Lauren Yarger - Page 9

Mark Lamos directs an impressive kickoff at Westport Country Playhouse with a 25th-anniversary production of Stephen Sondhheim's funny and thought-provoking musical INTO THE WOODS.

Knowing chuckles sputter throughout the audience during the world premiere of Will Eno's THE REALISTIC JONESES at Yale Rep. The story is about everything - and nothing - just like the dialogue, but sooner or later you recognize a character you know, or perhaps yourself, and suddenly the seemingly pointless conversation hits home like it was fired at a bullseye.

A mostly grey-haired matinee audience smiling, bopping heads, tapping feet and singing along with classics like 'Fly Me to the Moon,' Night and Day,' 'That Old Black Magic,' and of course, 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco.'

Cynical, angry artist Mark Rothko (Jonathan Epstein) hires a young idealistic assistant, Ken (Thomas Leverton) to work with him on his newest commission: a series of four murals to hang in the newly constructed Four Seasons Restaurant in Manhattan. A smart dialogue about painting and about American society unfolds with the teacher-student relationship transitioning. Ken's hopes that Rothko might be a friend, or even a mentor to replace the father he discovered murdered at a young age are dashed with every stroke of paint, however. The master's vision for companionship extends only to the relationship between the paintings. The end result is always the same for him: tragedy. Rothko is struggling with the futility of life and with putting his brilliance on the walls of a commercial enterprise where its full meaning of the color red might or might not be comprehended by the capitalists dining beneath it.

A De 'light full' Productions of Shakespeare's tale of love and jealousy.

A bewitchingly beautiful Kate MacCluggage plays Gillian Holroyd, a witch who sets her sights on mortal Shepherd Henderson (Robert Eli) who lives upstairs from her red-swathed, moonlit New York apartment in Long Wharf Theatre;s production of John Van Druten's play with subtle commentary on social issues of the 1950s.

Always Patsy Cline, playing at the Ivoryton Playhouse brings to life the true friendship between Patsy (Jacqueline Petroccia) and one of her biggest fans, Louise Seger (Laurie Dawn). Penned and originally directed by Ted Swindley, the show packs almost 30 tunes around the story of how the women met and continued their friendship through letters in the late 1950s and early '60s until Cline's death in a plane crash at the age of 30.

The idea is a good one -- both in real life, where editor George Davis dreams of running a boarding house for artists in Brooklyn, and and in the theater, where book writer Seth Bockley brings the residents' stories to the stage, but a lack of practical planning in both cases fails to bring the ideas to full fruition.

What does a 47-year-old single guy need to do to get a date with the girl of his dreams? Well, if you're Vincent DiDonato (Lou Martini, Jr.) in Gino DiIorio and Nancy Bleemer's comedy Centennial Casting playing at Seven Angels Theatre in Waterbury, you pretend you are a casting director and pretend to give her an audition for a movie.

'What was that about?' seemed to be the main question theatergoers were asking after experiencing Christina Anderson's play Good Goods receiving its world premiere at Yale Repertory, Well, it's about a family dry goods store, a mysterious factory town, finding love, finding sexual identity, and oh, yeah, possession and excorcism. It's almost enough to make your head spin (pun intended).

Eight short plays with a prologue and epilogue depict folks falling in and out of love in a town called Almost, ME. The action takes place on a Friday evening in front of a rustic cabin-like backdrop.

The multiple Emmy winner, who was honored with a lifetime achievement award by the Writers Guild, East in 2010, talks about having friends like Billy Crystal, Larry David or Gilda Radner and in the same breath, can listen patiently as a wannabe writer runs a really bad idea by him for a TV sitcom. The blend of genius and kindness is a rare combination in this industry.

A mother and daughter struggle with transitions in their life and with living with each other in Philip Hayes Dean's play THE STY OF THE BLIND PIG, getting a rare run on stage at TheaterWorks, Hartford.

Steven Epp and Christopher Bayes are definitely the go-to guys if you want 21st-century audiences laughing at centuries-old plays.

A playwright endeavors to tell the scariest ghost story he's ever heard, but will the real ghost let him?

Avatars appear as the users of an internet support forum for crack addicts sign on to chat, but the action doesn't take place in cyberspace. It unfolds on stage as Hartford Stage presents the world premiere of Quiara Alegria Hudes' moving play WATER BY THE SPOONFUL.

Doctor Without Borders Zack (Greg Keller) and his yoga instructor/actress wife Abby (Maria Dizzia) seem like a typical, cozy American couple living in their Paris apartment, but theatergoers who really want any part of typical or cozy won't find it in this world premiere of BELLEVILLE, by Amy Herzog, commissioned by Yale Rep.

Here in Hartford, it's worth the trip for the excellent, humorous play and a stellar performance turned in by Royce Johnson as Ralph.

Darko Tresnjak, Hartford Stage's new artistic director, helms a stylish production of the complicated murder-mystery musical CITY OF ANGELS for Goodspeed Musicals, starring Nancy Anderson, Burke Moses and a fabulous set designed by David P. Gordon.

Things aren't always the way they look, and they might not be anything like you think, unless you can see them from the other side.