"May we entertain you?" -- Indeed you do in a sparkling production of Gypsy at the Pike Road Theatre Company, directed and choreographed with an infectious flair by James Keith Posey. Based on the memoirs of iconic striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, this 1959 Arthur Laurents-Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim offering has been hailed by some as the "greatest American book-musical" for its powerful story, memorable songs, and extraordinarily forceful central character who has been played by such theatre icons as Ethel Merman, Bernadette Peters, Patti Lupone, Angela Lansbury, Rosalind Russell, Tyne Daly ..read more

"Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not." -- Caliban, Act III, Scene ii The Tempest. Director Rick Dildine's interpretation of Shakespeare's late-career The Tempest is playing at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival for an all-too-short run. Editing the play to a compact 110-minute intermissionless production, setting it in the late 18th Century on Christopher and Justin Swader's grand hulk of a skeletal wrecked ship, and adding a folksy musical score to span the centuries and signal its relevance to modern audiences, it details a story of r ..read more

Thomas Heggen and Joshua Logan wrote their 1948 play Mister Roberts based on Heggen's 1946 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, earning a Tony Award for Henry Fonda in the title role, which he then went on to play in the 1955 film. Before the performance begins at The Millbrook Community Players' theatre, a patriotic slide-show picturing many of the cast and their family members who had served in the military, delivers an excellent simple tribute. Set towards the end of World War II, it recounts the story of Lt. (JG) Roberts [Roger Humber] as he attempts to transfer from a cargo ship ..read more

 "The best laid plans of mice and men/often go awry" -- Robert Burns: To a Mouse Every character in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is crippled in one way or another [whether physically, psychologically, or by circumstance], and each seeks a way out from a Depression Era California working ranch. -- Money is tight, emotions run high, and manual labor takes its toll; the only relief for the men seems to come from gambling, drinking, and whoring. Friday night's sold-out audience at Prattville's Way Off Broadway Theatre were engaged in director Melissa Strickland's interpretation of Steinbe ..read more

Award winning playwright Lucas Hnath's brisk, sophisticated, philosophical, and witty A Doll's House, Part 2 opened the Cloverdale Playhouse's 12th Season this Thursday in front of a first night's appreciative,  though small storm-related audience.  If that title seems familiar, hold on: Hnath has imagined what might have happened some fifteen years after Nora Helmer infamously left her marriage and family in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House in 1859 Norway, slamming the door on her way out. -- In the opening moment of ...Part 2, there's a persistent knocking on that same door. -- Enter ..read more

Paris-1793-The Reign of Terror [or is it today?]. Four women: a playwright, an assassin, a political activist, and a former Queen walk into a bar --- no, wait...not into a bar, but on-stage at Theatre AUM in a staged reading of prolific playwright Lauren Gunderson's provocative 2017 comedy The Revolutionists. Prior to its penultimate reading on Saturday night, Dr. Michael Burger contextualized essential information about the French Revolution that served to focus the audience's attention on the subjects of Gunderson's play: aspects of the Revolution's slogan "liberte-egalite-fraternite", the o ..read more

Hollywood, Nebraska by Kenneth Jones [Alabama Story, et al.] is a work-in-progress currently on stage at the Wetumpka Depot as part of a "Rolling World Premiere"; this is the latest revision of a script that has been in development at various locations, and produced in Tennessee and Iowa before coming here. It recounts the story of two women who escaped their stultifying middle-American small town in quest of successful acting careers -- one in Los Angeles, and one in New York -- and who have now returned to their Nebraska roots where their values and life choices are challenged. Jane [Elizabe ..read more

A mere five years after its founding, the Fisk Free Colored School [now Fisk University] had significant financial needs. The newly formed Jubilee Singers almost singlehandedly raised the equivalent of $3.5 million in today's money to pay off the debt, purchase land, and finance the construction of Jubilee Hall, the first permanent building on its new campus. Author and director Tazewell Thompson's uplifting tribute production of Jubilee at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival weaves the story of the Jubilee Singers from their start at a fledgling HBCU, through their challenging and ultimately tri ..read more

Non-stop family entertainment is on display in the Pike Road Theatre Company's delightful production of Elf, the Musical. Running at about two-and-a-half-hours [the time flies by], director-choreographer James Keith Posey has again conscripted a 50+ ensemble of local talents to bring Buddy the Elf's story to effervescent life, closing the Company's Inaugural Season with a sold-out run. Based on the 2003 film that has become a Holiday staple, we follow the orphaned Buddy's journey as he leaves the North Pole in search of his biological father who is on Santa's "naughty list"-- You see, Buddy [T ..read more

Take your pick: Ebenezer Scrooge or George Bailey, Buddy the Elf or The Grinch, The Muppets or Charlie Brown, "Love Actually" or "Die Hard", or countless saccharined Hallmark movies -- the Christmas Season is well underway across the River Region; and families are preparing for their annual treks to gather for celebrations that often come with challenges. One such family gathering is currently being depicted at The Cloverdale Playhouse in their solid production of Dot [2015] by award winning actor and playwright Colman Domingo. The place is a house in West Philadelphia owned by African-America ..read more