Performance The last work by the British playwright Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis, aggressively resists staging. Calling it a “play” is misleading—the text names no characters and has almost no sta ...   More

Performance In 1915, John Buchan published a novel about spies and cops chasing an innocent man around Scotland. In 1935, Alfred Hitchcock made that novel into a very odd film. In 2006, Patrick Barlow made that f ...   More

Performance When an opera company wants to make the leap into the big leagues, it raises millions and stages a Ring cycle. Since its completion in 1874, Richard Wagner’s 15-hour, four-opera cycle based on a ...   More

Performance “Someone is against me,” Teach, a gambler, thief and low-grade thug, bellows as he waves a brass poker, looking for something to smash. This is about 15 minutes into American Buffalo, Davi ...   More

Performance A pair of Albanian princes with fake mustaches slink onstage toward the apprehensive young ladies. Wearing embroidered silk smoking jackets in a riot of Oriental colors, the pair recalls SNL’s S ...   More

Performance An awkward loser learns his lesson the hard way in this world premiere by Hunt Holman, running through this weekend at Portland Playhouse. Doug (Patrick Oury) returns to the miserable rural Washington ...   More

Performance In more than 35 years and 45 recordings, the Kronos Quartet has seemingly explored every conceivable musical direction, from the jazz of Thelonius Monk and Bill Evans, through collaborations with comp ...   More

Performance It’s possible for a work of art to be both ahead of its time and hopelessly behind. Noël Coward’s Design for Living was written in 1932 but not performed in London until 1939 because ...   More

Performance Greg Tamblyn has outdone himself. The Portland director and producer has had his hits (three years of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change) and failures (a financially disastrous 2003 producti ...   More

Performance 2010 kicks off with the second Fertile Ground Festival, Portland’s annual celebration of new work in the performing arts. This time the 12-day event features more than 50 world premieres by Port ...   More