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MEGAN GRUMBLING

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Good Theater explores being stuck, and escaping

Understanding poverty
The wood walls are streaky and weathered in the homes of both Margie (Denise Poirier) and Mike (James Noel Hoban).

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | October 18, 2012

Mad Horse opens new home with classic comedy

Playing at politics
Charles P. Smith (Brent Askari) is in trouble. He has, according to his own closest advisor (Mark Rubin), "fucked up everything he's touched."

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | October 18, 2012

AIRE’s journey of a Faith Healer

Don’t stop believing
The assonant, guttural names of old Welsh and Scottish villages — Aberarder, Aberayron, Llangranog, Llangurig, Abergorlech — return often to the mouths of the characters in Brian Friel's Faith Healer .

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | October 10, 2012

Wasserstein’s wide range of characters

It takes all kinds
Between the three of them, the sisters Rosensweig cover quite a range of the Meyers-Briggs psychological types.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | October 03, 2012

Comedy and talent at Lyric

A Golden Age
A ballsy young stock broker, a wealthy young ingénue, an evangelist-turned-nightclub singer, and a gangster and his moll Bonnie — a rich array of American archetypes will encounter each other aboard the S.S. American , in the Cole Porter classic Anything Goes .

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | September 26, 2012

Dead Wessex’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Victoriana’s old clothes
That we have not yet fully outlived the Victorians seems self-evident, given the political right's priggishly austere agenda for women's reproductive health and rights.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | September 19, 2012

Head back inside for fall’s theater

Leaves fall; curtains rise
My own first show of the season will be this weekend's opening of Tess of the D'Urbervilles , the classic Thomas Hardy tragedy of the ravished Tess, mounted by the newly formed DEAD WESSEX FAIR (September 14-23, at the sadly soon-to-be former Lucid Stage).

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | September 12, 2012

Playing with modern religion

Road Shows
A Maine playwright, director, and cast of four are taking the Big Apple this month, but before they do, we have the chance to see them right here in Portland: Dominion, a new play by writer and actor Hal Cohen, will premiere next week at Lucid Stage, in advance of its run as part of the Manhattan Repertoire Theater's Fall One-Act Competition.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | September 12, 2012

MSMT’s fabulous New York, in 42nd Street

A glorious homage
You know how this story goes: Lovely, ambitious, and impossibly nice tap-dancing ingénue arrives in Depression-era New York City to make it on Broadway, and — by a mingling of pluck, luck, and looks — she gets herself cast as a chorus girl.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | August 22, 2012

Doing the Time Warp at Arundel Barn

Absolute pleasure
The Arundel Barn Playhouse has given its production of The Rocky Horror Show a "PG-14" rating, and attendees are asked by artistic director Adrienne Grant (in both a pre-show speech and a detailed online document that is itself a work of art) to observe a few niceties.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | August 15, 2012

Carson Kressley in Damn Yankees

The Devil went down to Ogunquit
This year marks the Ogunquit Playhouse's 80th season of breezily sophisticated, classic American musical entertainment.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | August 08, 2012

Monmouth’s Henry IV is stunning

No Shallow Hal
Shakespeare's Henry IV is considered one of his "histories," as it enacts actual acts and battles of the British king who deposed Richard II.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | August 01, 2012

Fenix Theatre face the challenges of the Scottish play

They dare do all
Theater's al fresco season is upon us, and once again the Fenix Theatre Company regales us with a Shakespeare classic as we nestle against a hillside in Deering Oaks Park.

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | July 25, 2012

Molière than thou

The master of mockery at Monmouth
Religious hypocrisy has been one of the lowest-hanging fruits for satire in the last few years: Think of those fervid denouncers of homosexual acts, like New Life Church pastor Ted Haggard, who were discovered to be clandestinely engaging in those very acts (in Haggard's case, with a hired masseur and under the influence of crystal meth).

By: MEGAN GRUMBLING | July 18, 2012