Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association, Cleveland Critics Circle)

Pat Ciamacco, artistic director at Blank Canvas, has a “thing” for off-beat musicals.  Sure, he produced “Hair” and “Godspell,” but it’s more likely that what you’ll see mounted on his stage are “Beach Blanket Party,” “Debbie Does Dallas,” and “Texas Chainsaw Musical.”  I’m surprised he’s missed out on “Bullshot Crummond,” “Dance of the Vampires,” “Expresso Bongo,” “Hands on a Hard Body, and, …more…

MARY POPPINS continues the happy holiday tradition at Beck

Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association, Cleveland Critics Circle)

Like retail stores, local theatres realize that they need a big December holiday season to make enough profits to sustain themselves for rest of the year.

Looking on the holiday boards, there’s Great Lakes with their umpteenth production of “A Christmas Carol,” Cleveland Play House’s “A Christmas Story,” and Cleveland Public Theatre’s “Santaland Diaries.” …more…

Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association & Cleveland Critics Circle)

The existentialists ask, “What does it mean to exist?  What is our purpose in being?”  “American Falls,” Miki Johnson’s drama which showcases eight people living in a small town—six alive, two dead—is an existentialist exercise.

The Cleveland Public Theatre production probes “the inner life of everyday people desperately seeking meaning and love on the razor’s edge of transcendence and despair.”

Much in the …more…

“A Civil War Christmas,” a massive and impressive undertaking at Dobama

Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association, Cleveland Critics Circle)

Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel is noted for crafting play scripts which impact directly on the lives of people.  A review of her works illustrates that  she writes about issues that need to be expressed (AIDS, sexual abuse, prostitution, degradation of the individual), she favors writing about emotional circumstances which she expresses …more…

Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association, Cleveland Critics Circle)

Little did I realize as I stood many years ago, as an extra, in front of Higbee’s Department Store in downtown Cleveland at 3 AM, that I was participating in the filming of what would become one of the most popular winter holiday movies of all times.

The filming was done in the middle of the night because in daytime, the Erieview Tower …more…

Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association, Cleveland Critics Circle)

The holiday season is upon us.  Many local theatres are geared to make your days merry and bright.  Curtains have or will shortly go up on the likes of “A Christmas Carol,” “A Christmas Story,” and “Santaland Diaries.”  Even The  Key Bank Broadway series is ringing in the season with a holiday musical, “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.”

The stage musical, with libretto by …more…

Roy Berko

Member, American Theatre Critics Association, Cleveland Critics Circle

There’s a moor, a diabolical hound, a maiden, a man who dies of a heart attack (well, maybe), a butler who carries around a tray of plastic food and wears an obvious fake beard, an attempt to perform CPR on an obvious stuffed dummy, men in a sauna wearing towels over their suits, men dressed as women, and lots of doors slamming.

Then …more…