"Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical" is a scream, a clever send-up of skin flicks in the Ron Jeremy days, when production values were as low as the woodman's hairy gut. A special chee…
In championing "A Carol for Cleveland," Bloom passed on more tried-and-true fare, including the Sherlock Holmes Christmas mystery "The Game's Afoot," a box-office home ru…
Members of the bizarro wait staff from "Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant" join forces with Cleveland Public Theatre artists to create "The Secret Social," a delicious piece…
in the play's first act, Lee has all the fun. And in Cliff Bailey, director Clyde Simon has found a burly, deft comedian. Though he lacks the feline sexiness and menace of a Malkovich (who w…
I'd be a Grinch not to tip a tiara to Tim Tavcar, who gives a vanity-free performance as pot-bellied female impersonator Polly Esther. Tavcar, in a towering wig of ginger curls, the hair on …
While top-notch shows are onstage at the city's professional houses, there are also ambitious, inventive, dare I say "must-see" productions at area colleges. Cleveland State Univer…
"The Whipping Man," now playing in the intimate Second Stage theater of the Cleveland Play House, is a production that achieves holistic perfection. It fires on all cylinders, righ…
Shaker Heights native Russell G. Jones has carved out an enviable career on the New York stage, where he has built a reputation as "an artist's artist," says "Whipping Man&quo…
Despite some flaws in the script and pacing issues -- a few scenes needed a swig of Red Bull -- Samuel D. Hunter's 2011 Obie-winning play resonates now more than ever, and the Dobama Theatre…
Kevin David Thomas was to have appeared on Broadway with fellow Baldwin Wallace University alum Jill Paice next month in the hotly anticipated Gothic confection "Rebecca." Instead,…
In the Beck Center's "The Little Dog Laughed," director Scott Plate, department chair of the music theater program at Baldwin Wallace University, lets it all hang out and then some…
Academy Award winner Estelle Parsons is on board to play Alexandra, an 80-year-old artist who blockades herself in her home and threatens to blow it to smithereens rather than end her days i…
"Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays" makes no apologies for being what it is -- a piece of agitprop theater gift-wrapped as a collection of one-acts by some of America's …
Racehl York embodies the brash, bawdy Reno Sweeney -- made famous by Ethel Merman when the musical first set sail on Broadway in 1934 -- with a wink and a purr. And her pipes? Gather 'round,…
First produced in 1985 during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, Larry Kramer's historic play is as much a call to arms as a piece of theater. Twenty-seven years later, despite an effective …
Structurally, "The Winter's Tale," first printed in the folio of 1623 and grouped with the Bard's comedies, is two plays in one: a tragedy with a pastoral spliced on the end. That …
World-weary audiences of the '30s flocked to Broadway and the bijou to be transported to a place without bread lines and bad news, where life is de-lightful, de-licious and de-lovely. "…
"Lombardi," the season opener for the Cleveland Play House, features hard-hitting perfomances from Bob Ari and DeeDee Rescher in a look at the man behind the football legend.
As Ronnie in Stephen Adly Guirgis' irresistibly titled play, Anjanette Hall spends much of her time in a bra and underwear, proudly spewing obscenities that would make David Mamet blush, all…
The 2012-13 season offers a smorgasbord of the classic and the cutting-edge.
Charlotta Enflo, managing director of Dobama Theatre, easily landed the hot script "The Motherf - - - - - With the Hat" in April. "It might have been the title," Enflo de…
"You go off singing happy songs with a big smile on your face," says Rachel York, who will hoof it at PlayhouseSquare as evangelist-turned-nightclub-singer Reno Sweeney in the Roun…
Alison Garrigan has been madly stitching away, creating the over-the-top costumes for "Xanadu," the show that will open the 2012-13 season at the Beck Center for the Arts.
Moliere's "The Imaginary Invalid" has been moved from the 17th century to the 1960s with pop music and few 2012 issues, such as health care and who should be paying for it.
Cleveland Public Theatre's Raymond Bobgan didn't have to work hard to find a director for "Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays." He just read off the names of the work's c…