Rich Heritage of Cedar Rapids Theater Company (RHCR) opened Driving Miss Daisy to an appreciative audience Friday night — and indeed, there was a great deal to appreciate. […]
RHCR’s cast brings beautifully crafted ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ to life
Theatre reviews
‘Apple Season’ is moving and restrained
Iowa City needs new work. We are a City of Literature, a city of curation, a city of having written — new work shakes us out of our steadiness and surety and forces us to contemplate the glorious mess of process. It gifts us with those nuggets of honesty that can be sluiced away by a deluge of revision or buried deep beneath layers of polish. […]
Love is in the air: ‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change’ delightful seasonal fare
‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change’ is part of Old Creamery’s VIP (Very Intimate Performance) series which has shrunk the theater; the audience finds themselves on what is normally the stage.There is no fourth wall from the start of the play. This is an intimate show where the actors perform without amplification and interact with the audience. […]
Falling in love with TCR’s ‘Shakespeare In Love’
Tom Stoppard’s ‘Shakespeare In Love’ was a hit on the screen — it garnered a small handful of Oscars for those involved. It makes sense that it would be translated back onto the stage. Thank goodness we have the opportunity to see this story play out in it’s actual wheelhouse. […]
Authentic stories resonate with humor, tragedy in ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’
Giving Tree Theater’s production of Tiny Beautiful Things, running now through March 10 (tickets $26), might just be the antidote to whatever has got you down lately. […]
Brash and jocular, ‘Rotten Eggnog’ is the perfect play for Christmas malcontents
Set in a dive karaoke bar adorned with tacky decorations on Christmas Eve, ‘Rotten Eggnog’ opens on Tori as she awaits her two best friends, Rebecca and Addie. For the last ten years, the three women have met on the holiday to exchange gifts, tell their worst Christmas stories and share intimate details of their lives to each other. […]
‘Marjorie Prime’ an incredibly sensitive meditation on aging and grief
The rub of science fiction is that it requires quite a bit of world building to be comprehensible to the audience. Director Jen Brown guides her actors into a subtlety that nicely highlights the universals of personality, humanity and family life without dwelling too long on the technicalities of 2050. […]
‘Assassins’ is a necessary story, strikingly performed
If you like your musicals a little bit dark, a little bit thoughtful and a little bit acerbic, Jaret Morlan and his cast do a lovely job of bringing this weird, wonderful show to life. […]
TCR’s ‘My Fair Lady’ is a must-see
Some musicals you go to every time they come around. They are the classics that never disappoint. ‘My Fair Lady,’ directed at TCR by Angie Toomsen with music direction by Cameron Sullenberger, is no exception. The entire ensemble from cast to musicians to techies are to be commended on an outstanding performance. […]
Brilliant and bold performances anchor ‘Much Ado’
Inspired by childhood memories of free Shakespeare in the Park at Delacorte Theatre in Manhattan, Riverside Theatre’s artistic director Sean Christopher Lewis has created a free, accessible and giddy production of one of Shakespeare’s most beloved romantic comedies, Much Ado About Nothing. […]
‘Fuddy Meers’: Telling stories one character at a time
Fuddy Meers Theatre Cedar Rapids — runs through June 17; tickets $19-24 What’s your story? Who do you allow to write the chapters of your life? Every day is, quite literally, a blank page for amnesiac Claire (Kristen Wilcox) whose husband, Richard (Duane Larson), patiently re-constructs her life for her every morning. David Lindsay-Abaire’s Fuddy […]
SPT New Play Incubator Series captures honest emotion via beautiful language in ‘Conjure’
At the beginning and end of ‘Conjure,’ written by area poet and playwright Jennifer Rouse, the all-female cast joins hands and forms a circle, their faces turned inward toward one another. It’s a ceremonial act, and it signals and exemplifies the palpable bond linking these performers/characters. It also exemplifies the challenges the work poses to the audience. […]
