Sweeney Todd Playbill On the one hand, I’m not a big fan of musicals as a genre, but on the other, I very much like the story of Sweeney Todd. Penn State Theatre’s production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, directed by Zack Steele, was generally a strong performance, though the night …
Continue reading Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street—20 Nov. 2024
The playbill for John Proctor is the Villain Going into Penn State Theatre’s production of John Proctor is the Villain the first time, I was concerned that a play born out of the #MeToo movement might become didactic—basically an essay on stage. But I was pleasantly surprised by the complexity and passion with which Kimberly …
Continue reading Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor is the Villain—16 and 19 Oct. 2024
State College Community Theatre’s production of Ken Ludwig’s The Game’s Afoot, directed by Kerry Clancy-Burns, had some strengths as a production, though overall it was not the best show I’ve ever seen. There were many positive aspects—especially individual performances, most of which were excellent. But there were some technical issues that undercut the show. To …
Continue reading Ken Ludwig’s The Game’s Afoot—13 Sept. 2024
Back to the Future: The Musical Show Poster I’m not really a musicals person, especially in the West End/Broadway style of musical, so Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future: The Musical (with music and lyrics by Allan Silvestri and Glen Ballard) is not normally the kind of show I would seek out. …
Continue reading Back to the Future: The Musical—27 June 2024
Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap To get the standard info out of the way first, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is famous for having the world’s longest single production run, opening at the Ambassadors Theatre in 1952 and playing uninterrupted (despite a move next door to its current location at St. Martin’s Theatre in 1974—though they never …
Continue reading Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap—20 June 2024
Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution Agatha Christie is, as many people know, one of the most popular and beloved British authors. Theatrically, her most famous piece is The Mousetrap (review forthcoming after I see it next week), but an ongoing production, begun in 2017, is her play Witness for the Prosecution, running at London …
Continue reading Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution—12 June 2024
Me with the Richard III poster at the Globe As part of a Literary London study abroad course on crime and justice in British literature, I assigned William Shakespeare’s Richard III. It was a marvelous bit of serendipity that Shakespeare’s Globe was putting on that very show while we visited London. Even before the Globe …
Continue reading William Shakespeare’s Richard III—8 June 2024
Eve Ensler's The Good Body Program Sock & Buskin’s recent charity performance of Eve Ensler’s The Good Body—benefiting Centre Safe—was a great performance of a generally powerful play about the psychological and physical difficulties women experience in their own bodies. Stephanie Whitesell’s directorial debut was a triumph, and the performers were each amazing. Ensler’s most …
Penn State Theatre's Tartuffe Penn State Theatre’s production of Moliere’s Tartuffe, directed by Sam Osheroff, was an exceptional modern re-imagining of a play that has some antiquated feeling elements but overall remains exceedingly relevant to the world of 2024. On the one hand, Tartuffe’s rhymed lines and aristocratic subject matter feel very old. On the …
Sock & Buskin’s The Will to Kill was a new one for my partner and I, because we had never attended one of the company’s murder mystery parties before. Part performance, part cocktail party, part whodunit, the murder mystery party is an interesting, interactive, hybrid genre. Unlike most theatre, the majority of the action is carried out between “audience members” and the performers, rather than amongst performers themselves.
Phillip Zapkin 