Thursday, August 16, 2018
Brian Regan’s observational humor involves an awful lot of food. Like those jars that have peanut butter and jelly pre-mixed together: “I want to meet the guy who needs that.”). Or cra…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 06:00AMSaturday, August 4, 2018
The celebrated Canadian “new circus” troupe Cirque Eloize has a special relationship with Foxwoods. Cirque Eloize performs at the resort casino complex in Ledyard at least once a year, a…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 06:00AMThe “Mama D’s” burlesque shows at Playhouse on Park are a special thrill. Grounded in old vaudeville jokes, striptease bump-and-grind, and honking jazz music, they also manage to be st…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 06:00AMSome classic comedy stylings enliven the dog days of summer. Larry the Cable Guy has been around since cable TV was still a new thing in the 1980s, and is coming to Foxwoods Aug. 17. This be…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 06:00AMElm Shakespeare Company is one of the oldest and largest providers of free outdoor summer Shakespeare shows in Connecticut. The company’s shows are seen by tens of thousands of people each…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 06:00AMThursday, August 2, 2018
Two top-rank political comedians are in Connecticut, using news to amuse. Both comics have interviewed presidents, senators, business moguls, movie stars, activists and journalists. Both hav…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 06:00AM‘The Understudy” is play about what it’s like to be in a play — when the play is a newly discovered script by Franz Kafka and the star is a fading Hollywood action movie star named J…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 06:00AMWednesday, August 1, 2018
The swashbuckling musical “Cyrano” has arrived for its first full-fledged workshop at Goodspeed’s Norma Terris Theatre with a few readings under its sword-belt, many revisions and fres…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 02:25PMThursday, July 26, 2018
They have found their “place on the path … in the circle of life.” As children, both Greg Jackson and Bruce Paul Reik enjoyed putting on puppet shows in their backyards. Now they’re …
Linked From Hartford Courant at 11:55AMWednesday, July 25, 2018
Leslie Jones is the complete entertainer. On “Saturday Night Live,” she’s both a standout performer (especially when flirting with Colin Jost on “Weekend Update”) and a consummate …
Linked From Hartford Courant at 09:35AMTuesday, July 24, 2018
Before a single one of its duels (physical or verbal) has been fought, and before a single one of its songs (by members of the great indie rock band The National) has been sung, the musical …
Linked From Hartford Courant at 10:40AMMonday, July 23, 2018
‘Two Kings and a Queen” is a touring trio of stand-up comedians from New York. The queen is Cocoa Brown, who’s ruled on BET’s “Comic View” and “One Mic Stand,” Comedy Central…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 04:10PMThe Ivoryton Playhouse has done four musicals so far this summer of four distinct styles. First was the fantasy “The Fantasticks,” then the biographical tribute “A Night With Janis Jop…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 03:30PMThursday, July 19, 2018
Kids scramble up ladders and across bridges. Muttering, mutton-chopped authority figures wave their staffs (or even their spoons) menacingly. There are drinking songs and horseplay and expre…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 02:45PMPilobolus sees things differently than others do. When the internationally renowned dance/movement troupe decided to start an arts festival in its Connecticut hometown of Washington, it wasn…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 12:25PMMonday, July 16, 2018
Jesus Christ is super stressed out, man. Connecticut Repertory Theatre has restored Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s raucous religious rock opera to its 1970s origins, with a chorus of h…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 02:00PM‘I had the most wonderful mother.” Now there’s a statement you rarely hear in the American theater. It’s how Mona Golabek opens “The Pianist of Willesden Lane,” which she has bro…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 01:15PMSaturday, July 14, 2018
Four “Saturday Night Live” veterans, including one of the show’s longest-serving members, are at Mohegan Sun Arena at 8 p.m. July 28. Jon Lovitz, active on “SNL” from 1985-90, was …
Linked From Hartford Courant at 06:00AMFriday, July 13, 2018
Eight extra performances have been added to the run of the new musical “Cyrano” at Godspeed Musicals’ Norma Terris Theatre in Chester. The show, which opens Aug. 3 and was originally s…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 10:50AMThursday, July 12, 2018
‘Hand to God” is a harrowing, hilarious, hand-wringing comedy with tragic elements about a young man whose life is changed — and endangered — by an unhinged, demonically possessed ha…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 11:55AM‘The Lion King” still rules. The circle of life brings Julie Taymor’s acclaimed stage version of the 1994 animated Disney feature back to The Bushnell for a two-and-a-half-week engagem…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 11:25AMMonday, July 9, 2018
Theaters know something about second acts. The Palace Theater in Waterbury is giving the stage to Connecticut residents who have created second acts in their own lives. The inaugural Second …
Linked From Hartford Courant at 04:05PMFolks used to mock ventriloquists mercilessly as outdated, unfunny relics of comedy as it was a century ago. Then came Jeff Dunham. He’s made the ancient art of voice-throwing contemporary…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 01:35PMYes, Shakespeare has lurked in more than a few castles and dungeons. But most of the bard’s plays celebrate the outdoors — and in the summertime, that’s where you’re most likely to f…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 06:00AMTuesday, July 3, 2018
From demon barber to son of God. Fresh from his triumph in the title role of “Sweeney Todd” for Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s Nutmeg Summer Series, Terrence Mann now disappears backs…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 11:00AMNew England natives dominate the comedy clubs this week. Emma Willmann, who’s from Maine, has become a New York fixture, performing at clubs throughout the city and making her late-night T…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 10:50AMMonday, July 2, 2018
The Kids Company at Goodspeed Musicals may be new, but the youngsters already — as a particular set of lyrics from “Oliver!” goes — “consider themselves one of the family.” The n…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 03:35PMWednesday, June 27, 2018
In Connecticut, Mona Golabek has become a familiar face thanks to her one-woman show “The Pianist of Willesden Lane.” But that face really belongs to her mother. Golabek dons a red wig t…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 01:25PMTuesday, June 26, 2018
The Ivoryton Playhouse, in a bucolic village of Essex, has cornered the market on musicalized urban teen angst. In recent summers, the theater has staged “Rent,” “West Side Story” an…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 06:00AMStars of two groundbreaking TV comedy shows are in Connecticut this week — on the same night, at competing casino theaters. It’s been 20 years since the “Seinfeld” sitcom ended its n…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 06:00AMMonday, June 25, 2018
Within a few notes of the orchestra starting up, and a deep-voiced chorus member exhorting me to “attend the tale of Sweeney Todd,” I knew I was safe. Which is a funny word to use regard…
Linked From Hartford Courant at 01:25PM 
