Stage
I've never met Ginni Harden Pierce, yet I feel that I know, almost intimately, a dozen different people she has inhabited in utterly believable performances. A gifted creator of character, she has appeared on local stages for more than 40 years, bringing to life a wide range of personalities,
Stage
Lyricist-librettist Tom Jones and composer Harvey Schmidt's "I Do, I Do" is, at its best, a pleasant little two-character musical about Agnes and Michael's marriage, from their wedding night in their new house to the day when, many decades later, they move out. In a series of vignettes, it
Guides
Anybody who can't find something to see in the five pages of single-spaced listings I perused for the 2011-2012 theater season must be bloody hard to please. They include performances by some 30-odd companies from Geva Theatre Center and the Rochester Broadway Theater League to Black Sheep Theatre Coalition
Stage
A trace of transparency: long-time reviewers (I'm one of them) soon learn that it's impossible to set aside whatever assumptions, attitudes, and memories they've accumulated. Even so, you do your best to take each play as it comes. The result won't be perfect, even though it may be surprising.
Stage
After sitting through two disappointing seasons at The Shaw Festival in 2009 and 2010, I approached this season with some trepidation. Would the dumbing down of plays and the pandering to audiences that have begun to characterize Shaw under artistic director Jackie Maxwell continue, or would the Festival reassert
Stage
After sitting through two disappointing seasons at The Shaw Festival in 2009 and 2010, I approached this season with some trepidation. Would the dumbing down of plays and the pandering to audiences that have begun to characterize Shaw under artistic director Jackie Maxwell continue, or would the Festival reassert
Stage
Maybe operating on the principle of something for everyone, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival provides enough variety in 2011 so that anyone who sees all 12 plays will come away excited by some and irritated by others. Not only by the smashes and flops that are part of any theatrical
Stage
The Shaw Festival's roster of plays for 2011 looks like any other recent season, but for some reason it feels hard to get excited about most of Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell's decisions even though this is the Shaw's 50th anniversary season. There's the usual mix of plays by George
Stage
With 46 cast members, Geva Theatre Center's irresistible production of Meredith Willson's 1957 musical, "The Music Man," is its largest in nearly 40 years of professional theater in Rochester. It's an exercise in just how happy a non-stop hullabaloo can make an audience. Mark Cuddy's affection for the material
Pop Culture
When people talk about quality of life in Rochester, they routinely mention the parks and the Finger Lakes, the professional sports teams and Geva Theatre, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the clubs, and all the museums and colleges - and so they should. But there are also essential
