Lauren Yarger - Page 8

Insults, cooking competitions, family secrets bubbling to the surface and food fights are ingredients for a successful show.

= Christie Brinkley, who played this role twice on Broadway, gives it a professional effort (adopting a speaking voice that sounds a lot like original Roxie Gwen Verdon), and she looks terrific, but singing and dancing don't come naturally to the former supermodel.

The biggest mystery surrounding SOMETHING'S AFOOT isn't who's murdering guests at a posh estate on a remote island. It's why Goodspeed would decide to present a revival of such a flawed musical when there are so many other more deserving shows out there. It's not a whodunit. It's a whydunit?

It's compelling, moving, excellent theater and Pratt is a treat to watch.

Offering its first musical premiere since the 1996-97 season, Hartford Stage presents a tongue-in-cheek, Edwardian romp among the royals in A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder starring Tony-Award-Winner and Connecticut native Jefferson Mays (I Am My Own Wife) as eight different characters.

It was a dark and stormy -- and 50-Shades-of-Grey-kind-of -- night. If that opening sentence piques your interest, you're going to love David Ives' play VENUS IN FUR opening the 2012-2013 season over at TheaterWorks Hartford. If not, you might want to stay home.

Bullying, gun control and abortion rights are just a few issues that get a town hall hearing in the regional premiere of Theresa Rebeck's O BEAUTIFUL at CT Rep. What sets this one apart from other political plays is that some of the founding fathers themselves and other historic figures stop by to weigh in on some of today's hottest topics.

If you are a fan of the songs of Neil Sedaka, BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO, featuring 19 tunes performed by an enthusiastic ensemble at Ivoryton Playhouse, then love will keep you together. The implausible book concocted to link the songs together in Broadway-show fashion, however, might cause a little laughter in the rain.

Montoya's writing is impassioned, witty and insightful and we can't help but come away knowing that we and our family history are part of the Night too. The play disappoints, however, when it allows leftist politics a soapbox.

In this touring rendition of the P.L. Travers story (on which the 1964 Disney musical starring Julie Andrew and Dick Van Dyke was based), some of the telling in Julian Fellowes book is more "British" - darker -- than we might expect.

Times have changed, but Hedda's frustration still rings true in a contemporary society where political headlines about a "war on women" and protests that decisions on women's reproductive rights are made predominantly by men dominate today's headlines.

The dark and dingy streets of Victorian London and the hard life that faces those without the benefit of family pedigree or fortune are splendidly recreated in Ivoryton Playhouse's entertaining production of Oliver!, Lionel Bart's musical adaptation of Charles Dickens classic "Oliver Twist."

When dowdy, painfully shy Adelaide Pinchin (Andrea Maulella) meets dashing, smooth-talking, George Love (Mark Shanahan) it's love at first sight -- for him! Or is it? All is not what it seems in Karoline Leach's play Tryst, a taut, brooding, romance thriller full of creepy twists and turns that make you squirm and keep you on the edge of your seat wondering what will happen next and whether two very sad people can find happiness together.

Director Rob Ruggierio's production of the classic, like the ups and downs experienced while riding a carousel horse (the carousel is wonderfully recreated for the prologue on the restrictive Goodspeed stage), has moments of delight and some disappointments.

It's 1962 Baltimore, where racial tension and segregation provide a backdrop for teen angst and lots of catchy tunes by Marc Shaiman (lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Wittman) performed to stage-defying choreography by JR Bruno who manages to get some 15 ensemble members bopping around at times without crashing into each other on the small stage.

R. Bruce Connelly, one of Connecticut theater's gems, gives Neil Simon's LAST OF THE RED HOT LOVERS at Ivoryton Playhouse a shot in the arm with some charm and comic timing, but he and a willing cast can't fully resuscitate an aging play that's rather dated

Antoinette LaVecchia sparkles like a fine Chianti in Connecticut playwright Jacques Lamarre's stage adaptation of Giulia Melucci's bestselling memoir I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti getting a delectable world premiere at TheatreWorks in Hartford.

AMAZING GRACE is getting a run at Goodspeed Musicals' developmental Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, CT with an eye toward hitting Broadway. This might seem like a lofty goal given the large scale of the production in a struggling economy that has producers holding on tightly to their investment dollars (even smaller musicals can cost tens of millions of dollars to produce in New York). And the material is religious to boot (religious-themed shows have a hard time getting favorable reviews on the Great White Way.) Given the nothing-short-of-miraculous journey of the musical, so far, however, all things may be possible.

Even though the musical depicts events from more than 100 years ago, 'not much has changed.'

Tony nominee Louise Pitre (MAMMA MIA) brings to life a legendary stage persona in an engaging and well staged production of the Jerry Herman musical MAME to open the Goodspeed Opera House's 2012-2013 season.