Eugene Weekly

Premiering this weekend at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, winner of the 2013 Tony Award for best play, represents a kind of second act for playwright Christopher Durang. “Durang is known for his outrageous comedy, and rightfully so,” OCT director Tara Wibrew says. “But I particularly appreciate that his characters are lovable. In many of Durang’s pieces, there isn’t a villain against a hero — just good people taking opposing routes in an attempt to make life better.”  Continue reading →

Written by Joe DiPietro with music by Jimmy Roberts, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change is a series of skit-like vignettes punctuated by songs loosely hung around themes of love, sex, relationships and marriage. First performed Off-Broadway in 1996, the popular and award-winning musical is on now at Actor’s Cabaret under the direction of Anthony Krall. Continue reading →

Way back when, the late, great American writer Kurt Vonnegut published a short story — “Who Am I This Time?” — about a pair of community theater actors who, awkward in so-called real life, fall in love through the character they play on stage. In Vonnegut’s sure hands, the conceit is melancholy and sweet, a concession to the fraught slapstick of authentic emotional connection. Continue reading →

Sharply written and deeply empathic, Steve Yockey’s Blackberry Winter trains a bright light on Vivienne, whose mother has lived with Alzheimer’s disease for a few years and is now in the throes of transitioning from assisted living (Vivienne refers to it as “the Residence Inn”) to a more confining, yet safer, nursing home.   Played with tenderness and perfect clarity by Mary Buss, Vivienne is magnetizing as she draws us towards onstage objects that both elicit and anchor all-too fleeting memories: a little wooden horse, a pile of ladies’ scarves, a trowel.  Continue reading →

If we could time travel, rock-‘n’-roll fans might want to dial their wayback machines to Memphis’ Sun Records, Dec. 4, 1956, when legends Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash created an unforgettable musical session.    Perkins, already a powerhouse with hits like “Blue Suede Shoes,” had booked the studio that day and hired a little-known session player to back him up — a guy named Jerry Lee Lewis.  Continue reading →

“It’s been some time that I’ve been wanting to have music that gives voice to those who’ve gone through Alzheimer’s disease and dementia,” says Eugene Concert Choir artistic director and conductor Diane Retallack, who has poured her energies into making the world premier of composer Joan Szymko’Shadow & Light a reality.    Continue reading →

Ah, Paradise: What an orchard of happiness. Endless green, endless time and endless innocence, unsullied by death and the knowledge of it. What’s not to like? But God, in his infinite wisdom, looked upon Eden’s immaculate expanse and thought unto himself: Needs something. Needs a beholder to appreciate my handiwork and artistry, my Godness. Needs people. And so there were people, and everything went to hell. Continue reading →

Two couples, one reeling from the horrific murder of their only daughter, the other coping with a terminal illness that is reaching its late stage, come together and confront their demons: This is the thumbiest of thumbnail sketches of The Quality of Life, a play by Jane Anderson that explores the specter of death, the lash of loss, the cycles of grief and how people make meaning amid chaos and crisis — in short, it’s about life itself. Continue reading →

With perfect political timing, a new dinner theater company brings Murder on the Campaign Trail to town The newly minted Mystery Mayhem Theater Company’s dinner show, Murder on the Campaign Trail, opens in Springfield this weekend, with a sendup of the political process and whodunit rolled into one.  The show’s co-producer, Tony Stirpe, cut his teeth on shows like this.    Continue reading →