Playbill for Curtains I’m not a big musicals person, though as I have seen (and performed in) more of them over recent years I have warmed up to them somewhat. But generally, I prefer straight theatre. That out of the way, I went to see State College Community Theatre’s production of Curtains (book by Rupert …
Tag: Comedy
Michael Druce’s Death of a Hot Sauce Salesman—18 Apr. 2026
Program for Death of a Hot Sauce Salesman In State College Community Theatre’s production of Michael Druce’s Death of a Hot Sauce Salesman, directed by Kerry Clancy Burns, the acting far outshone the script. The performances were generally strong, but the script really didn’t give the cast and crew much to work with, being full …
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Stefanie Austin’s Wheel of Misfortune–28 Feb. 2026
Wheel of Misfortune Program Wheel of Misfortune is Stefanie Austin’s latest murder-mystery dinner theatre play written for Sock & Buskin Theatre Company. Directed by Henry Morello, the individual performances were often quite good, with some excellent gags, but (due, in my opinion, to forces beyond the cast or production team’s control) the overall performance lacked …
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Stefanie Austin and Kari Williamson’s Death by Chocolate—5 Feb. 2026
Death by Chocolate poster Sock & Buskin Theatre Company’s 2026 Valentine’s Day murder mystery party was Stefanie Austin and Kari Williamson’s Death by Chocolate, which I saw as part of the dress rehearsal mock audience. This type of semi-scripted performance is difficult to do, especially with a smaller audience, since so much of the show …
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Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros—9 Oct. 2025
Rhinoceros program Apart from Shakespeare, one of the first genres of drama I really fell in love with was theatre of the absurd, and so when Penn State’s school of theatre announced that it was opening the 2025-26 season with Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, I was thrilled to see what they’d do with it. Under the …
William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor—5 July 2025
Poster for Merry Wives of Windsor It was a wonderful coincidence when Shakespeare’s Globe posted their 2025 summer season, because they were doing Merry Wives of Windsor, which I had already decided to teach for my Literary London course. This followed them doing Richard III in 2024, while I was teaching that play. It was …
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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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Kari Williamson and Nate Schierman’s Slain at the Speakeasy—23 Mar. 2025
Slain at the Speakeasy program Kari Williamson and Nate Schierman’s Slain at the Speakeasy is a full-length play developed out of an original semi-scripted murder mystery party script by Stefanie Austin, so this is definitely an in-house project for Sock & Buskin Theatre Company. Although this version was based on the original, the full-length production—directed …
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Phillip Zapkin 