Night Watch poster I’ve seen a good amount of professional theatre and university theatre, and both seen and been involved in a good number of community theatre productions. But I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a show as well executed as Sock & Buskin’s production of Lucille Fletcher’s Night Watch, directed by Stefanie Austin. …
Continue reading Lucille Fletcher’s Night Watch—20 Sept. 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 …
Continue reading William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor—5 July 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 …
Continue reading Nora and Delia Ephron’s Love, Loss, and What I Wore—17 Apr. 2025
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
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 …
The program of The Final Rose It’s always a treat seeing Sock & Buskin perform, since the company consistently produces high quality community theatre for central PA. Seeing their production of Stefanie Austin’s The Final Rose was particularly interesting for me, because—by way of full disclosure—I participated in a late stage readthrough of the script …
Continue reading The Final Rose, by Stefanie Austin—10 Feb. 2024
The cover of the program for Bonnets Jen Silverman’s Bonnets: How Ladies of Good Breeding are Induced to Murder was written as part of a Big Ten initiative to produce more plays by women and with strong roles for college age female actors. This is a really good initiative, not only for getting the work …
The Duchess of Malfi was originally a Jacobean play by John Webster—one of the best early modern plays, in my opinion. But what Zinnie Harris has done with her new version is amazing. She has kept the dark, violent, misogynistic themes of the original, but updated it to feel fresh, contemporary, and even (perhaps surprisingly) …
Continue reading The Duchess (of Malfi), by Zinnie Harris–28 May 2019
Mad Cow Theatre’s production of Top Girls was the first Caryl Churchill play I’ve seen other than Cloud Nine, which I’ve seen twice. While Churchill is an amazingly influential playwright, in the US, Cloud Nine is almost certainly her most performed play (not without good reason) so it was great to see another of her …
Phillip Zapkin 