I wish I’d brought my Erotica red lip stain to Ferndale Repertory Theatre to mark the first-time audience members’ foreheads with a large V to anoint them into the cult that is the The Rocky Horror Show, first mounted in 1973 with music and lyrics by Richard O’Brien, and adapted for the screen as The […]
Holly Portman
Noises Off! Hits the Mark
For the first show since shuttering its doors two years ago due to COVID-19, Ferndale Repertory has staged playwright Michael Frayn’s popular farce Noise Off. It’s an ambitious choice — the plot is complicated, the dialogue is demanding; missed lines or uneven timing could easily derail the comedy of errors. Fortunately, the cast, under the […]
Brave Girls
Return to Oz After battling high winds on State Route 299, I was braced for Dell’Arte’s 2019 holiday show, Return to Oz, and the on-stage hurricane that carries Dorothy away from the world where Auntie Em, Uncle Henry, and everyone at school think she’s a little crazy and back to a version of L. Frank […]
The (French) Women’s Revolution
The Revolutionists takes a fresh look at the French Revolution through the experiences of four women, three real and one composite. Two are familiar: Queen Marie Antoinette (Kaitlyn Samuel Rosin) and Charlotte Corday (Holly Portman). But chances are you’ve never heard of playwright Olympe de Gouges (Alexandra Blouin) or activist Marianne Angelle (Lakia Solomon), who […]
