News Jerry Mouawad, one of the two talents behind Portland's 30-year-old Imago Theatre, has is accustomed to creating shows that rely more on movement than on speech. But lately, starting with APIS in February and continuing with his new show, The Cuban Missile Tango, running through this Sunday, Mouawad has moved from mime-heavy drama to something more akin to dance theater. The Cuban Missile Tango ...   More

News FRIDAY 6:30 pm: Get seduced by Al Green at Edgefield Forty years and running, Al Green remains a pre-eminent source of baby-makin' with his forceful voice and slick grooves. The secret to Green's staying power is the timelessness of his butter-smooth vocals, the kind of voice that will remain on bedroom mix tapes eternally. McMenamins Edgefield, 2126 SW Halsey St. 669-8610 6:30 pm. $40. 7:30 ...   More

News "The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later" is the epilogue to "The Laramie Project" play that was based on the notorious 1998 murder in Wyoming of a gay man named Matthew Shepard. There are only 100 theaters across the world bringing the production to the stage, and Oregon State University is one of them. The new play focuses on how Shepard's murder still affects Laramie and the world today. It ...   More

News Actor William Hurt, who is almost my third cousin (he is the grandson of Henry Luce, Jr., the founder of Time, from his second marriage; Luce's first was to my great great aunt) is returning to Portland to play the male lead in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night at Artists Repertory Theatre next August. Hurt's performed with Artists Rep twice before, in The Drawer Boy in 2004 and in ...   More

News Fame was screened for critics after Wednesday's newspaper went to press. Since I spent the majority of my childhood in tights and spandex (for dance class, don't get any weird ideas), Screen Editor Aaron Mesh volunteered me to review it. Fame When it came time for a remake of Alan Parker's 1980 drama about kids striving at a New York performing arts high school, the crew behind the new Fame ...   More

News There are many, many shows on Portland stages this weekend, but there is only one you must see: August: Osage County, the sprawling family drama by Tracy Letts that won the Tony and Pulitzer for best drama in 2008. The touring production comes straight from Broadway, with its stellar cast and three-story set intact. Much praise has been justly given to Estelle Parsons, the 81-year-old Oscar-winning ...   More

News After a short break for press day, we're back with more of the Fertile Ground festival of new performance art. Pulp Diction Presents: The Rewrite Man Everyone has something to hide in this occasionally mystifying reading of a new spy thriller, written by Oregon Book Award winner Steve Patterson and delivered with a splash of neo-noir. "There's cloak and dagger, and then there's crazy," announces ...   More

News My last show from the first weekend of the Fertile Ground Festival was Dirty Bomb: A thoroughly perplexing world premiere, written and directed by recent New York transplant Rob Newton, in which a pair of despicable middle-aged siblings drink, scream and complain about their mother, who is rapidly falling into dementia, and the depraved young hustler who seems determined to destroy all their lives. ...   More

News I only made it to one show on the second day of the Fertile Ground Festival (see our reviews from day one here): Hunt Holman's play Willow Jade, a social satire about a bunch of losers in a small Washington town that turns into something significantly stranger, which is getting a very short but very full production at Portland Playhouse. The play blends absurdity with despair in the best way. ...   More

News The first day of the Fertile Ground Festival of new play has come and gone. Here's what we saw on day one of ten: Truth and Beauty It's been a long time since Many Hats Collaboration's last full show—Lava Alapai's Mutt in 2005—and I had very high expectations for the company's latest project. Truth and Beauty is an adaptation (by Elizabeth Klinger, who also directs the show) of ...   More