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Bringing out the humor and the menace in Pinter's play
By Ed Huyck
The first thing you have to keep in mind when examining Harold Pinter's work, especially an early work like The Birthday Party, is that you are... More >>
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A nurse and longtime patient face wrenching decisions
By Ed Huyck
Jeffrey Hatcher's spare new play is all about subtle gestures, off-screen sound effects, and things unsaid. It's about the frustration of locked... More >>
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A Goethe tale of unrequited romance
By Ed Huyck
A piece that incorporates Goethe, Thomas Mann, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract sounds like an assignment from my high school... More >>
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Three children forced to raise themselves
By Ed Huyck
You might think that living all alone out in the country, away from the crowds and traffic and noisy bustle of modern America, would be a chance... More >>
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Analyzing the end of a long relationship
By Ed Huyck
On an all-white set that is quickly revealed to be the inner mind of best-selling writer Thomas Weaver, Neil Bartman and Brian Hill's The Story of... More >>
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Play is really nothing to crow about
By Ed Huyck
In the program notes for The Birds, playwright Conor McPherson talks about his youthful love of George A. Romero's zombie movies. It's an easy... More >>
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Gay drama merged with music of Mama Cass
By Ed Huyck
Jonathan Harvey's Beautiful Thing is set just two decades in the past, but it seems to be a whole different world. There are no cell phones or... More >>
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Delving right into thorny issues of race
By Ed Huyck
Politics onstage without a human, emotional core can turn into a boring polemic. Marry the two, however, and you can lead the audience into... More >>
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Poking and prodding the tender American psyche
By Ed Huyck
If the American Dream is dead, then the characters in Crashing the Party, the world-premiere comedy by Josh Tobiessen at Mixed Blood, are picking... More >>
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Judy Garland bio sticks to the surface
By Ed Huyck
Like a proto-rock-star, Judy Garland became as famous for her offstage antics as for her singing and acting chops late in her life. Still beloved... More >>
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Employing a less-is-more approach
By Ed Huyck
When Ragtime first premiered on Broadway in 1998, the producers tried to use spectacle to hide the deficiencies in the adaptation of E.L.... More >>
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Slow to start but offers thrilling second act
By Ed Huyck
The setting of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may be a palatial bedroom, but those four walls trap a lot of steamy heat and secrets... More >>
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Play delivers on the hype
By Ed Huyck
The musical version of Disney's The Lion King came back to town last week to its original home at the Orpheum Theatre, with 15 years of hype... More >>
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Chekhov classic rebirthed
By Ed Huyck
It's hard to watch the plays of Anton Chekhov without thinking about the fate that was just around the corner for these often upper-class... More >>
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Stage artists converge for experimental theater festival
By Ed Huyck
The idea of the auteur in theater—where collaboration is the name of the game—may feel a bit off, but Philip Bither, the curator of... More >>
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Hairspray, Doubt, On the Spectrum, and more
By Ed Huyck
Looking back, it was a terrific year on local stages, with several new voices heard along the way and plenty of fresh examinations of classic... More >>
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Two plays for the winter season
By Ed Huyck
How long does it take for The Soul of Gershwin: The Musical Journey of an American Klezmer to capture the audience? A handful of... More >>
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Giving new life to classic cross-dressing farce
By Ed Huyck
Not every farce needs to be as manic as Noise's Off to work, as the production of Charley's Aunt at the Guthrie Theater proves.
The classic... More >>
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Play featuring Randy Reyes offers no easy answers
By Ed Huyck
"If the world were coming to an end, one of us would get a text. Right?" asks Louisito midway through Alan Berks's intriguing How to Cheat, now... More >>
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Crispin Whittell's version losing focus on Dickens's message
By Ed Huyck
It didn't take long for the Guthrie's lean re-creation of A Christmas Carol to start gathering a layer of fat, like a Victorian gentleman... More >>
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Spreading happiness once audience at a time
By Ed Huyck
It will be hard to find a more aptly named show this year than Interact's Joy. The "holiday cabaret" provides the emotion in great waves, as... More >>
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Three-play festival examines disability issues
By Ed Huyck
Through the decades, Mixed Blood Theatre has been dedicated to creating art for and about underrepresented audiences, and that drive is clearly on... More >>
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Savage Umbrella retells a haunting Greek tragedy
By Ed Huyck
This summer, Theatre Pro Rata proved that the abandoned Hollywood Theater, an old movie house in Northeast, made an intriguing home for the right... More >>
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Two plays reviewed
By Ed Huyck
Adam Rapp can be a divisive figure, to the point that New York Times scribe Christopher Isherwood has begged off on reviewing any more of the... More >>
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Ten Thousand Things Theater succeeds again
By Ed Huyck
Ten Thousand Things Theater continues its remarkable run with Il Campiello, Steven Epp's adaptation of Carlo Goldoni's 18th-century comedy about... More >>
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Play exposes darkness in ordinary lives
By Ed Huyck
Hunter Gatherers offers us a bleak world. The four characters are clueless and lost, even when exuding superficial confidence. None of them seems... More >>
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Uncovering the secret terrors of being a brainiac
By Ed Huyck
Growing up, I was a terrible speller, to the point that my parents, who never offered bribes for good behavior or grades, made me a deal in sixth... More >>
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CTC brings the action and big heart
By Ed Huyck
Over the past half-century, generations of schoolchildren have thrilled to the adventures of Meg Murry in A Wrinkle in Time as she travels through... More >>
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Action gets heavy in Shakespeare's romantic comedy
By Ed Huyck
For all of its frivolity, the Guthrie Theater's latest production of Much Ado About Nothing is, at its heart, a drama. The most memorable moments... More >>
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Dysfunctional relationships abound
By Ed Huyck
If you've ever watched Long Day's Journey Into Night and thought, "I like this, but I wish the family was more dysfunctional," then Tracy Letts's... More >>
