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Let’s be real: At least 80 percent of the time, taking on a production of Les Misérables is a bad idea. “Ambitious” doesn’t begin to describe this excruciatingly melodramatic 1,500-page historical novel-turned-stage musical. Continue reading
Sight Unseen is an Obie award-winning play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies. The play, which opens this week at The Very Little Theatre, takes as its subject a renowned artist and strips him naked of all the trappings of success, leaving almost nothing where a man once was. Continue reading
Theater has long served as fertile ground for new ideas to germinate, with playwrights boldly questioning the status quo and planting the seeds of change. Eugene audiences will have the opportunity to examine two politically charged plays, as the University of Oregon Department of Theatre Arts presents Chantal Bilodeau’s Sila: An Arctic Story and Lane Community College’s Theatre Department performs Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Continue reading
Sara is unlucky. She has a problem with light bulbs blowing out, leftovers spontaneously combusting and goldfish going belly up before their time. But in the new comedy Lucky Me by Robert Caisley — now playing at Oregon Contemporary Theatre — Sara finds something special because of her supposed faults, not in spite of them. Written in a snappy style reminiscent of Kaufman and Hart, Caisley populates Sara’s leaky apartment with a cast of genuine and lovable misfits. Continue reading
With a large, skilled cast and an indefinable but undeniable energy, the reaction to New Hope Christian College’s Hairspray was: Wow. “This is one of the best musicals I’ve seen in Eugene,” an audience member gushed at intermission. Continue reading
“We’re sort of a road-hardened, long-running, tight theater ensemble,” says Hand2Mouth Theatre’s artistic director Jonathan Walters. “Our shows are sophisticated, structured and incredibly interactive.” Founded in 2000, Portland-based Hand2Mouth sails into town for one-night-only, Sunday, April 19, at Oregon Contemporary Theatre. Continue reading
The year is 1928, the last gasp of the good times before the crash of the Great Depression. Fringe is flying, bathtub gin is flowing and Queenie and her man Burrs are in a bad romance. Continue reading
The seventh-annual NW10 Festival returns this week with a handful of 10-minute plays premiering at Oregon Contemporary Theatre. “There’s a big difference between a skit and a 10-minute play,” insists festival co-founder Paul Calindrino. “A skit is like a one-line joke, whereas a 10-minute play has the potential to be a fully self-contained dramatic unit with character development, emotional impact and narrative force.” Continue reading
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum captured our country’s imagination when it debuted on Broadway in 1962. A young Stephen Sondheim wowed audiences with an interesting score, providing a teaser to his masterful later works. The book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart is based on Plautus’ Roman comedies, resulting in a goofy, sometimes brainy farce that manages to reflect a deep respect for the humor of antiquity. Continue reading
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is one of the peaks of Stephen Sondheim’s stellar career as America’s greatest musical theater composer, which, after multiple Tonys, Grammys, a Pulitzer and other laurels, received another boost with 2014’s film version of his musical Into the Woods. Continue reading