Before Jesus Christ Superstar and The Phantom of the Opera, Andrew Lloyd Webber composed together a brief “pop cantata” based on the biblical story of Joseph and his “coat of many colors.” It was a piece to be sung by children and subsequently recorded as a concept album. Webber later expanded Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, molding it into a bouncy, bubbly show stuffed with musical parodies.  

I became CityBeat’s arts and entertainment editor in 1998, following a few years of being a contributing writer, covering the local theater scene. In 1999 I wrote my first big cover story — it was about Keith Glover and his Blues musical, Thunder Knocking on the Door.    

The Carnegie’s production of Pump Boys & Dinettes works hard to appear effortless, and its effervescent cast chases away any worries you might have brought to the Otto M. Budig Theatre.  

Reasons to be Pretty, getting its local premiere at New Edgecliff Theatre, was Neil LaBute's first play to make it to Broadway, where it landed in 2009 and earned a few Tony nominations.   

Not many musicals begin with the cast flipping the bird at the audience, but then not many musicals are like Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, the brash show that spins a tale of America’s seventh president to in-your-face Indie Rock tunes.  

John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath, is a grim recounting of a Depression-era family of Oklahoma sharecroppers driven from home by ecological and economic disasters. In the late 1980s theater artist Frank Galati adapted it into a powerful stage production, one you can see throughout April at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. It’s a downer of a story, but definitely worth seeing.   

When you base a musical on legendary cartoons, you better be sure that the original material is referenced and that it delivers the same level of humor. That means more in the way of faithfulness than originality, but who cares when it’s The Addams Family? The touring production of the recent Broadway show, currently onstage at the Aronoff Center, delivers on humor, entertainment and a faithful recreation of the oddball characters who revel in the dark side of life.  

I read Kim Rosenstock’s Tigers Be Still before I saw the production currently onstage at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. I confess that I found it amusing but not hilarious, perhaps even a tad predictable. I didn’t anticipate that with solid direction by Rob Ruggiero and spot-on casting, Rosenstock’s script manages to be charming, funny, optimistic and perhaps even heart-warming.
  

A photojournalist’s image is framed and captured, a moment of high emotion frozen by the camera lens, a distillation of a larger, often tragic event. Today those events, all too often, are scenes of physical and emotional devastation in war-torn nations. In Donald Margulies’ 2009 play, Time Stands Still, we learn that shooting those images generates addictive adrenaline even as it hardens the soul.
  

At a swanky 1976 cocktail party, we witness the last gasp of two former friends. Composer Franklin Shepard, at the pinnacle of success in the entertainment world, is miserable. Author Mary Flynn is outspoken, loud and drunk. They argue about their old pal Charley Kringas, whose name can’t even be mentioned without ire.   

In Irish playwright Conor McPherson's St. Nicholas, Michael Shooner plays a thoroughly nasty theater critic; a writer without  much to say but who enjoys lording his influence over actors and theaters. Most  critics actually love the theater, but not this guy — it’s largely an experience for him to bully people and freeload food and drink on opening nights. He enjoys preying on those who fear him. So perhaps it’s only natural that he ends up in the employ of a coven of vampires.

  

One of the songs in Into the Woods warns, “Careful the things you say. Children will listen.” In the case of the current production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s a blender full of fairytales, some familiar and some not, the “children” — that is, CCM’s performers in training — clearly listened well as Aubrey Berg directed them in a remarkably mature and thoroughly entertaining production.  

The popularity of Jane Austen continues unabated. A sparkling adaptation of Pride & Prejudice was an audience favorite a year ago for Cincinnati Shakespeare, and another Jon Jory adaptation of the 19th-century author’s stylish novels of romance and domestic intrigue, Sense & Sensibility, is likely to repeat that box-office bonanza.  

Speaking in Tongues is a fascinating piece of theater. But it takes work to watch, follow and absorb. Casual theatergoers might be put off, but those who like challenging drama and multi-layered acting will leave the theater with their gears still spinning.
  

Playwright Theresa Rebeck knows Cincinnati (she grew up here), so her world premiere play takes dead aim by putting a very recognizable image our town onstage. You will know these people — your neighbors and people you grew up with if you’re from Cincinnati.