The Bard’s leading ladies
Shakespeare aficionados would be hard-pressed to find a better offering of the Bard’s works than Tina Packer‘s Women of Will now playing at Portland Playhouse. “Part [...]
A dance with grief
When Anna (Jen Rowe), an unmarried, first grade schoolteacher, is diagnosed with the fictitious Acquired Toilet Disease (ATD), presumably contracted from an elementary school toilet seat, what on [...]
Curators of lives
There is a reason journalists use “man on the street” interviews. It is because they work so well. They grab the audience as nothing else can. When the microphone is placed in front [...]
Mothers, daughters, and universal issues
“My mother is a fantastically energetic person trapped in an utterly exhausted body,” says Lisa (Allison Mickelson) near the beginning of Lisa Kron‘s play Well (which in [...]
The night the orphans unionized
A funny thing happened at Portland Center Stage the other night. Dorothy and Toto and Little Orphan Annie showed up onstage in a show about Charles Dickens’ The Christmas Carol. How are [...]
Kodachrome–a play about Love
Love is so darned complicated. He loves her…she thinks he’s boring. She loves him…he loves someone else. They love each other…and then they don’t. A sweet and [...]