The Root of All Evil

Moneylender Shylock gets his comeuppance in an amusing revival %u2028of Shakespeare’s tragicomedy The Merchant of Venice

By James MacKillop

There’s nothing like a new director to lead a company in new directions. Sharee Lemos, a winner at the Syracuse New Times Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) Awards, has been on the scene for

Wednesday, February 20,2013
STAGE

Twisted Sisterhood

SU Drama’s Top Girls merges historical feminist figures with a scathing attack on 1980s Thatcherite England

By James MacKillop

British playwright Caryl Churchill comes to the stage with fiercely held positions, but she makes her case through surprise and indirection. She seeks to disorient you so you will look anew at w

Wednesday, February 13,2013
STAGE

Life of Pie

Syracuse Opera digs into the quirky cannibal horror-musical triumph Sweeney Todd

By James MacKillop

Wednesday, February 13,2013
STAGE

Baum Shelter

Community-theater treasure Jodie Baum boldly takes on Blanche Du Bois for A Streetcar Named Desire

By James MacKillop

We know going in why most community theater troupes are reluctant to stage A Streetcar Named...

Wednesday, February 6,2013
STAGE

Do the Locomotion

Two Trains Running continues the annual run of August Wilson productions at Syracuse Stage

By James MacKillop

Some of the puzzles in Two Trains Running are immediately open to us now. As this is the seventh Syracuse Stage production from August Wilson’s...

Wednesday, January 30,2013
STAGE

Southern Discomfort

Ithaca’s Kitchen Theatre Company hosts the area premiere of the unusual Civil War drama The Whipping Man

By James MacKillop

Among the many provocative questions Matthew Lopez’s The Whipping Man asks is, “Were there enough Jewish Negroes at the end of the Confederacy to form a minyan?” That is, a minimum

Wednesday, January 23,2013
STAGE

Good Grief

The Redhouse offers the edgy dark comedies Baltimore Waltz and W;t in repertory

By James MacKillop

We thought we knew what dark comedy is. The audience is supposed to squirm, feel a bit uneasy and then smile with teeth clenched. Redhouse director Stephen Svoboda wants you to know that even in

Wednesday, January 16,2013
STAGE

Cheatin’ Hearts

By James MacKillop

Adultery is usually a risky if exhilarating business, especially for persons in elected office. Eliot Spitzer and John Edwards could fill you in on all the details. Across the pond the sexual mi

Wednesday, January 2,2013
STAGE

Seasons of Showboating

By James MacKillop

Top among the 2012 highlights in local theater included: Local actor makes it big, No. 1. Kentucky-born Steve Kazee was languishing...

Wednesday, December 12,2012
STAGE

Classic Reillustrated

The 1939 Kaufman-Hart comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner merits a spirited revival from Central New York Playhouse

By James MacKillop

Dan Rowlands is a young director who is never shackled by history. A year ago last summer for Appleseed Productions he clasped onto Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace, arguably the mo