play House is telling an entirely new “Story,” with a fresh cast, director and, most dramatically, a …
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 08:00AMTuesday, November 26, 2013
Laura Kepley, who has recently taken over as the ninth artistic director in the Play House’s nearly 100 year history, is going to make Christmas shopping simple this year for her husband, …
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:47AMSunday, November 24, 2013
Tommy Tune will perform his cabaret act "Taps, Tunes and Tall Tales" for two nights only, Wednesday and Thursday, Dec. 4 and 5, at Nighttown. (Event organizers say the Dec. 4 show …
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 07:06AMThursday, November 14, 2013
The music in “Once” is not canned or piped in; it doesn’t come from an unseen orchestra behind the scenes or in a pit – it is urgent and immediate, made by every performer on the sta…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:00AMSunday, November 10, 2013
While other Broadway musicals blare, "Once" glows. Minimalism is its trademark. The experience is not unlike being locked in an Irish pub for the night and joining in on a glorious…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 06:00AMSaturday, November 9, 2013
Play House artistic director Laura Kepley has chosen actors who can more than handle the demands of the material and are particularly good at the very funny stuff. That’s good news for thi…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:00AMWednesday, November 6, 2013
"Frankenstein," part of TheatreCLE, Ensemble's shadow season featuring short-run, experimental works, has a grinning, let's-throw-this-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks sensibility s…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:00AMSunday, November 3, 2013
David Ives wrote the screenplay for “Venus in Fur” with Roman Polanski, ensconced in the filmmaker’s Swiss chalet in the Alps. Ives fondly recalls a scene in the garden, when Polanski…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 06:52AMWednesday, October 30, 2013
In Mike Bartlett’s savage and provocative comedy – the title of which is actually more provocative than we’re letting on with “The Cockfight Play” – director Corey Atkins has his…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:00AMTuesday, October 29, 2013
The winning ensemble in Karamu Theatre's "Cut Flowers" delivers a fast, ferociously funny day-in-the life dramedy by playwright Gavin Lawrence that is sophisticated and low, down a…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 11:58AMFriday, October 25, 2013
That Richard Rodgers kept making beautiful music following the loss of not one but two of his creative partners sounds like the plot of a great musical – or at least a winning concert. Bil…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 01:05PMTuesday, October 15, 2013
In "Insomnia," Ev, Evelyn and Zelda are aspects of the same woman struggling to re-unite into a healthy whole. But like the fragmented woman at its center, though the play struggle…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 06:06PMAs Ludwig van Beethoven in Moises Kaufman's cerebral musical mystery "33 Variations," Dana Hart captures the single-mindedness and comic rudeness of a great artist obsessed.
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 04:58PMFriday, October 11, 2013
Set in today's world of sleek Armani-suited execs furiously tweeting, talking and texting, King Richard, Shakespeare's most popular and chatty villain (in the Bard's canon, only Hamlet has m…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 06:26PMThursday, October 10, 2013
"I went to a boarding school in Massachusetts for high school and I can remember calling him not only from there but also from Brown and also when I was at Juilliard and saying 'I don't…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 02:27PMWednesday, October 9, 2013
At first, Rajiv Joseph’s oddball tale seems too thematically obvious. But soon, as the characters deepen and their relationships grow more complicated, like the pattern for that mesh sleev…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:00AMTuesday, October 8, 2013
In director Victoria Bussert’s hands, "Sweeney Todd" has both a winking, pop-culture sensibility and the dark, discomfiting tinge of true madness. It’s not an easy line to walk…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 12:00PMThursday, October 3, 2013
Backstage at the Place Theatre after Tuesday's performance of "Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty," his sensual, sumptuous, deeply moving and unexpectedly witty reimagining of Peter …
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 02:00PMThursday, September 26, 2013
When celebrated British choreographer Matthew Bourne decided to tackle "Sleeping Beauty," his third Tchaikovsky ballet, he decided to make the 100-year span that the princess sleep…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 02:00PMWednesday, September 25, 2013
Why don’t regional theaters produce “She Loves Me” more often? Say, around the winter holidays? After all, the penultimate, frantic, antic number -- staged in Maraczek’s Parfumerie, …
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:00AMTuesday, September 24, 2013
Too many musical biographies cash in on an icon's songbook without the hard, messy work of having to examine a life and produce a structured, meaningful story.
One of the best things about '…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:00AMMonday, September 23, 2013
Laura Kepley, who took over the reins of the Cleveland Play House as interim artistic director in May, has been named the ninth artistic director of the 98-year-old cultural institution.
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 10:46AMSaturday, September 21, 2013
Of course there are lighter offerings in Cleveland's 2013-14 theater season. But it's blood-red that rules, from "Sweeney Todd" and "Deathtrap" to a giddily Gothic versio…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:00AMGet ready to go Goth, as PlayhouseSquare's KeyBank Broadway Series opens with a Victorian vampire take on "Sleeping Beauty" from British choreographer Matthew Bourne and continues …
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:00AMThe Cleveland Play House unveils an ambitious season that ranges from folk legend Woody Guthrie to tap legend Maurice Hines, and from sentimental favorite "A Christmas Story" to th…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:00AMGreat Lakes Theater isn't afraid of the dark this season, as properties master Terry Martin prepares his special "blood-delivery system" to pump gallons of the red stuff for Stephe…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:00AMThe Beck Center for the Arts will open its new season with a show artistic director Scott Spence calls the "all-time perfect musical," "She Loves Me." In the lead role wi…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:00AMThe sounds of classic rhythm and blues will shake Karamu Theatre for Lee Summers' "From My Hometown," which opens a 2013-14 season that includes a new holiday show and a reprise of…
SOURCE: Cleveland.com at 09:00AM 
