I have seen 1776 several times now, and a couple of things remain consistent among all of the performances: the staging remains pretty much the same (there is only so much you can do with a historical piece that has 22 men onstage at the same time), the set looks pretty much the same (it's a historical piece with evidence as to how it did look), and some AMAZING talent always shows up in the cast (and not always in the lead roles). Little Theatre of Virginia Beach's cast is replete with talent, particularly with some professional level acting from a couple of the leads and some great singing from the ensemble.

Yoder’s / CNU’s / Ferguson Center’s new theatre company, Tidewater Regional Repertory offers up their first production in a strong, lovely, and occasionally moving way. The evening was a patchwork of the lovely and not-quite-so-lovely, but the end product did end up revealing a whole that promises to entertain and enchant.

When I heard the Virginia Symphony was doing a concert of Russian music, I was looking forward to something not usually heard. But when I discovered they were playing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, my first thought was, ‘Who is going to pay 50 bucks for something they can hear every Fourth of July for free?’ As it turns out, the concert wasn’t all about the Overture. It was just the icing on a great big cake (or maybe a blintz).

Listen.  Do you hear that?  What could that lovely, staccato, and profane sound be?  Could it be the gorgeous sound of conversation?  I think it might be.  Of course, in the theater we have another word for it:  “Mametspeak.”  No other contemporary playwright has had more of an effect on the language of American dramatic literature than David Mamet.  His short succinct sentences and overlapping lines effectively capture the rhythm of American conversation.  When done well it can be one of the most glorious things you can hear.  When done badly it can be, well, confusing.  I cannot in good conscience call Generic Theater’s production of Mamet’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize winner Glengarry Glen Ross an example of well-done Mamet.  That would be doing it a grave disservice.  Instead, it is nothing less than extraordinary.

Send Me No Flowers at Little Theatre of Virginia Beach is quite possibly the finest comedy I’ve ever seen on local non-professional stages. It made me roar with laughter. Not only is it remarkably funny, it’s positively unique.

As someone who grew up on the Southside, I never travel to the Peninsula to see theater.  It's not because I don't think there's good theater on the Peninsula, it just always seems like such a hassle, what with gas being so expensive and tunnel traffic being what it can be.  However, on Saturday night I took the trek to Thomas Nelson Community College to see a production of a seldom produced Neil Simon play, Proposals.  Proposals is directed by Le'Royce Bratsveen the Artistic Director of Iron Street Productions, the organization that has produced the play.  I was incredibly impressed with what I saw.

The program notes for Little Theatre of Norfolk's production of Breaking Legs contain passages in which novice director Malcolm McCutcheon talks about his love for Tom Dulack's script: and where he thanks the board of LTN for allowing the play as part of their season despite its language, violence, and sexual content.  I have to admit I had high expectations for the script.  Years ago, in college, I read a remarkable play by Tom Dulack called Incommunicado, which dealt with the poet Ezra Pound's imprisonment by U.S. forces after World War II for his role as an Axis propagandist.  That play was a revelation.  Breaking Legs is not.  As a matter of fact, as I left LTN on Friday night I was left with one overwhelming question:  Why?

There were fun times to be had at the Roper, with not one but two shows to take you full throttle into the holidays. Director Aliki Marie Pantas delivered Happy Hanukkah My Friend and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, injecting a much-needed blessing to trendy Granby Street.

1945 was a strange amoral year in the American theater.  This is the year that Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel premiered.  While it revolutionized the American musical, it contained a disconcerting moral:  it's okay to beat your wife as long as you really, really, really love her.  As a result, it has become almost distasteful when produced today.  That same year, Mary Chase's play Harvey won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, and went on to become a permanent fixture of WWII-era American culture when it was made into a film with James Stewart.  Harvey would have you believe that the best lifestyle is one in which you drop out of society, and spend your days in bars slowly poisoning your liver; and that alcohol-induced hallucinations are not a symptom of serious illness, but a good luck charm.  This moral plays just as strangely today (though not as offensively) as that of Carousel.  But Harvey is back anyway, in a largely successful production currently being mounted by Peninsula Community Theatre.

LSD. Peyote. PCP - I’ve never tried any of them. And since attending Bat Boy: The Musical daringly staged by Foppish Dandies and Co. at 40th Street Stage, I will never have the need to. Formerly, I was under the impression that witnessing a group of West Virginia townspeople chanting, “Stop the Bat Boy,” was the result of habitual acid-dropping.  Now I know it can be real - and fun for most of the family.

Little Theatre of Norfolk’s recent production of Dial “M” for Murder fell short on the two things every mystery/suspense story needs the most. Namely… mystery and suspense.