A Great Wilderness @ The Beck Center, March 3--April 9, 2017

Review by Laura Kennelly

Photo by Andy Dudik

Daniel ( Christian John Thomas) and Walt (Tim Tavcar)

Can two weeks at a mountain cabin and an understanding adult “turn” a gay teen straight? That’s not the only question the ambitious A Great Wilderness poses at this latest Beck Center’s production. Author Samuel D. Hunter has provided director Scott Spence and the six-member cast a play that toys with the “what ifs” of life, but provides no pat answers.

All action takes place in the cozy cabin great room created by scenic designer Aaron Benson (with a hand from carpenters Gabriel Jimenez and Ryan Gajdos). There’s a wooden table and chair set, a comfy sofa covered in warm plaids, several round braided rugs, a kitchen, and a window with a terrific view of evergreens outside. There are even timbered ceiling beams.

It’s a retreat center created to convert Christian gay teens to the hetero-normative model for sexual expression espoused by their (or their parents’) religious beliefs. Mom and Dad pay to send the boys away for two weeks. They believe being gay can be cured by therapy. Walt’s “cure with kindness” retreat was set up some thirty years ago by Walt, Abby, and Tim. When the play opens, Walt (Tim Tavcar, the model of a friendly, avuncular fellow) is the only one left still working there. He’s busy packing up in anticipation of his retirement.

When a young boy appears at the door, we learn that Walt has accepted one last client: Daniel (Christian John Thomas, a talented fifteen-year-old actor who very persuasively reveals his character’s awkwardness and discomfort). Daniel’s there under protest, as he soon makes clear, but he’s a polite young man and Walt is able to convince him his stay won’t be a harsh “brainwashing.” Relieved, Daniel goes outside to take a short hike. Hours later, he still has not returned and it’s assumed that he’s lost in the Idaho wilderness.

Although the pace is slow and the action predictable in the first act (setting up how nice both Walt and Daniel are), the second act immediately time-jumps and leads us to doubt our previous assumptions. It’s a clever technique and brings in an element of mystery and, perhaps, crime. Abby (Lenne Snively as the bossy ex-wife of Walt) and her current husband, Tim (a helpful Brian Byers), Eunice (Heidi Harris plays Christopher’s semi-hysterical mother), and Janet (Kelly Strand, the business-like Park Ranger) join Walt in the cabin while everyone worries about what happened to Daniel.

Alternate pairs of conversations gradually reveal an array of personal traumas and insecurities. Questions include: Why didn’t Walt retire before now (he seems semi-incompetent, mostly because he keeps forgetting things). Why is it called a “Christian” camp? Why do the characters feel passionately that gay teens should conform to the traditional social models espoused by some churches? Did Walt’s love of young boys make Abby feel neglected in their marriage? Has Walt compensated for and subsumed his own homosexual desires so that he can stay Christian and still remain engaged with young gays as a friend? (Maybe.)

Bottom Line:  A Great Wilderness holds a mirror up to difficulties encountered when society tries to contain and regulate sexual attraction. In this play, the real wilderness seems lodged in the heart, mind, and motivation of Walt. Like the speaker in the famous poem that follows, he’s a man who has enjoyed his own version of Paradise:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness—

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow.

[Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, Edward FitzGerald translation from the Persian]

The Great Wilderness continues through April 9, 2017 at the Beck Center in Lakewood.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time @ Playhouse Square, March 3--April 9, 2017

Review by Laura Kennelly

Gross: As we enter the Connor Palace theatre and look to the stage what greets our eyes? A dead dog impaled on a pitchfork. And that dog and its discovery triggers all subsequent action in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, turned into a play by Simon Stephens, is based on an excellent and engrossing novel of the same name by Mark Haddon. (I recommend the novel without reservation. It’s a fine hypothetical exploration of what it might be like to see the world through the eyes of a boy with autism.)

Director Marianne Elliott’s recreation of the world of Christopher Boone, our 15-year-old hero with an autism-related disorder, relies effectively on powerful scenic design and quietly expressive costumes (both created by Bunny Christie), stage-framing and defining lighting (by Paule Constable), and dramatic sound effects (by Ian Dickinson). [There’s a strobe light warning.] While not a typical Playhouse Square Broadway Series musical, in fact, not a musical at all, “Curious” delights in sound, light, and special effects (including a model train set, track lighting all over the sides, top, and bottom of the stage, live animals, post-curtain surprises, and near-sonic booms). There’s no attempt made to construct a realistic set, but rather to create one that reflects the world Christopher sees. It’s confusingly full of unexpected doors and storage cubicles. (The minimal furnishings are carried onstage by the actors as needed.)

Adam Langdon’s Christopher seems to represent a perfect innocent, but he’s also a strangely aggressive one who feels empowered when he believes his truth is “true” truth. He states matter of factly that he never lies (unlike everyone else he knows, as we come to see) and his tender heart is touched when he discovers the body of his neighbor’s dog. When the play opens, we see him kneeling beside its body; he’s sad, yet growing in determination to find out who could have done such a thing. Langdon adeptly portrays the lad’s righteous passion while also showing that the teen’s  growing physical powers, coupled with his ignorance concerning unspoken social contracts (be polite, don’t hit people) can make him hard to live with.

He lives with his father, Ed (Gene Gillette). Gillette’s tough-guy-with-a-heart portrayal of a single father who has tried to shelter his son from some unpleasant truths makes him an appealing character. Christopher’s teacher/therapist Siobhan (a nurturing Maria Elena Ramirez) offers the lad understanding and helps him deal with everyday realities. Of course Siobhan makes Christopher’s family look inept in comparison, but then, she has the freedom to refuse to live with him (as she does when he asks to come home with her). Unlike those responsible for his care, she gets a break at the end of the day.

As Christopher’s investigation continues he runs into other delightful characters, especially Charlotte Maier’s ultimately hilarious Mrs. Gascoyne, a woman who always says what you think she will.

The talented and versatile ensemble cast rotates around Christopher’s adventures. They switch persuasively, if dizzyingly, through roles as the quirky people our hero runs into as the story continues. The ensemble’s choreographed movements serve, at times, to help Christopher violate ordinary rules of gravity as well as create key elements in his eventual trip to London.

Ensemble members include the previously mentioned Maier, Ramirez, and Gillette, as well as Brian Robert Burns, John Hemphill, Geoffrey Wade, Francesca Choy-Kee, Amelia White, Felicity Jones Latta, Robyn Kerr, and J. Paul Nicholas. Dance and Fight Captain, Tim Wright should also be singled out for directing some necessary roughness.

Although I was lucky enough to see the play several years ago in London (where it was first produced), the changes made in the New York production have, while not changing the central impression, smoothed out and clarified elements important to the story lines. Still, while the relentless struggle of being a person with autism and living with a person with autism is sketched out dramatically, things seem a little too cute at times. It’s asking too much to really even begin to share the experience, which is likely why I highly recommend Haddon’s more immersive novel.

Bottom Line: A well-acted, splendidly assembled production that conveys a little of what it must be like to lack the ability to sort out and shut out all that daily living that dances before our eyes and ears.

Gene Gillette as Ed and Adam Langdon as Christopher Boone in the touring production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Photo: Joan Marcus

For tickets or more information about this Playhouse Square production to to playhousesquare.org or call 216-241-6000.

How I Learned to Drive @ The Cleveland Play House, March 4-26

Photo:

From left to right: Michael Brusasco (Peck), Madeleine Lambert (Li'l Bit), Karis Danish (Female Greek Chorus), Nick LaMedica (Male Greek Chorus), and Remy Zaken (Teenage Greek Chorus). Photo Credit: Roger Mastroianni.

It’s a great ride through risky territory. Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive looks honestly at family, sexual desire, puberty, pedophilia, and yet--magically--avoids being a mere lecture about the evils thereof. This Pulitzer Prize-winning play at the Allen Theatre, directed by Laura Kepley, runs through March 26 at the Cleveland Play House at Playhouse Square.

Under director Kepley’s sensitive guidance the five-person cast persuasively portrays people who (in their own minds) are all “doing the right thing.” The origins and consequences of their actions shown in back and forward time-jump sequence tell a nuanced and exquisitely-plotted story about what is often dismissed out-of-hand as merely a “dysfunctional” family.

As Vogel points out, it’s not quite that simple. The rural family is indeed dysfunctional, but it’s messed up in its own unique way. The story (set in the 1960s) begins with main character Li’l Bit (a very engaging Madeleine Lambert) sitting on a long winding road that, thanks to the clever set design by Collette Pollard, stretches upward to infinity (also known as the top of the stage). She begins to fill us in about how she learned to drive, thanks to instructions by her Uncle Peck (a handsome, conflicted Michael Brusasco). It becomes clear that she learned about a lot more than driving as she spends time with the only one in her family who doesn’t make fun of her body (though he appreciates her beauty and her Herbal Essence shampoo) or try to keep her trapped in her small town.

Li’l Bit’s name, like the others, holds an important meaning for the story. Her family, yearning for a girl baby, checked out her diapered self to happily discover she had only “little bits.” Her Uncle Peck’s name, of course, implies “pecker,” but that’s not explained. (We get to figure that one out for ourselves.) Other family members and friends are brilliantly (and often hilariously) sketched out by members of the Greek Chorus (Karis Danish, Nick LaMedica, and Remy Zaken).

Vogel’s play is neither a simple well-meant diatribe against sexual abuse nor a damning of adults who abuse children. It is, of course, against harming children and sexual abuse, but it also recognizes that in Li’l Bit’s case at least she’s not immune to sensing the power she has over her besotted uncle even though she’s not always sure what to do with it. Peck, a basically kindly man, is also a damaged person--his wife mentions wartime trauma when he was in the service--a factor which does not excuse his actions or compulsions, but makes him human. The interplay between the two leaves neither one unaffected, but the victory is clearly Li’l Bit’s.

Played without intermission, How I Learned to Drive gives plenty of grist for after-play conversation.

Bottom Line: Maybe someday being able to drive will be less important than it was in the 1960s, but for Vogel’s fascinating and highly recommended drama they provide a perfect metaphor for escaping boundaries.

Susy Hendrix (actor, Jodi Dominick) and Harry Roat (actor, Arthur Hanket (Photo by Roger Mastroianni) 

Wait Until Dark @ Great Lakes Theater at Playhouse Square

Review by Laura Kennelly

Feeling helpless? Imagine the plight of Susy Hendrix, blind and trapped in a room with a murderous drug dealer. That’s just one plot turn in Wait Until Dark, an engaging thriller staged by Great Lakes Theater at the Hanna Theatre at Playhouse Square through March 12, 2017.

Director Joseph Hanreddy keeps the pace swift and the atmosphere menacing as newlywed-just-back- from- a-Quebec honeymoon Hendrix (a convincingly “blind,” but very trusting Jodi Dominick) slowly begins to realize that she’s not safe in her Greenwich Village basement apartment. It seems that Susy and her husband, Sam (an earnest Jonathan Dyrud) had agreed to help a strange woman they met in Canada to take a doll to a sick child in a New York City hospital. Shortly after they get home, the doll disappears. (This plot device worked in 1966, but I hope we all know by now never to agree to “help out” by taking packages across borders after hearing a good story from strangers.)

The first-rate cast includes Elisa Pakiela as the bratty Gloria who lives upstairs, Arthur Hanket as the enigmatic Harry Roat, Nick Steen as “sympathetic friend” Mike Talman, and David Anthony Smith as “Sgt. Carlino.” Roat, Steen, and Smith also assume other roles. Laura Welsh Berg and Lynn Robert Berg play the late-arriving  and somewhat puzzled police

Highlights? Dominick and Hanket tumble around persuasively in the final scene, both fighting for their lives as the blind Susy becomes more desperate to find a way to take advantage of her disadvantage. A tense scene, where the audience (something I’m glad about) has a better view of what’s going on than the cast does, was created by lighting designer Rick Martin. Robert Westley skillfully choreographed their encounter. Set designer Scott Bradley convincingly fashioned all the rooms needed without scene changes. I would have liked the sound effects to have better reflected Susy’s reliance on her sense of hearing. It was hard to believe characters could come and go up the stairs to the entrance without her hearing them, though she did observe that one man’s footsteps sounded just like his father’s. Perhaps exaggerated door clicks (that door never seemed to shut right) and other sounds could have emphasized that her world was dark, but her ears were keen.

To say more would spoil the fun, but if you must know the plot, just consult wiki at Wait Until Dark. Warning: It’s a lot more fun if you don’t.

Bottom Line: Fast action in dark and confined spaces in a well-played old-fashioned thriller.

Wait Until Dark runs through March 12, 2017. For tickets go to GreatLakesTheater.org or call 216-241-6000. Next up? Hamlet, March 31 through April 15.

Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Bring It On the Musical @ The Beck Center, 2/10 - 26

Review by Laura Kennelly

Wow, was I wrong! [That happens once in awhile, hahaha.] Bring it On the Musical, a rock/hip hop show now playing in regional premiere on the Mackey’s big stage at the Beck Center, turned out to be quite surprising.  I had assumed I’d see a fluffy  musical based on a film about high school cheerleading competitions---a great subject to showcase dance, but not one too intellectually or emotionally “deep.”

In fact,  it did showcase athletic dancers and singing cheerleaders, but it was also an unexpected exploration of “adaptation”--in both the word’s literal and figurative (or emotional) sense. With a libretto by Jeff Whitty, music by Tom Kitt and Lin-Manuel Miranda (yes, that Lin-Manuel), and lyrics by Amanda Green and Miranda, this 2011 musical (based on a motion picture) enjoyed a national tour before playing on Broadway for a limited run in 2012.

Literally, the plot turns on adaptation manifested by two girls: pretty head cheerleader Campbell (played with vulnerability and charm by Kailey Boyle) and her friend, zaftig Bridget (an earnest, very likeable Shelby Griswold). The two become even faster friends when they both have to adjust quickly to a new school thanks to sudden school redistricting policies which force them to leave their beloved cheerleading squad at good old Truman High. Their new school, Jackson High, has a funky urban vibe, but it doesn’t have a cheerleading squad. It does, however have a “crew,” run by the redoubtable Danielle (Shayla Brielle). Danielle’s dancing posse includes Nautica (sassy Joy Del Valle) and the sexually ambiguous La Cienega (a glam Nick Drake, more about this below).

The two transfer students learn to adapt, picking up new vocabularies and new attitudes. At last, after various missteps and fumbles and lies, Campbell begins to fit in. She inspires the Jackson High team to compete against her old squad, now captained--after some rather mysterious “coincidences” by the very freshman Campbell herself had added to the team, the innocent-looking little Eva (played with scary glee by Abby DeWitte).

Ah, our girl Campbell might have been more wary if she had seen the classic film, “All About Eve,” but by contest time Eva has taken up with Campbell’s old boyfriend, Steven (Jonathan Young, who beautifully satirizes the “perfect” boyfriend with silly puppy sweetheart rituals). Campbell’s former besties at Truman, Skylar (a self-centered, yet glamourous Victoria Pippo) and Kylar (a clueless but cute MacKenzie Wright) prove outstanding glimpses of why high school popularity  is a fleeting thing.

The rest of the marvelous ensemble cast, some thirty-two Baldwin Wallace students in all, offered a polished performance despite at least one substitution in a major role the night I was there. Sporting a dramatic wig, understudy Nick Drake smoothly stepped into the alt-campy role of La Cienega, one of Danielle’s crew. Drake completely sold it--making the statuesque beauty’s  remark about knowing plenty about discrimination both funny and touching.

But the show had a point beyond the vagaries of cheerleading competitions and that’s the figurative adaptation I mentioned. This transcending motif developed throughout the story as we watched Campbell and Danielle, both dominant, strong young women, learn to see past social and racial differences. This meaning is perhaps best expressed near the show’s end when Danielle sings “I Got You.” She tells Campbell, “I thought you were a spoiled rich, uptight little white bitch, now I think you're just white.” Such thoughts can sound preachy, but they seemed earned here.

On the down side: The Broadway production featured a professional cheerleading team for the stunts, an advantage this production lacked. The result? A few injuries (common to all athletic efforts, think how injury-prone high school sports can be) and as an overheard commentator remarked “You get a different show every night.” However, none of that was evident to the audience that watched this cheer-worthy show pulled off with heart and guts.

Helping to “Bring It On” were Director Will Brandstetter, Music Director Peter Van Reesema,  Associate Music Director Alyssa Kay Thompson, Choreographer Martín Céspedes, and Cheer Choreographer Mary Sheridan.

Bottom Line: Delicious fun for those of us who used to be cheerleaders and for those of us who never led a cheer in our lives.

For tickets, call (216) 521-2540 or go online at www.beckcenter.org. The Beck Center is at 17801 Detroit Avenue in Lakewood. The show closes February 26, 2017

Photo by Roger Mastroianni

The King and I @ Playhouse Square, Feb. 7-26, 2017

Review by Laura Kennelly

Who doesn’t love a bit of fantasy in February? This month the KeyBank Broadway Series at Playhouse Square offers The King and I, a classic Golden Age musical currently in the Connor Palace Theatre (through Feb. 26). Directed by Bartlett Sher, this is the recently-produced and much acclaimed Lincoln Center production that won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Musical Revival.

The opening scene is breathtaking: Filmy fabric curtains part and a blood-orange sky flames out behind a ship as it slowly hoves into view, looking as if it’s about to fall off the stage if it doesn’t stop in time. (It brings back the scene in Phantom of the Opera  when we’re not sure about that chandelier plummeting across the audience). After that introduction, it was easy to settle back and wait to be reminded of all the reasons the show has been winning hearts since 1951.

Good things weren’t hard to find. The story (cobbled together from a novel based on a memoir), concerns some of widow Anna Leonowens’ experiences in the 1860s when she came to Bangkok to serve as tutor to the King of Siam’s multitude of wives (dozens) and children (even more dozens). It’s touted as “East meets West,” but Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I draws its power from love stories.

There’s the unspoken love (or at least appreciation) that slowly blossoms when feisty woman (Anna, of course) meets feisty man (the King). Anna (a schoolmarmish Laura Michelle Kelly) shows her young son (Graham Montgomery) how to overcome fear with the optimistic “Whistle a Happy Tune” and muses about her loss in “Hello, Young Lovers.”

Although a lovely vocalist, Kelly seemed stuck in “teacher” mode so that a little extra frisson possible when dealing with the King (played with charm and verve by Jose Llana) didn’t really materialize. That is more likely to be true to what might have really happened than the “East meets West” vibe, but reality is overrated in a classic musical. A perfect tyrant, Llana’s King postured appropriately and sang powerfully, especially in “A Puzzlement” and, of course, with Anna in “Shall We Dance.”

Ah, but there was plenty of romance between Tuptim (the utterly lovely Manna Nichols) and Kralahome (the dashing Brian Rivera). As the only true romantic pairing in the show, they share  a wonderful duet (“We Kiss the Shadow”), but pay a high price for their love. (Young lovers often pay a high price in Rodgers and Hammerstein shows; South Pacific came out only two years earlier with the tragic story of Lt. Cable and Liat.)

The King’s first wife, Lady Thiang (Joan Almedilla), shines in the gorgeous “Something Wonderful” as she expounds on the tricky nature of love and acceptance between fallible human beings. Almedilla turned what might have been a “ho-hum” justification of polygamy into lyric emotion that, if applause is any measure, touched most of that night’s audience.

Best thing in the show? The ballet based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel of the period, A wonderfully fabricated “The Small House of Uncle Thomas” features over a dozen dancers portraying main characters Eliza (Lamae Caparas), Uncle Thomas (Amaya Braganza), Angel/George (Nobutaka Mochimaru), Topsy (Yuki Ozeki), Simon of Legree (Rommel Pierre O’Choa), Little Eva (Michiko Takemasa) as well as Dogs, Guards, and others. The choreography by Christopher Gattelli was based on the original choreography by Jerome Robbins. Dance Captain Yuki Ozeki and assistants Kelli Youngman and Andrew Cheng also deserve high praise for this enlivening, skillfully executed interlude.

Other dancing, especially the sweeping waltzes, added froth and glamour (even when the hoop skirts were used to comic effect). Doing justice to the rich score, Gerald Steichen conducted the small orchestra that included many local musicians.

Bottom Line: I went to this critically-lauded The King and I expecting to be blown away, and there were many good moments, but overall it seemed as if it lacked heart, something missing. But, perhaps, “The Small House of Uncle Thomas” made up for it all. I think it did.

For tickets or more information go to www.playhousesquare.org

Into the Woods

Into the Woods, Cleveland National Tour, Jan. 10 to Jan. 29

Review by Laura Kennelly (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Intertwined fairy tales conjure “what ifs” in the latest Playhouse Square Broadway Series production, the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine hit, Into the Woods This  touring version of the recent Broadway show, reshaped and reimagined by the Fiasco Theater and Roundabout Theatre, and directed by Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld, adds an extra element of amusement even for those who have enjoyed this whimsical show before.

The clever and tuneful ensemble cast handles complex lyrics, dances, and  choreographed entrances with ease. The latter is highly important because the stage gets very busy. Almost everyone plays more than one character and/or plays a musical instrument. Some truly shine, such as Lisa Helmi Johanson as the coy little Red Riding Hood and the hapless Rapunzel.

I used to think that the character of Jack (Philippe Arroyo) was dumb for falling in love with Milky White, the family cow (played with true bovine sensibility by Darick Pead), but now I’m in love with the cow too. It should be noted that Pead also plays wicked sister Florinda and Rapunzel’s Prince, but it’s the cow that knocks my socks off. “She” reacts with just the right touch of charming affirmation and (sometimes) sarcasm--and all without a word! Moo.


Evan Harrington as the Baker and Eleasha Gamble as the Baker’s Wife start the action with their wish to have a child. The story is then filled out by adventures with others who wander in and out of their own various stories. Cast  members include Anthony  Chatmon II, as the sexy wolf,  Lucinda, and Cinderella’s Prince; Fred Rose as Mysterious Man; Bonnie Kramer as Cinderella’s Stepmother/Jack’s Mother; Laurie Veldheer as Cinderella/Granny, and Vanessa Reseland as the Witch. Even the “baby” (played by a bundle of rags) cries with feeling (thanks to various maidens just out of the scene).

There are, of course, many funny songs, such as the laughable “Agony” sung by the gallant princes (Chatmon and Pead). Theirs is a delicious duet dedicated to male fickleness and self-absorption. It’s even funnier in the second act than the first (like life, I guess in that it takes a bit of age to see the humor in some things).

The first thing audience members may notice when they arrive is that the Connor Palace stage looks like a jumbled mess. Framed by tiny boxed piano guts above and on the sides, it’s cluttered with junk: giant piano strings across the back, a ladder with extensions, loops of yellow yard, chairs, an  upright piano in the middle, random costumes scattered about--typical backstage storeroom vibe. Scenic designer Derek McLane created a set, which looks, in a good way, like what might have happened if a giant had tossed the traditional set for the show--trees, a house, castle, etc.--into a Vitamix and then poured the resulting concoction out onto the stage. The ladders, benches, colorful structures suggesting houses, castles, gardens, woods all get put into  use when needed by the nimble cast.  Opening night, as items were called into service, only the upright piano remained in the center, even turning its back upon us once in awhile. Other times we saw music/director pianist Sean Peter Forte admirably pounding away on the piano and becoming part of the larger story.

On opening night, while we awaited the start of the show, members of the brilliant ensemble cast begin to appear, some waving at us, others intent on getting into costume. One cast member stepped up to remind us of the rules: “no photos, no phones,” and then added something new: “Before intermission it may look as if the show is over, but it isn’t. So stick around.”

Sure enough, after the rousing  resolution to Act I, featuring the musical summing up we expect at the end of every show, the [Happy] “Ever After,” some of the audience did leave. Well, it was getting late, and the truth is that optimists and/or youngsters may leave at that point, completely satisfied. After all, the first act, shapes a complete drama of loves lost and found and evil overcome. You can safely take the little ones home and they will have sweet dreams.

However, grownups might like to stay and find out what “ever after” really means to Sondheim and Lapine. The rest of the story, as it were, is a bit cynical, with a bit of Voltairian disillusionment (as in “Candide”) laid on the contemporary mantra of “find your family where you can.”

Bottom Line: Beautifully done. It helps, more than it hurts, to know your Fairy Tales.

For tickets call 216-241-6000 or go to playhousesquare.org. The show runs through January 29, 2017.

[Review by Laura Kennelly]