Stage Write

From the opening strands of music to the lilting melody that plays as the actors take their final bows 'Our Town' is a beautiful piece of theatrical work. The show is on stage now at the Indiana Repertory Theatre. Playwright Thornton Wilder wrote this Pulitzer Prize winning piece of work in the '30s, but its message still rings true decades later. The story is timeless and touches on points that every person on earth can relate to. Set in the small town of Grover's Corners, N.H. the play unfolds in three acts. First there is the daily life of a small town, then there is love and marriage and lastly there is what waits for us all in the final act, death. The production is staged as a play within a play. The stage is simple with few set pieces and even fewer props. Audience members are left to use their imaginations and rely on the outstanding acting the cast provides. Rarely does an evening at the theatre so completely satisfy. The show is about the simple joys of life, ...

Only a few years ago you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing the most recent pop song by a boy band. Bands like 'N Sync, Backstreet Boys and 98 Degrees ruled the airwaves and spewed out one formulaic hit after another. A show which manages to both embrace and mock that pop culture phenomenon, "Altar Boyz," is on stage now at the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis. The off-Broadway musical is making its Midwest premier. The show is staged like a concert featuring the five-member boy band "Altar Boyz." The members of the band, Matthew, Mark, Luke and Juan (the latin member), are good Catholic boys who believe they were called to minister through the rhythm God put in them. The fifth member of the group is Abraham, a Jewish guy who ended up in the band by mistake. Mix them together and they create the self-dubbed "apostles of pop." There is, like in any boy band, the "cute" one, the "bad boy," etc. The boys get down while shari...