Nerd is the Word

Geeky students triumph in Merry-Go-Round’s musical comedy Spelling Bee

Anyone who has ever attended a public spelling bee knows it makes for gripping live theater, with elements of American Idol. Your humble reviewer gained a grounding in how wrenching the bee is by

Critics’ Choice

Theater reviewers and Agatha Christie mysteries are briskly lampooned in Appleseed’s The Real Inspector Hound

Profiles in Courage

"The horror. The horror.” Those four words are groaned at the climax of Joseph Conrad’s famous novella Heart of Darkness, set in the Congo. No friend of the Belgian administration, Conrad

They’ll Take Manhattan

Covey Theatre strikes the right sparks with Neil Simon’s romantic comedy Barefoot in the Park

At first glance the announcement looked like a mistake. What could be motivating Garrett Heater and Susan Blumer’s Covey Theatre Company to revive Neil Simon’s nearly half-century-old do

Unsentimental Journey

An aging lady travels through Texas to find herself in Hangar’s The Trip to Bountiful

For the late playwright Horton Foote (1916-2009), living long was the best revenge. In his extended career, he was in and out of fashion, and despite winning Pulitzer Prizes, that meant mostly out

The Moor, the Merrier

Two cross-dressing actors cavort amid a gloomy English estate in Cortland Repertory’s satiric The Mystery of Irma Vep

The Mystery of Irma Vep is a curious, one might even say ridiculous, mystery because just about everyone enters the theater knowing her true identity. And if you don’t know, you figure it out

The Reich Stuff

The Nazi menace again rears its head in Merry-Go-Round Playhouse’s inspired rethinking of the musical Cabaret

It’s been 11 years since Brett Smock, one of Merry-Go-Round Playhouse’s favorite director-choreographers, staged John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Cabaret in Auburn. Eleven years is more t

Getting The Acts

Central New York’s new season of theater boasts comfort food as well as in-your-face works

 This year we can see Jersey Boys, a white whale on stage, musical assassins and the return of Debbie Does Dallas. Shakespeare will be the most produced playwright with two rival companies as wel

Rube Awakening

A drama student and aging Canadian farmers learn from each other in Cortland Repertory’s The Drawer Boy

The phrase “hit Canadian play” is not an oxymoron, although it may sound like one. Michael Healy’s The Drawer Boy opened in Toronto in 1999 and then appeared in most of the leading re

Disorderly Conduct

Rock’n’roll mixes with manic depression in the unusual musical Next to Normal at Ithaca’s Hangar Theatre

Rock idiom may have dominated American popular music since Elvis was drafted into the Army, but the musical theater embrace of rock has been fitful and irregular. Jonathan Larson scored a huge hit