Romeo & Juliet: Defy the Stars poster As part of the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, Tempest Productions performed Romeo & Juliet: Defy the Stars, a version of the Shakespeare play adapted by Cynthia Mazzant, founder and co-artistic director of Tempest. Most of the original Shakespearean language is there—though some is cut, often to …
Tag: Adaptation
Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – 13 Sept. 2025 by Andi Stout
And Then There Were None program This weekend I saw the State College Community Theatre’s (SCCT) production of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None directed by Eli Beers-Altman and assistant directed by Joe Appel. Our story begins with eight very different house guests, eccentric in their own ways, arriving at an isolated mansion situated …
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John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers—24 June 2025
John Cleese’s stage version of Fawlty Towers is a striking adaptation of the beloved 1970s sitcom of the same name, in which Cleese starred and which he co-wrote with Connie Booth (who played Polly in the original). What makes the stage version—premiering in 2016—so fascinating for me is what it does and doesn’t do, and …
Roald Dahl’s Matilda: The Musical—18 June 2025
Typically, I’m not a huge fan of musicals, but Roald Dahl’s Matilda: The Musical, direct by Matthew Warchus at London’s Cambridge Theatre was properly enjoyable. I watched the film version of Matilda as a kid, but I’ve never read the book, so I did have some distance from the source materials, while still having a …
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Nora and Delia Ephron’s Love, Loss, and What I Wore—17 Apr. 2025
Love, Loss, and What I Wore program The Gamble Mill and Sock & Buskin Theatre Company co-sponsored a staged reading of Nora and Delia Ephron’s Love, Loss, and What I Wore—adapted from Ilene Beckerman’s novel—as a charity performance to raise money for Out of the Cold Centre County, which is a shelter. The production was …
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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street—20 Nov. 2024
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 …
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Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor is the Villain—16 and 19 Oct. 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 …
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Back to the Future: The Musical—27 June 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. …
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William Shakespeare’s Richard III—8 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 …
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Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, by Aaron Sorkin—14 June 2023
The big draw of the Rochester Broadway Theatre League’s production of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, by Aaron Sorkin, was undoubtedly Richard Thomas in the role of Atticus Finch. Thomas, famous as John-Boy in The Waltons, was certainly a big factor in my mother’s excitement to see the production—and considering that many of the …
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Phillip Zapkin 