Reviews

In Part 2 of the “Queens Girl” trilogy, Lauren Steele dazzlingly embodies voices out of Africa; “Hamilton” and its hip-hop cousin settle in; “Titus” wraps things up. “Queens Girl in the World,” the first work in a trilogy by professor and playwright Caleen Sinette Jennings, introduces us to Jacqueline Marie Butler as she faces the […]

Picking up what they began in New York, Clackamas Rep and star Lauren Steele take a stellar tale continental. Plus Forgotten Women, Chick Fight, Taylor Mac & more. Lauren Steele can’t say what it was about her that seems to have so impressed Cyndy Smith-English, managing director of Clackamas Repertory Theatre. After all, Steele was […]

We’ve ranked the top 10 Portland area plays in 2021. Here’s a look back on the year’s best. Theater as we know it was back in Portland in 2021. Or was it? Yes, there were in-person plays, sumptuous sets and curtain speeches that seemed to last as long as Hamlet, but something was amiss. Maybe […]

Clackamas Rep’s production may joke about everything from gerrymandering to Diet Coke, but above all, it is a play about and for people who love theater. It is a dark time for Popcorn Falls. The town’s famous waterfall has dried up, a destructive squirrel is plaguing the local government, and the diabolical Mr. Doyle (Mark […]

Rich, evocative writing and Lauren Steele’s vibrant performance highlight a winning one-woman play at Clackamas Rep. Over the course of decades writing about performing arts in Portland, I have come to recognize a certain sort of experience that I refer to as a “black dot show.” This is when I happen to glance around at the audience and notice that […]

Past and Present Tumble Together in the Vintage Musicals “South Pacific” at Clackamas Rep and “Footloose” at Broadway Rose The ideal summer-musical matchup might’ve been Footloose and Fancy Free, the great Leonard Bernstein/Jerome Robbins dance sequence that was quickly expanded into the 1940s Broadway hit “On the Town.” But when it comes to immersing yourself […]

Ken Ludwig’s Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood, Opened Clackamas Repertory Theatre’s 14th Season at Osterman Theatre on the Campus of Clackamas Community College in Oregon City. Much like Clackamas Rep’s 2016 smash hit Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, also by Ken Ludwig, Sherwood is a Monty Python-esque performance filled with quick wit, even quicker […]

If you like your medieval epics brawny and moody, Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood, which kicks off Clackamas Repertory Theatre’s 15th season, will leave you sneering like Sir Guy of Gisbourne. If, however, you enjoy lavish larks with traces of Monty Python DNA, you will savor the play’s heavenly scenery and valiantly silly performances. Sherwood […]

When it comes to Robin Hoods, we’ve had everything from swashbuckling (Errol Flynn) to serious (Kevin Costner) to silly (Carey Elwes). Ken Ludwig’s version, Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood, currently running at Clackamas Repertory Theatre, combines all of them, with heavy emphasis on the silly. It’s a fun, family-friendly way to spend a summer […]

Abby Binder (Randi Douglas) is a grouch. And it’s no secret that she doesn’t want a roommate. Never has. When she is assigned one at the senior living facility where she resides, she understandably objects. Marilyn Dunne (Anita Sorel) is just too darned cheerful. And she makes noise. This is the setup for Pulitzer Prize […]

“Some people like having someone around. I’m just not one of those people.” So says Abby early on in Ripcord, and it seems like she means it. Abby, portrayed by the brilliant Randi Douglas, lives in a retirement home. She’s crotchety and deceitful and, frankly, just wants her room to herself. She doesn’t really care […]

Annie is stronger than Cameron Diaz. The horrendous 2014 big-screen re-interpretation of the Broadway musical — of which Diaz’s shrill Miss Hannigan was a monstrous lowlight — could have soured the sweet story of “Little Orphan Annie” for an entire generation. Landing at movieplexes long after the better 1982 film adaptation, the rebooted Annie, thankfully, […]

Clackamas Rep’s “Annie” brings the orphans in from the cold and heats things up for the audience. “Never work with animals or children” was the sage actorly advice from legendary actor and comedian W.C. Fields. Luckily for us, Clackamas Repertory Theatre steered far from this piece of advice with its production of Annie at Clackamas […]

Although I’ve always thought of the summer as a down time for live theatre in metropolitan Portland, there really is a lot going on. One special summer treat is the Clackamas Repertory Theatre, which produces three summer shows yearly. Onstage now is Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery which opened June 30 at Clackamas […]

Clackamas Rep romps through Ken Ludwig’s spoof of the Sherlock Homes mystery “Hound of the Baskervilles.” The man in the deerstalker hat and his biographer sidekick Dr. Watson live for the thrill of the hunt in Ken Ludwig’s screwball spoof of the most popular of Sherlock Holmes’ tales, Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery. The whodunit […]

Clackamas Repertory Theatre strikes up one of America’s most popular bands with greater Portland’s latest revival of Meredith Willson’s beloved musical The Music Man. For more than half a century the songs and characters that make up this delicate slice of midwestern pie have delighted us with a good celebration and a light poke of fun at Americana. For every […]

If you’ve a hankering for some old-style broad comedy, Clackamas Repertory Theatre’s current production of Richard Bean’s “One Man, Two Guvnors” might be just the thing. A 2011 London National Theatre triumph and highly acclaimed success when it arrived on Broadway the next year, Bean’s play is loosely based on Carlo Goldoni’s 18th-century style commedia […]

In “Good People” by David Lindsay-Abaire (“Fuddy Meers,” “Rabbit Hole”) currently at Clackamas Repertory Theatre, a few burning questions thread through this absorbing comedy-drama: Are we responsible for our own poverty and victimhood? Do we just need to work harder? Or does upbringing, class and good luck make a difference in how we turn out? […]

Carousel, currently in fine form at Clackamas Repertory Theater, has a lot in common with Thornton Wilder‘s 1938 play Our Town. The Rodgers and Hammerstein classic premiered in 1945, just two years after Oklahoma! dazzled Broadway, shares with Wilder’s work a dark quality, the setting of a small New England town in the late 19th […]

If you thought your love life was complicated, take a look at Tracy Lord’s: On the eve of her wedding, the bride-to-be finds herself in a love triangle (or is it a square?) of the stickiest sort. Should she marry her safe, boring fiance? Pursue the poetic, judgmental reporter? Remarry her charming yet arrogant ex-husband? […]

Between the Internet and all the entertainment shows on television, it’s hard to be surprised when you sit down to watch something these days. Movie trailers give away most of the plot and the best jokes, and someone online will happily post the surprise ending of the latest thriller. You’d better watch the latest episode […]

  People under 50, particularly musical comedy lovers caught up in the flood of new musicals, probably don’t know much about Cole Porter. They should. The super-clever, dryly hilarious lyrics, the lush melodies, and the sheer sophistication of his songs (many rife with sexual innuendo) have put him in a class by himself as one of the […]

Clackamas Rep’s Revival Puts the Song and Dance into Oregon’s Shrewish Summer A really good musical comedy is a contradiction in time. It pushes things ahead, always keeping its eye on the story, surging like a locomotive toward its narrative destination. And it stops things dead in their tracks, creating scenes so mesmerizing that the […]

Political satire and gallows humor were integral to the scene in sleazy cabarets in pre-war Berlin, and ironically history has never captured that scene more powerfully and memorably than in a little musical based on a play based (“I Am A Camera” by John van Druten) on the book Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood. The […]