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About the Beat

The world of community theater is full of talented and hard-working people donating their time and energy to telling stories on the stage.  The shows that are created can be exciting, thought-provoking, frightening, funny--but they're all labors of love.  Community theater reviews are a way to recognize the skills that people bring to these shows and the moments that make these shows shine.

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I'm "Positive" You'll Enjoy "Legally Blonde" at Ashland Productions

When Elle Woods is dumped by her boyfriend because she’s not “serious” enough for him, she knows just how to get him back; she’ll get into Harvard Law School and prove in person just how serious she is. East Coast academia is a cold new world for a girl used to sorority life in the California sun, and Elle seems destined to fail, proving that everyone who thinks the worst of her is right. But with encouragement from new and old friends, Elle finds her footing and her drive, just in time for the biggest challenge yet – a murder trial! Can Elle win the case without compromising on who she is? There are some musicals I wouldn’t want to see over and over again, and a large part of that is whether the main characters are ones worth caring about.   Legally Blonde is a show that’s fun and energetic, but at its core it’s a show about doing what you believe in and building supportive friendships along the way.   Elle Woods may be vain and she may commit to things for the wrong reasons, but sh
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She Loves Me a Delight at 4 Community Theatre

She Loves Me tells a story that by now feels familiar: Two rivals each develop a romantic relationship with a pen pal – not knowing that they’re actually writing to each other. The first iteration, the play Parfumerie, premiered in 1937 in Hungary, and in the years that followed it was adapted into film versions starring Jimmy Stewart and Judy Garland (in two separate movies), then into the musical She Loves Me, and most recently into the 1998 film You’ve Got Mail , starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Whether the characters are writing letters or shooting off emails, the premise remains irresistible. How long can they hate each other at work and love each other in writing, and which will win in the end? 4 Community Theatre has certainly been busy lately, as I imagine they started rehearsals for She Loves Me right on the heels of their summer show.   But they’ve found a nice spot in the year for an uncontested show weekend; after multiple crowded weekends this summer it was nice to hav
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"The Spitfire Grill" Shines at Cross Community Players

After serving her time in prison, Percy Talbot dreams of starting over in a new place – specifically, in a small town she found in a travel book. But when she gets there, she finds a town hit by hard times, where people don’t often open up and don’t easily trust an outsider with a troubled past. The Spitfire Grill is a show about people who have lost hope in their communities, their families, and their own lives. Percy’s belief in what the town has to offer starts to turn things around, but is it too late for the other characters to change their ways? Cross Community Players picked an interesting space for their production of The Spitfire Grill ; the room they used at St. Joseph Catholic Community was not designed as a theater and was not even totally enclosed, but it worked surprisingly well for staging this show.   As a bonus, coinciding with the run of the show, the church had on display an exhibit featuring poetry by incarcerated people.   A church member told me that they had b
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