Redneck Rhapsody

Under its blue state skin, Central New York has a hidden yearning for country music. So when country tastes and styles become grist for red-hot satire, we know just how the gags break.

No Fooling

Simon has never been a neglected playwright. Then again, letting some of his shows go fallow as we rethink his strengths has clearly been a good idea. Now in his twilight years, almost age 86, Simon isn’t producing anymore, and we’ve begun to miss him.

Womb with a View

The new production at Ithaca’s Kitchen Theatre Company begins with a stark, off-white square, the size of a parlor, and one metal chair without arms. Nothing else. High above this spartan space, scenic designer Alexander Woodward has placed a square frame, the same dimensions as the one on the floor.

Sleuth or Consequences

An Agatha Christie puzzler starts the summer season at Cortland Repertory

Stylish Agatha Christie mysteries have flourished at Cortland Repertory Theatre for several years now. The company really has the hang of them, beginning with dialect coach Dustin Charles, who commands British accents of different classes and, in the case of the season opener, The Unexpected Guest, two social classes in Welsh. Costumer Wendi R. Zea loves period costumes; this is a late Christie, 1958.

Setting the Stage

Classics and newbies mix it up for Syracuse Stage’s 2013-2014 slate

Call it balance, if you will. The holiday show for Syracuse Stage’s 2013-2014 season will be the best-known stage work in the English language, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, albeit a new, non-musical version by innovative playwright Romulus Linney.

A Homer Run

A cast of one inhabits multiple roles for Syracuse Stage’s An Iliad

For several hundred years, the sprawling stories of western culture’s oldest epic, Homer’s The Iliad, were recited and acted out before they were written down. Even when seen on the page, certain pages seem to cry out to be spoken:stark verbal encounters and the hair-raising viciousness of battle.

Shakes It Up

Hamlet Cha Cha Cha kids the Bard in Central New York Playhouse’s musical spoof

As you can tell from the title, Hamlet Cha Cha Cha is not a tragedy about a melancholy Danish prince who can’t make up his mind. Strange to say, this Hamlet (Peter Dowling), sometimes called “Hammy,” speaks quite a few of the lines from Shakespeare. Like, “O! that this too solid flesh would melt,” only here it becomes a gag line.

Herstory Exam

Kitchen Theatre honcho Rachel Lampert mines autobiographical amusement with And, Lately. . .

It’s hard to tell where the curtain speech (comments about exit doors, cells phones and so on) ends and the action begins in And, Lately. . . . Actor-playwright Rachel Lampert, who is the producing artistic director at Ithaca’s Kitchen Theatre Company, asks for a show of hands, “There isn’t anybody here who doesn’t know me, is there?” One timid hand goes up. With a shrug of the shoulders, she then advises, “You will.”

Back to Bataan

Nurses experience World War II up close and personal in Appleseed’s Cry Havoc

In her program notes for Cry Havoc, fledgling director Lois Haas describes her campaign to get Appleseed Productions to mount the dramatic rarity as a “labor of love.” Haas, a stalwart at the company for many years, sees Allan R.

Hook, Lines and Tinker

Peter Pan soars in a new Redhouse interpretation