The dark Douaihys: From left, Charles (Christopher Sanders), Joseph (Chris Richards) and Uncle Bill (Bernard Canepari) in "Sons of the Prophet," now onstage at Dobama Theatre. Nath…
Dorothy Silver in "The Velocity of Autumn" at the Beck Center for the Arts in spring 2012. Courtesy of the Beck Center for the Arts Before Eric Coble's "The Velocit…
As embodied by Laurie Birmingham, Madame Arcati is a batty whirlwind in brown velvet. Whether attempting to sense ectoplasmic energy through her wrists, munching on cucumber sandwiches or ch…
As Bessie Smith, Miche Braden is as fun as sin. Backed by a tight, three-man band, the jazz and blues veteran who cut her teeth playing clubs in her hometown of Detroit delivers an unforgett…
View full size "For pure originality and expressiveness, it's hard to imagine any Broadway chorus line topping the solo dances performed here by an 83-year-old woman with a superfluity …
For the 2013-14 season, Cleveland Play House Artistic Director Michael Bloom has landed some of the hottest properties from the best of Broadway, including Tony darlings "Venus in Fur&q…
"With my having been a club singer and working with jazz cats and blues cats, doing R&B and rock 'n' roll and everything, it just kind of lived in me -- the life of an entertainer o…
The ocean of opportunity that was opened to girls like Pokie by the civil rights movement threatened to swamp the world of her elders, who prized family and filial duty above all else, and p…
"The Gospel According to James" is an unsettling, urgent, beautifully written drama that demands that we pay attention to the scourge of racism in ways "Django Unchained"…
According to a press release issued Wednesday afternoon, a transformer in the electrical vault in the basement of the Hanna "malfunctioned and began smoking," said Tom Einhouse, Pl…
Cleveland Play House costume designer David Kay Mickelsen describes how he created the timeless pieces in "Bell, Book and Candle," now onstage at the Allen Theatre through Sunday, …
"Fiction" concerns the insufferable Linda and Michael Waterman -- glib, brainy authors who have been married 20 years and know everything. They also get off on arguing about the so…
"Bell, Book and Candle" is rarely performed, and yet its influence -- the idea of a paranormal being falling for an unremarkable human -- is shot through pop culture, from the long…
The nearly 500 glam, glitzy getups are reason alone to catch the show. Because where else are you likely to see men with the abs of Brad Pitt in "Troy" outfitted as orange lizards,…
Sexy witches, thrill killers, unrepentant gamblers, Mormon missionaries and armless, legless knights are but a few of the characters coming to Cleveland stages in 2013.
There are some 260 quick changes during "Priscilla Queen of the Desert," some 15 seconds long, others 45 seconds long. "There are quick changes happening onstage, there are qu…
Cleveland Public Theatre's Big Box series never fails to bring the most esoteric works to the stage, and its 11th cycle does not disappoint. The best title in the eight-week menu of offering…
While Tri-C students often enter acting and design competitions at the regional conference, they've never been asked to stage a full-scale production at the Kennedy Center American College T…
The 2012 professional theater season in Cleveland proved you can pack a house without programming "The Music Man."
The trouble with "Annie" isn't this production -- the performances, on the whole, were solid and some even soared -- but the musical itself. Admit it: "Hard Knock Life" p…
Nothing sets those visions of sugarplums dancing like Great Lakes Theater's production of "A Christmas Carol" -- onstage at the Ohio Theatre through Sunday, Dec. 23 -- except for t…
Whether dining out before a show or catching a weekend matinee, ticket holders flocking to PlayhouseSquare have more choices than ever about where to eat, drink and be merry in the city's pr…
When last Dorothy Silver headlined a drama, it was Eric Coble's "The Velocity of Autumn" at the Beck Center for the Arts, and Silver so outshone her co-star that it was almost like…
"Devised theater" like "The Secret Soical" is by its nature a leap of faith. Lots of cooks often make the soup, collaborating on the script and character development. The…
"A Carol for Cleveland" is original work brimming with heart, its roots planted deeply into the city's sooty soil. The script is littered with crowd-pleasing touchstones, from navi…