Herbert Paine

In Joe Bardin’s SEEING MAYA, peace doesn’t emerge through political rhetoric or grand ideological revelation. At least conceptually, it begins with something far more fragile: two people willing to step outside the boundaries of what feels normal.

There are productions that succeed because the script is strong, and productions that succeed because performers manage to elevate familiar material. Theatre Artists Studio’s production of John Patrick Shanley’s OUTSIDE MULLINGAR achieves something rarer: a complete unity of tone, performance, language, and emotional truth.

Strong performances, impressive staging, and the sense of fun and theatricality that audiences expect from a jukebox musical built around one of popular culture’s most enduring stars.

Stray Cat Theatre’s revival seems to rediscover the volatility in the text and the humor that snaps like electricity.

HELL’S KITCHEN leaves you with the sensation that at the very least Alicia Keys has done something instinctively theatrical: she’s turned the noise of her youth into music, and the city that raised her into a stage big enough to contain it.

Theatre Artists Studio's production of Amy Hartman's MAZEL has ended its run, but its themes of remembering, reconciliation, and forgiveness echo beyond the stage. Under Kathleen Butler's direction, the play, which was conceived in 2006, arrives in reworked form at a moment when its central question is no longer merely theatrical, but urgently real: what happens when the last witnesses to history are no longer here to tell it?

A production that reveals what the craft of theater can do when it trusts simplicity and emotion.

Silverman's dark and witty script, Mason's incisive direction, and two beautifully calibrated performances make this one of the season's more provocative and entertaining productions.

A small, sincere musical that reaches for neither spectacle nor modernity.

By the mid-1920s the Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo) were already well known on the vaudeville circuit. Broadway gave their mayhem a larger canvas. Producer Sam Harris commissioned a musical comedy built around them, pairing their improvisational chaos with the polish of Berlin’s songs and Kaufman’s sharp theatrical wit.

A tour de force, a musical perfectly crafted and performed, and directed by Dzifa Kwawu with remarkable precision. A must-see!

With four actors on a generally bare deck, and a whale that exists in our imagination, the old story of compulsion and the sea finds a fresh, unexpectedly playful life.

What’s more satisfying than watching six wronged women reclaim their power? Watching them do it in rhinestone corsets, backed by a thunderous girl band and enough LED lighting to short-circuit Times Square. SIX, the British import that’s barreled from university revue to Broadway headliner like a sugar-rushed Spice Girls revival, is a history class... if the lessons were taught in stilettos and unapologetic girl-group glory.

Stephen Casey, the director and choreographer of Arizona Broadway Theatre’s production of PRETTY WOMAN: THE MUSICAL, understands something essential about adapting a modern fairy tale, especially one rooted in a Rodeo Drive fantasy, for the stage: unless the performers anchor the story in authenticity, the flair of the music and dancing can vanish like a pumpkin carriage after midnight, leaving little substance beneath the sparkle.

UNCLE VANYA arrives at Theatre Artists Studio with thoughtful intentions and a capable ensemble, though the results are somewhat uneven. Presented in Conor McPherson’s streamlined adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s classic, and directed by Carol MacLeod, the production leans heavily into emotional immediacy.

A joyful revival that reanimates the spirit of the show that once jolted Broadway.

Lean and evocative, funny and frightening, tender and profane...reckoning with how to survive trauma.

Mounted with in-the-round polish and flair, Hale Centre Theatre’s GUYS AND DOLLS is bright, brassy, and built on rhythm. And for a few hours in Gilbert, the neon-drenched skyline glows, the dice roll, and Broadway’s Golden Age feels very much alive.

The play is suffused with the sympathetic wisdom that defines Wilson’s writing. He looks at lives many would dismiss as small or defeated and finds in them an undeniable nobility.

COME FROM AWAY makes you care with a humility and vigor that feel bracingly out of step with our more cynical age.