Krista Garver - Page 19

What would you do if the wife who left you 20 years ago in the middle of the night, and who you've loved and and hated ever since, showed up at your door?

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM is the musical equivalent of the perfect summer beach read -- funny, not too demanding, and everything works right out in the end. The current production at Broadway Rose fulfills all of these expectations and gives you a tune to hum on your way home (I've been amusing myself with 'Comedy Tonight' for days).

Portland has a new theatre company! Public Citizen Theatre is the mostly crowdfunded passion project of Amanda Mehl and Aaron Filyaw. For their first production they've chosen Jean Genet's 1947 play THE MAIDS, a sadomasochistic look at domestic servitude, based on the true story of the Papin sisters and translated by Martin Crimp.

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR had its heyday before I was born. Of course, growing up as a musical lover, I had several Andrew Lloyd Webber compilation CDs, so I got to know the music, which I still think is rates among Webber's best. But, I'd never had the pleasure of seeing the actual musical until last weekend, when I took in Michael Streeter's production at Post5 Theatre. And I thought it was great! One of the people in my party had been lucky enough to see the original 1970 production on Broadway. He enjoyed this one as well.

Broadway Rose could perhaps not have picked a more fitting time to bring us Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim's WEST SIDE STORY. Right now, our country and several others around the world are in dire need of a reminder that when gangs face off, there is no happy ending. Violence that is rooted in blind hatred and fear has tragic consequences -- for everybody.

When AMERICAN IDIOT premiered on Broadway in 2010, I must admit I was skeptical. Like every other person of my generation, I started listening to Green Day in high school. But a punk jukebox musical? Really?

If you've been wondering whether you should see THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH at Artists Rep, the answer is yes. Here's why.

As soon as you walk into the theatre at Portland Center Stage, you'll start to feel overheated and a little claustrophobic. No, nothing's wrong with the air conditioning. It's because of G.W. Mercier's set, which features an authentic New Orleans second-story balcony jutting out over the two cramped rooms where the action of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE takes place.

I'm about to give away the best-kept musical theatre secret in Portland. Once every few months, a rotating group of incredibly talented singers and actors gets together and puts on a cabaret-style concert. For a big Broadway musical fan like me, this is about as close as it gets to a perfect night.

You know those shows that won't quite let you go? Heidi Schreck's GRAND CONCOURSE, now playing at Artists Repertory Theatre, is one of them. I saw the show with 10 people. We all had a slightly different take on it, and we have continued to talk about it -- both online and off. I take that a sign of something good.

This spring, Portland's Milagro Theatre, whose mission since 1985 has been to provide 'extraordinary Latino theatre, culture, and arts education experiences for the enrichment of all communities' is presenting the world premiere of its first commissioned play, INTO THE BEAUTIFUL NORTH: AN ADVENTUROUS QUEST, by Karen Zacarias, based on the novel by Luis Alberto Urrea. In advance of the opening, I sat down with Zacarias to learn about her life, the play, and what she thinks about the Portland theatre scene.

If you were to google 'information about love,' randomly click on 57 of the results, and then skim each page starting in the middle, you'd experience the digital equivalent of watching Caryl Churchill's LOVE AND INFORMATION, currently playing at Theatre Vertigo.

Are we the products of our cultural history? Or can we create ourselves from scratch as something new?

Chalk up another winner for Portland Center Stage this season -- THE PIANIST OF WILLESDEN LANE is one you don't want to miss! Mona Golabek's one-woman show about her own mother's escape from Nazi-controlled Austria on the Kindertransport is part-concert, part-storytelling, and all magic.

From now until May 7, you could sit around and wait for something glorious to happen. Or you could go see A DOLL'S HOUSE at Shaking the Tree and guarantee that it does.

In the middle of Samuel D. Hunter's THE FEW, Brian - a long-haul truck driver recently returned home after a four-year absence - slumps in a chair and says: 'I'm really terrible at being a person.' That statement perfectly encapsulates the struggle at the center of this play, which is about people trying to figure out how to be people and to perform the seemingly impossible task of connecting with themselves and with one another.

You remember Heathers, right? The 1988 cult classic movie starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater that gave the high school lexicon such classics as 'What's your damage?' 'That's so very!' and 'F**k me gently with a chainsaw.' (I wasn't allowed to see it, but I had a friend whose mom let us watch anything we wanted.) Well, now it's a musical playing at the Sanctuary at Sandy Plaza courtesy of triangle productions! and Staged! And it's great!

When Jackie Sibblies Drury wrote WE ARE PROUD TO PRESENT A PRESENTATION ABOUT THE HERERO OF NAMIBIA, FORMERLY KNOWN AS SOUTHWEST AFRICA, FROM THE GERMAN SUDWESTAFRIKA, BETWEEN THE YEARS 1884-1915 (yes, that's the complete title), in 2012, she couldn't have known the maelstrom that would be upon us in 2016. Since the shooting of Michael Brown led to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, race relations in the United States have been declining. According to a survey, they're currently at their worst in recent history.

In Chekov's THE SEAGULL, writer Constantin Treplev says: 'We need new forms of expression. We need new forms, and if we can't have them we had better have nothing.' And, with THE SEAGULL, the first of his four great plays, Chekov did indeed introduce a new form of theatre -- one that replaced the melodrama popular at the time with realism. Chekov's characters were real people, having real conversations, and doing real things. It wasn't always successful in his time (read about it in the STUPID F**KING BIRD Playbill), but it had a huge impact on theatre.