THE BASICS: This is the WNY premiere of the infamous stage version of the film hit of 1976, from a novel by Stephen King. This ART of WNY production, directed by Christopher Standart and with music direction by Michael Hake, plays weekends through October 10th in the auditorium at Medaille College. The show, with its 15 minute intermission, runs approximately two hours and ten minutes. THUMBNAIL SKETCH: Mousy, misfit teen Carrie White, only child of the solitary, psycho-religious Mary White, is tortured, mocked and set-up by her peers during her final days at high school. The stress is compounded by…
Author: Grant Golden
THE BASICS: This 1948 comedy by Moss Hart is a love letter to the theater. Directed by Blair Williams, SKY plays in repertory at the Festival Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake through October 11th. This three act play, which was wisely divested of one intermission, still runs a good two hours and twenty minutes. THUMBNAIL SKETCH: Hart’s gentle satire is a day in the life of a new play—the first Boston tryout of a “meaty” postapocalyptic drama by a fledgling Midwestern playwright. The characters are pretty much what you would expect—the temperamental star actress, the hypersensitive director, the blustering producer, the naïve…
THE BASICS: This delicious one act comedy by J M Barrie (PETER PAN, THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON), fills (appropriately enough) the Luchtime Theater slot at the Shaw Festival this year. Lezlie Wade directs a cast of five. Courthouse Theatre. The curtain is at 11:30am, and the show is done by 12:10, giving patrons something additional to chew on as they dine at one of the many fine restaurants in town! THUMBNAIL SKETCH: On the eve of his knighthood, Harry Sims hires, through an agency, a typist to respond to the expected crush of congratulatory messages. And receives the surprise of his…
THE BASICS: Caryl Churchill’s landmark feminist comedy from 1982. The Shaw Festival production, at the Courthouse Theatre, runs in repertory through September 12th. Vikki Anderson directs the all-woman cast of seven (most play several roles). TOP GIRLS runs approximately 2 ½ hours with its single intermission. THUMBNAIL SKETCH: A couple of red-letter days in the life of Marlene, a hard-driving career woman who has recently been promoted to manager in the London employment agency where she works. The famous opening scene involves a fantasy dinner party the triumphant Marlene gives, with top-achieving women from various centuries and cultures as her…
THE BASICS: This is Rick Felice’s play version of a popular novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. It’s a prequel to James Barrie’s PETER PAN, giving us the back stories for Peter, Captain Hook, The Lost Boys, Tinkerbell, etc. Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell has directed the Shaw Festival production, which runs in repertory at the Royal Geoge Theatre through November 1st. The play, with its single intermission, runs approximately two hours and forty minutes. THUMBNAIL SKETCH: This plot-heavy tale of adventure on the high seas concerns Lord Aster’s secret mission to dispose of a trunk of magical stardust for Queen Victoria. …
THE BASICS: A comedic rumination on women’s attachment to certain Special Clothes. This O’Connell and Company production plays weekends through June 7th, at the Park School on Harlem Road in Amherst. Roger Paolini directs a cast of five. The show, which is performed without intermission, runs about 90 minutes. THUMBNAIL SKETCH: Nora and Delia Ephron adapted LOVE, LOSS… from the best-selling book by Ilene Beckerman, amplifying it with material provided by a group of questioned friends. For about an hour and a half, we hear women talk of major life episodes, from blissful to bitter, and of the specific pieces of clothing…
THE BASICS: The local premiere of Christopher Durang’s acclaimed absurdist comedy/satire of 2009. A production of the Subversive Theatre Collective, it plays weekends (minus Easter Sunday) at the Manny Fried Theatre in the Great Arrow building, through April 12th. Thomas LaChiusa directs a cast of seven. The play runs about two hours with its ten minute intermission. THUMBNAIL SKETCH: WHY TORTURE… poses this fundamental question: What if you woke up one morning and found a stranger in your bed, and it seems that, under the influence of alcohol and rape date drugs, you actually married him, and he won’t tell you much…
THE BASICS: This lightweight domestic comedy by James Sherman is the second offering of the Jewish Repertory Theater’s “Season of Humor”. It plays weekends, minus Fridays, through March 1st, at the Maxine and Robert Seller Theatre at the JCC’s Amherst branch, on North Forest Road. Steve Vaughan directs a cast of six. The play, with its two brief intermissions, runs about two hours and ten minutes. THUMBNAIL SKETCH: Chicago, circa 1990. Sarah Goldman, a pretty, eligible kindergarten teacher, has been steady-dating a WASP businessman named (get ready) Chris Kringle, to the chagrin of her old-fashioned Jewish parents. Sarah is still really close…
THE BASICS: This nostalgic comedy-drama by A. R. Gurney, a coming of age story, is receiving its local premiere at the Kavinoky Theatre. Peter Palmisano directs a cast of five. FURNITURE plays weekends through February 1st. It’s about 1 ¾ hours in length, and is being played without an intermission. THUMBNAIL SKETCH: FURNITURE takes place, almost entirely, at the Canadian beach house of Russell and Claire, old moneyed Buffalonians in the classic Gurney mold. It’s 1952, and while their little world of privilege remains intact, there are telltale cracks and fissures. Their teenage children, Nick and Peggy, while not openly rebellious, are…
THE BASICS: Mark Twain’s 1876 children’s classic, adapted for the stage by Laura Eason. The Buffalo production plays weekends at the New Phoenix Theatre, through December 21st. Chris Kelly directs a cast of ten. The show runs approximately two hours. There is a single fifteen minute intermission. THUMBNAIL SKETCH: The timeless adventures of Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, Huck Finn, et al, set in the imaginary town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, 1840’s. Boys at Play, Ingenious Schemes (like getting others to whitewash a fence for you, and making a big entrance at your own funeral), Young Love, Magical Cures, Caves and Graveyards, Murder…