Roanoke Theater Reviews

July 23 to August 9, Showtimers Community Theatre, Roanoke, 7:30 pm, 1 hour 45 minute run time, no intermission.  I have to start with a quote from the show itself. This show "does what a musical is supposed to do! It takes you to another world and it..it gives you a little tune to carry in your head for...for...when you're feeling blue, you know?" That is exactly what the good folks at Showtimers have accomplished with  The Drowsy Chaperone .  I was not familiar with this show, but it's been around since 1998 and it won a bunch of Tonys on Broadway in 2006. It was written by Canadians, and it's just as wholesome and upstanding as you'd expect. That is, it's a parody of a 1920s musical, written much later. That's all I knew, going in: some kind of 1920s musical revival. But friends, I want you to know: there is a frame, and the frame story makes all the difference, in my opinion.  At tonight's performance, at the beginning of the show, the light...

 July 17-19, 24-26, Fred Harper Theatre, Bedford, 7:30 pm, nearly 3 hour run time including two 15 minute intermissions. This is a robust rendition of a much-beloved farce. You will enjoy yourself with this one! Michael Frayn's  Noises Off  is a classic British farce. It is, as the director's note states, "one of the funniest plays ever written." The basic premise is this: act one shows the final rehearsal of a silly sex-farce play (think lots of slamming doors and people in their underwear); act two shows the same material, but as viewed from backstage in a performance weeks later; and act three shows the "front facing" play again, but because we've seen the backstage, we know how to interpret the increasingly deteriorating performances delivered by the actors. It's all screamingly funny, especially the second act, which involves much pantomime and physical humor, because the actors have to communicate quietly in the backstage setting. So yes. It...

July 9-26, D. Geraldine Lawson Performing Arts Center, Fincastle, 7:30 pm, 2 hour 45 minute run time including one 15 minute intermission. Let it not be said that our local community theater companies are short on ambition! After Bear Theatre's impressive unabridged Romeo and Juliet last month, I was pleasantly surprised to see this equally impressive and equally ambitious production of  Into the Woods .  Wrangling a cast of nearly 30, director Kerry Williams has done an impressive job with a musical that is, to put it lightly, difficult. Sondheim's music is notoriously hard to sing, and this particular musical features smart but relentless lyrics, a mishmash of several story lines, and several other difficult-to-handle components (how do you put a giant on stage? How do you transform a witch? How do you portray a tower? How do you keep people from thinking the intermission is the end?). Into the Woods  is a tightly controlled musical. I've seen several productions and t...

June 19-21 and 26-28, Community High School Theater, 7:00 pm (Sunday at 2), nearly 3 hours run time, one intermission. This production surprised me -- good surprises, mostly!  I love Bear Theatre (officially called Exit, Pursued by a Bear, a name drawn from a different Shakespeare play).  I love them for two reasons: 1, they are downtown (so I can walk, bike, or take a bus to get there, unlike many other theaters in our area), and 2, they are unabashedly a community theater.  This production featured several actors I'd never seen before, and only a handful of old favorites. Director Les Epstein created a big tent in this production - a wide range of actors, a wide range of ages and backgrounds. Such a setup is exciting and invites surprises - of which there were many. Good surprises included:  1. Celebrity Cameos. Such a fun idea, and a great way to invite new audiences to engage with theater. I went tonight (6/19) and saw Kimberly McBroom from WDBJ7 in the party s...

Showtimers Community Theater May 7-17, Thursday through Saturday 7:30 pm, Sunday Matinee 2pm What a perfectly lovely experience. I literally both laughed and cried. If you are wondering whether you should go see this play, I will give you the TL;DR: yes. Yes you should. I was not familiar with this script, written by Sean Grennan in 2014. It traces the story of a woman (Joy) who's received a heart transplant; the family of the donor (Jack) who are grieving the loss of their son; and how their lives eventually intertwine. The script itself is very good. It is very funny and very touching. It touches on issues from depression to grief to survivor guilt to the meaning of life itself. It gives us reasons for living without being saccharine or explicitly spiritual. And did I mention it's funny? It's very funny. There are a few loose ends - there's this tree symbolism near the beginning that seems not to really come back; the "vivacious friend" character (Darla) has...

 April 23-May 3, D. Geraldine Lawson Performing Arts Center, Fincastle, 7:30 pm, 90 minute run time, no intermission This is a very worthwhile play, and an able production: you should go see it! (Reasons below). Some notes on the script, written by Cindy Marcus, which was new to me -- This is a deceptively ambitious script, which requires the actors to master at least three things: comedy (some extremely funny lines in there), pathos (can they make us care?), and connection. In brief, the story is this: a writer has beef with the whole world of "fairytales" for having given her a false expectation of a happy ending. We only get a very brief glimpse of the writer's backstory (she was, in fact, lucky in love but then her love got sick... that's all I caught). The writer then undertakes to rewrite, or add "realistic" sequels to, several familiar fairy tales to demonstrate their lack of happy ending. There is a good deal of breaking the fourth wall and audience ...

  April 16-18, 7:30 pm, Crystal Lynn Van Hise Stage in Olin Hall, Roanoke College.      It’s hard to make Shakespeare fresh, but these intrepid students and their extremely talented director pulled it off beautifully.      Everyone knows the story, but director Nelson Barre draws us in by starting not with the famous prologue (“Two households, both alike in dignity…”) but first with the setting of the stage itself. A group of young actors convenes: they chat, they try on costumes, they goof around. Loud music gets them dancing and celebrating together. But they finally calm down, the lights dim… and then comes the much anticipated prologue.      The end shows a similar “undoing” as the actors remove their costumes and chat. By creating this “framing” for the play itself, Barre highlights the fact that it’s a play. Choices were made. We are watching. They are performing. There’s a certain distanc...