Charlie Schill

Fine acting and brilliant staging are bringing a museum-piece drama to life in the Pioneer Theatre Company’s ongoing production of Mary Stuart. 

A man who had a huge impact on the Cache Valley theater community left us all in late December. So this is a humble tribute to W. Vosco Call. 

It’s official: all Nutcrackers are not created equal. 

We’re talking about ballets here, of course, not ugly wooden trinkets. If you want to see a traditional version of the holiday classic The Nutcracker, you can take your pick of productions full of artistry and refinement up and down the Wasatch Front at Christmastime. But if you want to see a Nutcracker that’s full of imagination and fun, the only game in town is The Redux Nut-Cracker by the Odyssey Dance Theatre. 

Some holiday events are just worth seeing over and over again. The recent production of A Christmas Carol by the Four Season Theatre Company in Smithfield was a prime example of that.

The problem with holiday traditions is that they’re always the same. See the Nutcracker. Trim the tree. Over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house. Same, same. Ditto, ditto.

After a two-year hiatus, the Four Season Theatre Company is once again staging its trademark holiday production of A Christmas Carol. If the quality of their six previous presentations of this show is any indication, this one will be spectacular as usual.

The ongoing production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre by the Theatre Arts Department at Utah State University is both an entertaining and educational experience.

If you think that children’s theater is kid’s stuff, guess again. The Theater Arts Department at Utah State University treats preparing its students for the unique challenges of performing for young audiences as serious business. But that doesn’t mean that watching their shows intended for children can’t be a delight for both young and old.

At the risk of being accused of spawning a terrible pun, the Cache Theatre Company’s ongoing production of the blue-grass musical Bright Star really shines. It’s a feel-good show that works, because the performances are strong enough to make the audience care about its characters.

So I visited the Moab Folk Festival this past week, where I collected some good old-fashioned memories and got a sunburn.

The Odyssey Dance Theatre’s deep dark secret is that its most popular Halloween extravaganza Thriller isn’t really scary. Unless, of course, you’re frightened of ghouls, zombies, mummies, ghosts, dinosaurs, Frankenstein’s monster, skeletons, scarecrows, phantoms, witches, vampires, a horde of homicidal Chucky dolls, hockey-masked maniacs with chainsaws, killers hiding under the bed and things that just generally go bump in the night.

The Davis clan has done it again. Their production of The Addams Family at the Pickleville Playhouse in Bear Lake is an absolute delight.

The Department of Theatre Arts at Utah State University opened its 2019-20 season last weekend with the contemporary drama Civics and Humanities for Non-Majors.

It’s true confessions time! I really don’t care much for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I know, that’s practically heresy for anyone living in Utah, given Donny Osmond’s well-known connection to that show.

I’m embarrassed to admit that in three decades of living in northern Utah, I had never visited the Pickleville Playhouse in Garden City prior to last month.

Twelfth Night is the Shakespearian equivalent of the screwball comedies that Hollywood made during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Done right, the comedies of William Shakespeare are that hilarious and the Utah Shakespeare Festival knows how to do these shows right.

The Cache Theatre Company staged an amusing little amateur production of Frozen Jr. featuring talented teens from Cache Valley high schools last weekend.

Everyone knows that even bad Shakespeare is pretty good. But there’s no bad Shakespeare at the Utah Shakespeare Festival and their current production of Macbeth is the Bard at his best – lean and mean.

Now that our local summer theater season is over, there’s time for me to vent about one of my pet peeves – Disney musicals.

If you loved The Barber of Seville during the 2018 Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre season – and who didn’t? – make a beeline for the final performance of the current production of The Marriage of Figaro. It’s another great comic opera with the same hilarious characters, equally beautiful music, thrilling performances and gorgeous costuming.

If you don’t think that a 90-minute farce with a tiny cast can be as entertaining as a full-scale musical comedy, then you obviously haven’t seen the Lyric Repertory Company’s current production of Murder for Two.

The Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre launched its 2019 main-stage offerings with a rousing production of Newsies, an old-fashioned, crowd-pleasing musical.

When performing one of the greatest works in the whole canon of American musical theater, the quality bar is naturally set sky-high. The Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre’s ongoing production of the classic West Side Story easily vaults that bar and continues into the heavens.

In a surprisingly gutsy move, the Lyric Repertory Company has played the high-voltage drama card again in its 2019 season. The Lyric’s trademark is feel-good comedies and small-cast musicals, after all. But the company’s artistic directors Richie Call and Jason Spelbring have assembled a group of performers who represent a high-water mark of talent this year. So why not go for broke?

If you haven’t been living on Mars for the past two decades, then you know that Mama Mia! is a juke box musical featuring the eclectic music of the Swedish pop group ABBA.