It takes courage to perform a one-woman show. But there is a particular audacity required to perform a show where you discuss your sex spreadsheet in front of your grandmother.

Danitza Piper brought both qualities to Thursday’s Cincinnati premiere of her solo show, 4.5 Stars, at Gabriel’s Corner.

Her parents were there, too. And her fourteen-year-old brother. Whether that made the production a family bonding experience or material for a future show is anybody’s guess. Probably both.

For the rest of us, it was a thoroughly entertaining hour with someone who makes sharing her dating history feel like catching up with your best girlfriend. There are men to rate and review. There are opinions about hand soap and age gaps. And there is — God help us — data.

Created and performed by Piper and directed by Erika MacDonald, 4.5 Stars uses a spreadsheet rating the men Piper has dated as an invitation into her romantic life. At twenty-four, she has already accumulated enough experience to identify some preferences, including an affection for older men. Silver foxes like actors Pierce Brosnan, Tony Goldwyn, and Tom Selleck also figure into the conversation.

Danitza has a type. And a fairly flexible upper age limit.

The piece is sharply written, but feels deceptively casual thanks to both MacDonald’s direction and Piper’s easiness on stage. A love of rom-coms supplies a frame for the stories: those familiar promises about attraction, compatibility, and the person who might turn an ordinary life into something worthy of a soundtrack.

Piper makes us feel immediately comfortable. Her delivery is breezy, and she’s immensely likable. The intimate setting at Gabriel’s Corner suits a show that feels as much like a conversation among friends as a performance.

At this one-night-only hometown appearance, that distinction was especially blurry. Piper seemed to know practically everyone in the room by name. Anyone familiar with Cincinnati theatre will recognize the experience of arriving at a show and discovering that half the audience knows one another. Here, that familiarity became part of the evening’s charm.

The closing turn is surprisingly touching. After all the humor about dating, Piper arrives at the idea that everyone deserves to feel loved — and that romantic love is only one way that happens. Friendship counts. Family counts. The people who know you, enjoy you, and keep showing up count.

The sincerity of that ending is the show’s superpower. It’s heartfelt without ever becoming schmaltzy.

Friends and fellow artists and people she greeted by name were in the house. Her parents, too. And her grandmother and her brother. Having them there supplied a little extra comedy during the show when she’d apologize before saying something risqué.

But by the end, their presence supplied something sweeter.

Piper spent the hour telling us about her search for love; the room was already full of it.

Keep up with Danitza Piper’s work — including future performances of 4.5 Stars — at danitzapiper.com.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

I like it when a story I know well is presented in a way that lets me see it differently.

Carrie, Stephen King’s 1974 novel, is back in the spotlight thanks to Mike Flanagan’s new series on Prime Video, which started streaming earlier this month, just in time for The Carnegie and UC-CCM’s production of Carrie: The Musical.

I’m really digging Flanagan’s modern take on the tale. But what director Vincent DeGeorge has done with it onstage interests me even more.

Flanagan has eight hours to tell the story. DeGeorge has about two, including intermission, and he uses that time to craft a thoughtful, entertaining production filled with gorgeous stage pictures and remarkably clear storytelling.

For anyone unfamiliar, Carrie White is a naive teenager with a religious zealot for a mother. She’s bullied relentlessly at school, but when one of the girls, Sue Snell, begins to feel guilty about her role in Carrie’s humiliation, she convinces her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to take Carrie to the prom.

Chris Hargensen is one of the girls who humiliate Carrie at school, but unlike Sue, she refuses to apologize when Miss Gardner demands it. As punishment, she’s banned from the dance, and she’s determined to get even. She rigs the voting for Prom King and Queen, setting Carrie up for the ultimate public humiliation with help from her boyfriend, Billy Nolan.

While the television version is firmly planted in 2026, the stage production feels more timeless. Tyler Gabbard’s thoughtful and specific scenic design centers on a police station that looks like it could have been there for decades. The characters have cell phones, but there’s something decidedly old-fashioned about this version of Chamberlain.

It reminds me of the kind of small town I grew up in. A little behind the times, but modern enough when it needs to be.

DeGeorge leans into the memory-play structure already present in Lawrence D. Cohen’s script. The musical opens with Sue being questioned by police about what happened at the prom, and Sue remains onstage for almost the entire production, watching the events unfold around her. At one point, she even helps Carrie get dressed, almost like a ghost moving through her own memories.

Ayla Schwartz, as Sue, needs to be both likable and trustworthy. This is nearly as much her story as Carrie’s. Schwartz manages to blend into the background, keeping Sue’s presence alive without taking the focus away from Carrie, while still delivering a powerful and heartfelt performance.

And that focus belongs to Edin Kebede, who has an innate ability to move an audience even in stillness. When she explodes into the title song, “I’m Carrie,” the energy in the room immediately changes. I could feel the people around me sit up in their seats. Because she’s so grounded in the character, her transition from withdrawn teenager to confident Prom date to vengeful psychic feels seamless.

I was rooting for her. Watching Kebede’s Carrie come out of her shell, enjoy the attention of a handsome boy, and experience what it’s like to belong made me genuinely happy, almost enough to forget the underlying dread of what ultimately happens.

This is a horror story, after all.

In the modern era, people seem to put everything online. What they had for breakfast gets posted on Instagram, and anyone can share their opinions or experiences, even if no one asked.

One thing I feel conflicted about, though, is those TikTok videos of people helping those down on their luck. What is inspirational can also be exploitative. Someone who just needed a little help might not appreciate suddenly becoming the center of attention.

Sometimes good intentions have unintended consequences.

Sue’s intentions are good. Tommy wants to give Carrie a wonderful evening. But their kindness also puts a girl who’s spent her life trying not to be noticed directly in the spotlight.

For us to stay invested in the story, the actor playing Tommy has to be genuine. If he’s just a popular jock reluctantly doing his girlfriend a favor, Carrie’s happiness becomes another kind of humiliation.

Griffin Simmons understands that assignment. His Tommy is sweet, nervous, and entirely believable as the popular boy who also enjoys getting to know someone he might otherwise have overlooked. He has an easygoing confidence, but also just enough awkwardness around Carrie to suggest that he’s figuring out their relationship as they go.

Chris and Billy can afford to be one-dimensionally evil, and Arden Allmon and Jack Bear Ryan fully embrace their characters’ cruelty, making them enormously entertaining to watch. There’s something almost gleeful about how awful these two are, and neither performer holds back.

Carrie finds an ally in Miss Gardner, played by Victoria Okafor. She exudes authentic warmth as she treats Carrie as a person, not a project. There’s a subtle dimension to their relationship in this production because both Okafor and Kebede are Black women. The script doesn’t address race directly, but in a story so concerned with othering, their shared identity adds a deeper layer.

By the way, their duet? Perfection.

Carrie’s mother, unfortunately, offers a very different kind of love.

Amy Luce finds a difficult balance in Margaret White, making her feel like a real person while never letting us forget how dangerous she is. When Margaret first appears, we see joy in the way she lights candles and sings along to the radio. But this is also a woman who pulls her daughter’s hair and throws her into a closet.

I got the sense that Margaret has confused loneliness with love. Carrie is her only friend, and as long as Margaret can keep treating her like a little girl, their relationship works for her. But when Carrie finally matures physically, she threatens the only sense of safety her mother knows.

There’s something particularly sad about that. Margaret is so frightened of losing Carrie that she becomes one of the people Carrie most needs to escape. Luce allows us to recognize the fear underneath Margaret’s cruelty without making the cruelty any less disturbing.

All of this is happening in a musical with a memorable score.

Under Steve Goers’s magnificent musical direction, the company delivers impeccable vocals across the board. Michael Gore’s score, with lyrics by Dean Pitchford, moves between powerful pop-rock numbers and sweet ballads, and the band strikes the right balance between the two. Matthew Tibbs’s sound design deserves recognition as well, keeping the musicians and singers equally clear, which isn’t always easy in The Carnegie’s space.

I’ve been humming “I’m Carrie” the entire time I’ve been writing this essay.

Of course, we know how Carrie’s big night is going to end. But DeGeorge and associate director/choreographer Jessica Harris manage to make the inevitable feel shocking. Using stylized movement, Jessica Drayton’s lighting, and Gabbard’s projections, they create a climactic sequence that’s intense, frightening, and surprisingly emotional without relying on realistic violence. One particularly effective moment singles out Carrie’s revenge on Chris without making a spectacle of it.

I found that moment cathartic. Judging by the audience’s reaction, I wasn’t alone. But there’s something uncomfortable about cheering for revenge, especially when innocent people are also affected.

At the end, we’re back in the police station with Sue, who has spent the evening watching the events of that night unfold. She didn’t film the story for TikTok, but she and Tommy did put Carrie in a spotlight she might never have sought out herself.

Kindness is complicated.

And then, just as we’ve got everything figured out, DeGeorge gives us one final stage picture that’s not fully explained. I love that after everything he’s done to bring clarity to the musical, he leaves us a little unsettled.

Again, this is a horror story, after all.

ADDENDUM: I saw the show again Halloween weekend; was fortunate enough to catch Maya Sharma in the role of Ms. Gardner - her physicality as an actor, while subtle, took me by surprise and allowed me to believe she was old enough to be a teacher. And her duet with Carrie got one of the loudest applause breaks of the matinee. I also wanted to mention the fine work of Nic Rocklin, whose presence provides connective tissue for pivotal moments - and he does so with nuanced flair. Finally, sitting in the back row of the theatre allowed me to appreciate the seamless transitions, impressive tech, and overall cohesiveness of this production. I feel fortunate to have seen it more than once.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

This week, Kelly Clarkson, superstar singer, songwriter, television personality, and coach on The Voice, went viral with a post on social media about the way she was treated at a shop in Brooklyn. The internet has devolved into what it often does — side-taking by people who weren’t there and who really don’t have much right to an opinion. (I’m Team Kelly, though, all the way.)

This might seem like an unusual way to begin an essay about Ensemble Theatre’s production of Mrs. Mannerly, which opened tonight. But bear with me.

It’s 1967 in Steubenville, Ohio, and young Jeffrey is determined to become the first student in the history of Mrs. Mannerly’s etiquette class to earn a perfect score. This is no small accomplishment, considering the complicated rules of polite society that children were expected to master in those days. There were proper ways to introduce yourself, answer the telephone, set a table, and conduct yourself in virtually every conceivable social situation. And Mrs. Mannerly was determined to teach them all.

Jeffrey Hatcher’s largely autobiographical comedy looks back at a time when good manners were something you studied, practiced, and were eventually tested on. Raymond McAnally plays Jeffrey, both the precocious young student and the adult looking back on his childhood (among other characters). He’s joined by Cincinnati theatre treasure Dale Hodges, who portrays Mrs. Mannerly, a woman who has devoted much of her life to teaching children how to behave in polite society.

Hatcher’s script is wonderfully funny, filled with sharp observations and cultural references that make the world of 1967 come alive. Much of the humor comes from Jeffrey’s impolite observations about the other people around him and the snarky asides he makes about them. But he’s also determined to be the best-mannered boy in the class, because he’s not really that great at anything else.

Of course, we don’t live in 1967 anymore. Emily Post’s rules of etiquette have largely given way to a culture that prizes informality, authenticity, and the freedom to say whatever happens to be on our minds. In many ways, that’s probably a good thing. But I wonder whether, in our enthusiasm to dispense with all those rules, we’ve also lost something worth keeping.

Somewhere along the way, we seem to have confused honesty with saying whatever we want, whenever we want, regardless of who might be hurt in the process. We’ve become so accustomed to public figures insulting one another that even the most outrageous remarks barely surprise us anymore. We’ve elected people to public office who speak about others in ways that would have been considered unacceptable in Mrs. Mannerly’s classroom, let alone at press conferences or in oval-shaped offices.

Nobody needs to memorize which fork belongs beside which plate anymore, but perhaps the pendulum has swung too far.

Ensemble Theatre’s production finds plenty of humor in the world of 1967, though. Under D. Lynn Meyers’ direction, Raymond McAnally captures Jeffrey’s enthusiasm and determination to become the perfect student. Dale Hodges brings such natural warmth to Mrs. Mannerly that even her strictest lessons seem to come from a place of affection. Hodges and McAnally first played these roles together fourteen years ago, and there’s an easy familiarity between them that makes the relationship especially enjoyable to watch.

Trey Tatum’s original compositions deserve special mention. There’s a whimsy to the music that enhances the moments it underscores and helps establish the tone of the entire production.

Jeffrey spends much of the play trying to pry loose his teacher's secrets. So it's striking when, near the end, he reflects on the idea that knowledge isn't necessarily as important as mystery.

One of the things I’ve noticed in my counseling practice is how many people crave certainty. We want to know, without question, what’s right and wrong, what’s black and white, because certainty helps us feel safe.

And sometimes we want answers simply because we can’t stand not having them.

That search for certainty often extends to the people around us. We want explanations for their behavior and reassurance that we understand what they're thinking. But what if understanding someone doesn’t require knowing everything about them? What if respecting them means accepting that there are things we may never know?

Which brings me back to Kelly Clarkson.

I love social media as much as the next person. I enjoy sharing pieces of my life and keeping up with the people I care about. And while I’m firmly on Team Kelly, I wonder whether she really needed to tell the world about her experience in that Brooklyn shop. Did the rest of us need to know? Did we need to weigh in? Or could it have simply been an unpleasant experience that she chose to keep to herself?

We’ve developed an expectation that everything should be shared, analyzed, debated, and judged, often by people who have little understanding of what actually happened. But just because we can share something doesn’t necessarily mean we should.

Maybe we don’t need to know everything. Maybe we don’t need to tell everybody everything, either. And maybe being well-mannered in 2026 has less to do with knowing which fork to use than with knowing when to mind our own business.

Mrs. Mannerly would probably approve.

Mrs. Mannerly runs through November 1, 2026, at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, 1127 Vine Street in Over-the-Rhine. Tickets and performance information are available at ensemblecincinnati.org or by calling the box office at (513) 421-3555.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

When Alanis Morissette released Jagged Little Pill in 1995, I was nineteen years old.

I was listening almost exclusively to Christian music. Carman, Bryan Duncan, Clay Crosse — they provided the soundtrack to my small-town, small-minded life. While I was giving money to Jerry Falwell and listening to Rush Limbaugh, throngs of people were coming-of-age to this album.

I’m a little jealous.

This morning, I pulled up Jagged Little Pill on Spotify and listened to the entire album on my drive to Columbus to see The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio’s production of the musical it eventually inspired.

I’d heard most of the songs before, of course. I didn’t live out in the woods or on a prairie somewhere. This was music from my youth. It just wasn’t the music of my youth.

Jagged Little Pill is ostensibly about the Healys, a wealthy Connecticut family who have become very good at looking like they’re doing just fine. MJ (Sabrina Lynn Gore) is a mother recovering from a car accident and quietly struggling with an opioid addiction. Her husband Steve (Justin King) works sixty-hour weeks and believes providing for his family is essentially the same thing as being present for it. Their son Nick (Tommy Sanders) is the high-achieving golden child headed to Harvard, while their adopted daughter Frankie (Sammantha Robinson) is less interested in helping maintain the family image.

That’s enough plot. Because Diablo Cody’s script soon throws addiction, sexual assault, race and sexuality — among plenty of other things — into the blender. It’s a lot, and occasionally the show works too hard to make sure we’ve gotten the point. But Cody’s script is also funnier than that list of subjects would suggest. At one point, the musical takes a moment to acknowledge that the situations described in “Ironic” aren’t actually ironic. I appreciated that.

Cody understands how to use Morissette’s lyrics dramatically. The songs don’t feel like interruptions. They feel like things these characters have been trying to say. Inside this story, the lyrics fit these people so well that it was hard to believe they hadn’t been written for them.

Director Leda Hoffmann understands that the danger in material this loaded with SUPER IMPORTANT ISSUES is allowing the characters to become vehicles to make a point. But this production doesn’t do that. It’s kinetic and alive, but Hoffmann and the cast know when to pull back.

For instance, Frankie confronts her mother about race and about the ways MJ, despite believing herself to be progressive and accepting, still doesn’t understand her Black daughter. Robinson doesn’t approach Frankie’s anger as righteous fury waiting to explode. The anger comes from hurt and from a lifetime of being othered by well-meaning people who cannot quite get their heads around what racism actually looks and feels like.

Gore meets her from the opposite side with something more interesting than defensiveness: bewilderment. MJ believes she is good. She believes that if she does good — and, perhaps more importantly, projects good — she and her family will be safe. She loves her daughter and cannot understand how that love hasn’t been enough. Watching these two women who love one another remain baffled by the other’s experience is more interesting than watching a play tell us which one is right.

Robinson has an ease to her tone and diction that caught my attention. Nothing seems forced, and there’s a vocal confidence that keeps Frankie at the center even when the songs get big.

Payton Fraser’s Jo is another standout. Fraser has the kind of stage presence that makes it difficult to look anywhere else. I believed them. Every lyric felt lived in. “Hand in My Pocket” made me lock onto Fraser, and by the time they reach “You Oughta Know” in the second act, the song isn’t an Alanis Morissette anthem being recreated for a theatre audience. It’s Jo’s song because Jo means every word.

King refuses to make Steve simply the emotionally absent workaholic dad. He loves his family, and King makes clear that working sixty hours a week to provide for them is one of the ways he thinks he’s supposed to demonstrate that love. King and Gore’s marriage-counseling scene works because both actors find the years of frustration underneath a couple who aren’t entirely sure how they got this far away from one another.

Sanders brings sincerity to Nick. He’s sweet, loving and kind, even as the story forces him to confront the consequences of his own failure to act when it mattered. You can’t really fake the quality Sanders brings to the character, and it helps keep Nick human instead of just a “good boy.”

David Hap Cremean gives Phoenix the awkwardness of an actual high-school kid. He’s charming, and it’s easy to understand what Frankie sees in him. Tanner Wink has a small role as Andrew Montgomery, the spoiled rich kid who gets away with everything — and likely will again.

Tara Mastorakos brings restraint to Bella, whose confrontation with Nick could go scorched earth. Instead, her anger at his inaction-turned-heroic-savior feels justified. The restraint makes it hurt.

Alexa Baker, Melissa Hall and KC Hopkins comprise the adult ensemble, with Bella Chapman, Allie Fullerman, Paxton Lonepria, Evelyn Piamonte, Shawn Underwood and Meredith Zeallbear as the teen ensemble. Hoffmann and choreographer Cherelle Brown give them plenty to do without letting them become a distraction. They’re watching, reacting and living inside the world of the show, and the younger performers move like they belong there.

Dan Gray’s scenic design uses the glowing outline of a suburban house for a family invested in how things look from the outside. Jonathan Collura’s music direction allows Morissette’s music to retain its identity without making the evening feel like a tribute concert. The five-person band rocks when it needs to, while the vocals remain connected to character and story.

I caught myself nodding my head. Tapping my foot. Smiling when a performer found something in a lyric I hadn’t expected. I had listened to these same songs in the car only a few hours earlier, and now they had a whole new meaning.

Maybe that’s why I didn’t mind that Jagged Little Pill is trying to be about so many things.

Is it a show about addiction? Sexual assault? Race? Sexuality? Perfectionism? Workaholism? Marriage? Privilege? The impossible expectations parents put on their children and themselves? Sure.

But I think it’s mostly a show about vulnerability.

By the end of Jagged Little Pill, MJ writes another Christmas letter. The perfect suburban family she spent so much energy constructing has been exposed as something messier. So has she.

Even suburban soccer moms can change.

I know something about that.

You live.
You learn.

Jagged Little Pill runs through October 4 at The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio in Columbus. Click here for tickets and more information.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

I love movies. I especially love independent films: labors of love made by people who often use limited resources to tell human stories. Tonight, I went to Memorial Hall for the Cindependent Film Festival’s block of Ohio shorts called ‘Homegrown.’

I got there early with my camera because Cindependent had rolled out a red carpet. Festival founder and executive director Allyson West greeted me warmly. She’s incredibly talented — and remarkably ambitious. But she’s every bit as kind.

Filmmakers, photographers and familiar Cincinnati arts people walked the carpet while the two giant concessions mascots, Crunchy and Bubs, wandered around. (Maybe the Cincinnati Fringe Festival needs a mascot.)

The festival is considerably bigger this year. It runs September 16–20 between Memorial Hall and the newly reopened Mariemont Theatre, with more than 80 films from more than 10 countries. Earlier this year, Cindependent joined forces with the Over-the-Rhine International Film Festival, bringing LADD into the new structure and giving accessibility a more visible role. That partnership was front and center. Accessibility Liaison (and local theatre and film artist) Katie Scarlett walked the carpet, and before the block of films, West was joined onstage by LADD Board Member Kristen Saul.

Then we got to the movies.

The night began with Savor the Moment, which is like a Cincinnati-themed SNL commercial parody. A very muscular man strips down to relax in a bathtub full of Cincinnati chili.

It is exactly as stupid as it sounds, and I mean that as praise. The audience loved it.

Homebodies was probably my favorite of the shorts I saw. Its near-future premise is wonderfully simple: leaving your house costs money and is highly regulated by the government. A woman who desperately wants some time alone is willing to go to increasingly ridiculous lengths to get her boyfriend out the door.

There are days when “I would pay money for everyone to leave me alone” feels very relatable.

What makes the movie work, though, is that it doesn’t rely entirely on the premise. The comedy builds through tension as our protagonist tries to find peace and is continually foiled. The acting is grounded — it stays human underneath the absurdity.

I love the diversity in the types of films selected for the festival. The Trumpeter is a documentary that follows the same young musician across several formative years, roughly from 13 to 17, as he grows into jazz and into himself. It’s a simple idea, nicely executed, and the audience seemed especially happy that its subject chose jazz over basketball.

Then there was Bare Knuckle Brooke, a short documentary about Brooke Evans and her journey from addiction into bare-knuckle fighting.

It reminded me of one of those very well-produced profile packages you might see immediately before a UFC fight, and I don’t mean that dismissively. In six minutes, the film gives us enough of Evans’ history, discipline and personality that I wanted to see what happened once she got into the ring. I would have loved to see the actual fight.

The crowd was responsive and greeted every film with enthusiasm. You could feel the room rooting for the people who made these shorts. I bought Cindependent’s virtual pass, so I can watch all of the festival’s official selections through September 30. You can do the same for just $25.

Most of the time, Off Book Cincinnati is all about artists telling stories on Cincinnati’s stages. Tonight, I got to watch some great stories on a Cincinnati screen instead.

Turns out I love that too.

The Cindependent Film Festival continues through Sunday, September 20, with screenings and events at Memorial Hall and the Mariemont Theatre. A virtual pass also provides access to this year’s official selections through September 30. Find the full schedule, tickets, and streaming passes at CindependentFilmFest.org.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre — but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

Earlier today, a friend and I were laughing about how in our old age we’ve turned into the proverbial old man yelling at the clouds. Perfect timing, as I was about to spend my evening seeing Jim Hopkins play Howard Beale in Network, one of the most famous angry men in American culture.

That same friend once taught me that anger is often the least interesting thing you can put on a stage. But I also know that if I’m going to watch anyone get angry in a theatre, I want it to be Jim Hopkins.

I’ve never seen the 1976 film. But of course, I know the “mad as hell” speech. What I didn’t know was how much more there was to this story.

Network is a talky play. There are enormous speeches in this thing, almost soliloquies, which makes Cincinnati Shakespeare Company — a company built on actors handling big language — an appropriate place to stage it.

Hopkins has the difficult job of playing a man whose breakdown becomes his greatest professional success. Howard Beale is a longtime news anchor who learns he is about to lose his job and responds by announcing that he intends to kill himself on live television.

The first time Howard mentions suicide, he is sitting privately with his friend Max Schumacher, played by Barry Mulholland. I was immediately uncomfortable, particularly when I heard people behind me giggling. I have spent part of my professional life talking with people who are suicidal. There was nothing particularly funny to me about this broken man calmly telling his friend he was planning to kill himself.

Then Howard went on television.

He announced his plan to kill himself on the air with such matter-of-fact calm that I laughed, too. Within moments, the scene had descended into something approaching slapstick, and I finally understood the rules of the world I had entered.

Network is funny. Absurd, even. But just barely.

Lee Hall adapted Network from Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay for the 1976 film, and there are easy observations to make about how little has changed in fifty years. I could write several hundred words about outrage as entertainment, corporate greed, and our increasingly desperate need to have somebody validate that, yes, the world really has gone insane.

But I bet most audiences figured all of that out before they bought their tickets.

What interested me more was the man everyone else decides has gone insane.

Earlier this week, someone asked me a surprisingly difficult question: How do you know if someone is paranoid or delusional if the things they believe are actually true?

Howard Beale is having some kind of breakdown. But as Network goes on, an uncomfortable possibility emerges: What if the man everyone thinks needs psychiatric help is the sanest person in the room?

Hopkins makes that question possible because he doesn’t simply play Howard as angry. He begins as the television news anchor we immediately recognize: composed, polished, in control. But as Howard descends, Hopkins lets that exterior come apart. By his Act One breakdown, he is standing before us in a raincoat, his hair mussed, desperate to convince us not just that he is right but that we should join him. The more unhinged Howard appears, the more urgently Hopkins makes us listen.

Director Brian Isaac Phillips uses the Otto M. Budig Theater in the way this company does at its best. Actors move through the aisles and among the audience. Cameras, television monitors and Robert Carlton Stimmel’s extensive media design make us part of Howard’s television world rather than allowing us to observe it safely from our seats. Danitza Piper’s stage management deserves mention for keeping an awfully complicated machine moving.

Eventually, we become Howard’s studio audience, enthusiastically responding to cues and shouting his famous words back at him. The opening night crowd was more than willing to play along.

That’s important. Network isn’t only interested in the guy doing the yelling. It’s interested in those who watch him. Join him, even.

Despite all that noise, the moments I found most affecting were quieter.

Mulholland gives Max a bewildered humanity that grounds much of the play. He loves his friend even as Howard becomes increasingly difficult to understand. And when a much younger Diana Christensen, played by Hayley Guthrie, becomes interested in him, Mulholland finds something both funny and sad in Max’s recognition that this woman may be capable of almost anything except genuine human connection.

Guthrie makes Diana fascinating precisely because she doesn’t seem troubled by that limitation. Diana can see almost immediately that Howard’s collapse could be turned into television that people would watch. She understands the value of his anger before almost anyone else does. The disturbing thing is that she isn’t really wrong.

Brent Vimtrup is also having a hell of a time as Frank Hackett, especially at the stockholders meeting that opens Act Two. His exuberance there is almost gleefully obscene — Vimtrup at his scenery-eating best — and exactly right for a man who understands that spectacle sells.

But the understated highlight of the production for me is Connan Morrissey as Max’s wife, Louise. In a play filled with men delivering enormous speeches about enormous ideas, Morrissey gets a monologue about something painfully ordinary: betrayal.

And she makes the absolute most of it.

I couldn’t quote a word of the speech to you now. I can tell you exactly what it did to me.

Louise is hurt because the person who was supposed to be loyal to her wasn’t. Morrissey doesn’t need cameras or an audience chanting along with her. She simply lets us see what betrayal costs.

That was when I realized how much Network is about loyalty.

Max remains loyal to Howard long after it would be easier not to. Both men are loyal to Edward Ruddy. Louise expects the same loyalty from Max and discovers that he has given it elsewhere. The corporation, meanwhile, offers its own grotesque imitation of loyalty: it adores Howard precisely as long as Howard remains useful.

Ideas matter in Network. Truth matters. Money certainly matters. But ultimately, people are what matter most.

Speaking of people, CSC has pulled off a major coup in getting a special video cameo from Bryan Cranston, who won the Tony for his performance as Howard Beale on Broadway. Here he plays an almost mythical character and delivers a stunning monologue that reminds us why he’s one of the best actors in the world. At the end of the curtain call, Cranston appears again on screen and says, “Thank you, Cincinnati,” leaving no doubt that this was special. Just for us.

The timing feels particularly appropriate. Cincinnati Shakespeare Company has just announced a capital campaign to build an additional theatre adjacent to its current space, with plans not only for more performances but more room for community. Network arrives at almost exactly the right moment: a production that shows how ambitious this company is.

It takes advantage of the intimacy of the Otto M. Budig Theater, the company’s facility with heightened language and the technical capabilities of the space to create something that feels simultaneously enormous and very close. The video technology is impressive, but it never becomes more important than the people standing underneath the screen.

Which brings me back to my friend.

I still think he was right. Anger probably is the least interesting thing you can put on a stage.

Howard Beale can yell all night. We can yell back, and Friday night, we happily did.

But anger is only interesting when we start asking what made somebody angry in the first place. Fear is interesting. Betrayal is interesting. Helplessness is interesting. Loyalty is interesting. A man wondering whether the world has gone crazy — or whether he has — is interesting.

And sometimes the old man yelling at the clouds has a point.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre — but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

I wore a Toy Story shirt to the theatre tonight because I thought I was seeing a show about nostalgia and childhood play.

Maybe I should have worn my Stephen King’s It shirt instead.

Childhood is easy to sentimentalize from a distance. We remember the toys and games, the blanket forts and imaginary worlds, the hours when a cardboard box could become practically anything. What we remember less readily is how little control we actually had over any of it.

That’s by design. Childhood is supposed to be free of adult worries; adults are in charge of the hard stuff. Like deciding where we live, paying bills, and ultimately making children feel safe.

But what happens when they fail us?

That’s the dark territory Bess Wohl explores in Make Believe, now onstage at Know Theatre of Cincinnati. Four siblings — Chris, Kate, Addie and Carl — gather in the attic of their childhood home, surrounded by toys, games, old furniture and all the accumulated junk of a family history. They bicker. They swear. They imitate their parents. They hurt each other. They comfort each other.

And they play.

But play isn’t always escape. Sometimes it’s rehearsal.

In my other life, when I’m not sitting in theatres thinking about how to write something profound or interesting about the shows I’m seeing, I’m a therapist. Almost daily, I find myself explaining this idea to my clients:

Trauma happens when something takes away our sense of power or control badly enough that we stop feeling safe.

Sometimes that something is enormous and unmistakable. Abuse. Violence. Death.

Sometimes it’s quieter.

Parents who fight constantly. A caregiver whose behavior is unpredictable. Living in a house where emotions can be volatile. Not knowing whether Mom is coming home or not.

The details vary, but the experience underneath them is often the same: I am not safe. So I find ways to control what I can. Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to reclaim the power we lost. I call those adaptations “power grabs.” Not because I think they’re inherently bad; power isn’t good or bad. It just is.

One person becomes fiercely independent. Another avoids anything that might make them vulnerable. Someone else controls every detail of their environment. We become passive. Aggressive. Assertive. Accommodating. Indispensable at work. Addicted to achievement. Addicted to substances. Addicted to people. We leave before someone can leave us. We cling so tightly that nobody can get away. We disappear.

Some of those strategies build impressive lives.

Some destroy them.

That is what I kept thinking about while watching Make Believe.

I spend my workdays sitting with darkness. I don’t reject what Wohl is saying. Quite the opposite. I recognized it almost immediately.

Maybe too immediately.

What I walked away wanting, though, was hope or some light. Wohl reaches for that in the final moment. Director Bridget Leak said that she thinks there’s a lot of hope in the characters choosing to break the cycle of trauma in their lives. I wish I’d felt that more deeply.

Leak keeps the play moving briskly, which matters in a play like this one. The cast has difficult material to carry, particularly the younger performers — Ryker Sohmer, Layla Rowley, Giselle Aagaard and Bennet Kreit — who are asked to move quickly between playfulness, cruelty, fear and imitation. Leo Jenkins, Merritt Beischel, Tess Talbot and Nathan Tubbs enter later as their adult counterparts, tasked with showing what all of that has become.

Trey Tatum has composed a haunting score, while Marly Wooster illuminates the stage with inventive effects. Samantha Reno’s attic set and Rebecca Armstrong’s prop design give the production plenty to look at: old toys, faded furniture, childhood clutter, the stuff families keep long after they need to.

I have a few of my old toys. A couple of Fisher-Price play sets my Mom was threatening to throw away now sit on my bookshelf while I try to figure out what to do with them. I have a box of wrestling action figures in my bedroom. Those pieces of my childhood still bring me comfort. They also remind me of the ways I learned to grab power when I didn’t feel safe.

But Make Believe isn’t interested in comfort. It is a play about what happens when children are forced to become fluent in adult pain before they have the language to understand it.

I can respect that.

Opening night received a standing ovation. People in the lobby were talking about how moved they were. So, you may sit in that room and have a different experience. Maybe you’ll find it touching. It might give you a sense of comfort. Healing, even.

But know this: Make Believe isn’t a story about toys. It’s a ghost story – and for some of us, the really scary kind.

Make Believe, by Bess Wohl and directed by Bridget Leak, continues through September 26 at Know Theatre of Cincinnati. Tickets and more information are available at KnowTheatre.com.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre — but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

Corner of the Sky, the world premiere of a new musical featuring the songs of Stephen Schwartz at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, ends with a stage picture that made me cry. I didn’t know why. Not at first.

Frankly, I was so overcome by the quality of the vocal performances that it took time to fully register what the show had done to me. Even if there were no story, no larger idea, no reason for any of it beyond putting these voices in a room together, Corner of the Sky would still be completely worth seeing. This company could sing Stephen Schwartz — or the best of 1980s commercial jingles, for that matter — and I’d happily listen. But there is something deeper happening, and once the sheer vocal thrill wore off, I realized just how interesting it was — and how personally it had landed.

Creator Scott Coulter began with a deceptively simple question: what if “Corner of the Sky,” written for Pippin more than fifty years ago, somehow contained the seeds of the themes Schwartz would continue exploring for the rest of his career? Coulter has spent years producing beautifully curated evenings through Spot-On Entertainment. I’ve actually seen a concert featuring Coulter, John Boswell, Stephen Schwartz and the Cincinnati Pops. Corner of the Sky could easily have become another excellent entry in that lineup of concerts. But this is something even more ambitious.

For this project, Coulter brought director and choreographer Vincent DeGeorge into the process, and the collaboration is magical. Coulter finds the connective tissue in Schwartz’s catalog; DeGeorge gives that connective tissue a body.

Before the show officially begins, Boswell enters an urban roof as The Songwriter. He sits with a legal pad, tries to write, moves to the piano, plays a little, stops. He’s clearly frustrated. Then he begins hearing voices from somewhere outside his world. Slowly, one by one, the singers enter the rooftop design conceived collaboratively by DeGeorge, Brian c. Mehring and Shannon Rae Lutz.

Throughout the performance, there is no spoken dialogue between the characters. Instead, they sing to the songwriter, around him and then with one another, moving through Schwartz’s work in clusters built around ideas and images found in “Corner of the Sky.” Jake Tillmann and Danielle Lobello’s sound design is so seamless that the voices materialize and I never once thought about the mix or the balance. The crystal-clear vocals follow words and phrases about goals, soul, thunderclouds, life, freedom, place, time, loss and dawn into songs written years or even decades later.

It’s abstract, sure, but not hard to follow. The show trusts us to make the connections without stopping to explain every one. A lyric about rain can lead to “Stranger to the Rain, accompanied by subtle but stunning lighting effect.) The desire for a life that is more than merely long opens into a miniature explosion of “Caviar Dreams,” “Extraordinary” and “The Spark of Creation.” Ideas about freedom lead naturally toward songs like “Out There,” “Wanting” and “Meadowlark.” Some of the connections are obvious. Others take a second to click. All of them are sung as well as they’ve ever been.

Sunday night’s special CCM Power preview featured a talkback where Coulter discussed Schwartz’s attraction to outcasts. Once you know that, it becomes difficult not to recognize those characters everywhere in his work. Elphaba, Quasimodo, even Jesus — these are people standing just outside the life they think they are supposed to have, convinced there must be something more. They want to belong, to be seen, to be free, to matter. Mostly, they want some version of a world large enough to contain them. Corner of the Sky takes decades of that yearning and gives these songs new meaning.

That creates an interesting challenge for the performers, because they cannot rely on the original shows to do the storytelling for them. “Out There” no longer belongs exclusively to the character and circumstances for which it was written. “Meadowlark” no longer lives entirely inside The Baker’s Wife. “Popular” arrives carrying enough cultural baggage that nearly everyone in the room already knows exactly how it is supposed to work. But here, each number has to function in a new thematic context. Because this musical is built so heavily on lyrical association, the cast has to make those new connections convincing.

Songs I thought I knew sounded new again.

Gavin Poronsky brings a boyish sincerity to “Beautiful City” that gives the song a delicate hopefulness, then turns around and finds the comedy in the wonderfully unexpected choice to give him “Popular.” That versatility matters, but so does what he represents. He feels like possibility itself: the youngest presence in the room, still standing at the beginning of whatever comes next. DeGeorge returns to that idea in the final moments, which makes Poronsky’s place in the overall construction even more moving.

Chanduni Herath’s angelic soprano gives “The Lion Tamer” an aspirational quality that feels exactly right in a section devoted to goals. Her brightness and openness make the song feel like youthful dreaming. Her Pocahontas material is equally strong, and she sings with a clarity that keeps Schwartz’s language in the foreground without sacrificing warmth.

Klea Blackhurst has a character arc of her own. She begins in the searching ache of “Stranger to the Rain,” moves through a haunting “Wanting,” and later arrives at “No Time at All” at precisely the moment the show needs the perspective of someone who has lived. Blackhurst has that old-school musical-theatre diva command: wit, presence, confidence and the ability to communicate a lyric as though the room belongs to her. What I love about her journey here, though, is that experience is never presented as resignation. She has lived, yes, but she is very clearly not finished yet.

Chris Blem is phenomenal. His performances of “Out There,” “Dreamscape” and “It’ll Be Me” repeatedly gave me chills, and I found myself physically leaning forward in my seat as if getting a few inches closer might let me feel more of his luscious vibrato. But the sound is only part of what makes him so compelling. Blem believes every word he sings. He doesn’t present these songs from the outside as polished vocal showcases; he enters the thought itself, which makes even music designed to soar feel intimate and immediate.

Kenneth Early brings a rich, resonant baritone to ‘Fathers and Sons,’ but the emotional weight beneath it makes the number heartbreaking. His duet with Jordyn Amani Jones on “When You Believe” is one of the first moments when the evening threatens to lift the roof off the building, and from there the vocal standard somehow continues to rise.

Jones gets another major showcase with “Meadowlark,” where her considerable power is almost secondary to the way she tells the story. She understands the architecture of the song, allowing each shift and escalation to build from the one before it rather than simply racing toward the big vocal payoff.

Jones and Sydney Short are especially thrilling together in the “Extraordinary” / “Caviar Dreams” / “The Spark of Creation” mashup. The sequence has the energy of two enormous voices joyfully pushing against each other, but it also explores what it means to want a life that is not merely long but expansive, creative and fully lived. Short’s voice soars throughout the evening, and she brings both buoyancy to the Godspell material and an infectious sense of ambition to “Caviar Dreams.” She makes wanting more feel like something worth reaching for.

None of the performances feel like isolated showcase numbers, and that is where DeGeorge’s direction becomes essential. The singers have distinct personalities without becoming conventional characters with names, histories or dialogue. They touch, watch, form temporary alliances, move toward Boswell and away from him, sometimes seeming to offer comfort and at other times challenge. The staging emphasizes the humanity.

Music Director John Boswell is the literal and emotional center of the musical, seated for much of the evening at a piano that rotates with the turntable beneath him. Coulter has worked with Boswell for roughly two decades, and at the talkback he made clear how essential that relationship was to this project. After getting Stephen Schwartz’s permission to pursue the idea, Boswell was Coulter’s next call. If John said no, he said, there was no show. Watching the finished piece, it is easy to understand why.

Boswell’s musicality is exquisite, but his performance as The Songwriter is built out of much smaller things. He begins the evening unable to find whatever it is he is trying to create. Once the singers arrive, he listens. Really listens. At the end of certain songs, he looks toward the soloist with an expression that suggests he understands something now that he did not understand before. Sometimes it is only eye contact or the slightest softening in his face. Every song is, in one way or another, being sung to him, and after a while it felt more like the songs were explaining his life back to him.

That becomes especially powerful when he finally sings “For Good.” After an evening of breathtaking vocal power, Boswell does not try to compete with any of it. His version is stripped down, unshowy and deeply sincere. He sings with gratitude, as though the entire evening has brought him to a place where all he can do is thank these songs, these people, these experiences for whatever they have given him.

As “For Good” continues, the company gradually disappears into the night until Poronsky is the last presence left. He climbs back through the same window from which he first appeared and looks toward The Songwriter. Boswell looks back.

That is the image that made me cry.

I am fifty years old this year, and I have spent a surprising amount of this threshold year looking backward. Not because I want to go back. I don’t. But there is something about reaching a certain point in life that makes you take inventory. Who was I? Who did I think I was going to become? Who changed me? What survived? What did I build without realizing I was building it? Which pieces of the person I used to be are still sitting somewhere inside the person I am now?

I have always understood “Corner of the Sky” as a song that looks outward. There has to be a place where I belong. There has to be something more than this. Somewhere there must be a life that fits me better than the one I currently have.

But maybe the question changes as we get older. Maybe eventually it becomes less about whether we found that mythical corner of the sky and more about what happened to us while we were looking for it. Who walked with us. Who disappeared. Which voices stayed. What the wanting itself made of us.

Watching Boswell sit at that piano while the hopeful presence who has spent the evening representing so much possibility looks back at him, I suddenly saw something else: an older version of yourself being confronted by the person you once were.

Maybe, if you are lucky, he would recognize you. Maybe he would understand. Maybe he would even thank you.

No wonder I cried.

Corner of the Sky: The Songs of Stephen Schwartz runs through September 27 at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, 1127 Vine Street in Over-the-Rhine. Tickets and more here.

And watch Scott Coulter’s Spot-On Entertainment and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra perform Eternal: A Tribute to Tina Turner on AppleTV.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre — but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

After five years at Know Theatre, Katie Hartman is leaving her roles as Marketing and Communications Manager and Cincinnati Fringe Festival Producer to head closer to home and become the Marketing Director at History Theatre in St. Paul, MN.

That’s wonderful news for Katie. It’s also a real loss for Cincinnati.

Katie is a brilliant artist, producer, promoter, and advocate for the kind of strange, ambitious, deeply personal work that makes Fringe so great. She was also fiercely inclusive and made everyone in her orbit feel like they belonged.

I remember meeting her for the first time and introducing myself. She was warm and enthusiastic, and her energy was infectious. A couple of years later, I met with her before submitting my play, Webcam, and her guidance through the process gave me the confidence to produce it as a development piece at Fringe.

She has also been incredibly supportive of Off Book’s Fringe coverage of Know Theatre and has always made me feel like part of the community rather than a journalistic observer.

Somewhere along the way, she became my friend.

History Theatre is getting someone extraordinarily good at what she does. Cincinnati is losing someone who has helped improve and shape one of its theatre cornerstones.

I’m thrilled for you, Katie.

But man, I’m going to miss you.

I don’t go to the movies anymore.

People no longer know how to behave, and I always feel like I’m potentially one incident away from cancellation or my first arrest. So I stay home. Or I go to live theater, where ticket prices are high enough that usually people are mostly docile, if not refined. Sophisticated, even.

But when I saw there was an independent film called Union County, set in the place where I grew up, I knew I needed to see it.

I got to the theater early. Another man was already there, sitting alone. He looked vaguely familiar and seemed very much like he did not want to be bothered. So I didn’t speak to him. But I wanted to.

I wanted to know why he chose this film. And I wanted to tell him why I was there, too. Instead I just ate my Twizzlers in silence, hoping no one would come in and sit next to me.

I read somewhere that director Adam Meeks chose to shoot in the spring, when the grass was green and the fields didn’t look brown, as they do in so many Midwestern stories. It looked like home, where not much happens a lot of the time.

Appropriately, Union County is not particularly interested in plot. The film moves slowly and quietly. There are long stretches where very little happens, at least in the conventional sense. People drive. They work. They look at one another. A lot of the action happens wordlessly.

And then someone would say something ordinary, and I’d start crying.

The film follows Cody and Jack Parsons, foster brothers navigating addiction and a county drug court program in rural Ohio. Will Poulter plays Cody. Noah Centineo plays Jack. They appear alongside a supporting cast made up largely of people from the actual Ohio recovery community — a judge, a social worker, and people in recovery sharing their stories without pretense.

Those people wrecked me. There was something about watching someone simply tell the truth of their own life that got to me. Cody, by contrast, evoked nothing from me at first. No empathy, no connection.

But by the end of the film, I realized that distance was intentional. He had to earn his vulnerability. When he finally smiled upon learning he’s being phased up in drug court, I smiled with him.

Centineo as Jack is astonishing. He is broken and impulsive and desperate, but somehow still bursting with life. There’s a boyish enthusiasm underneath everything that addiction has done to him.

At one point, Jack asks Judge Kevin P. Braig whether he watched the Reds game the night before. It’s such a small thing. Yet perhaps the most profound moment in the entire film.

I spend a lot of time observing people’s attempts to connect with others. And I’ve noticed that sometimes people’s desire to connect doesn’t land well. For those in the throes of addiction, that often looks and feels like manipulation. Us therapists like to pathologize behavior and give it a label. “Antisocial Personality Disorder” comes to mind.

But underneath all that, someone is still asking, in the only way they know how: Do you see me? Do I matter to you?

The film’s recovery professionals are extraordinarily compassionate. Maybe more consistently compassionate than those of us who actually work in helping professions manage to be. We get tired. We get impatient. We have boundaries. Phones do not always get answered in the middle of the night.

Cody’s recovery liaison, Annette Deao, actually does this work. Do I think she really answers her phone in the middle of the night when a client calls? I actually hope not, for her sake. But in the world of this film, I was really glad she did.

This film could have become recovery-porn. But instead, these weren’t stories being told about addicts. They were people telling stories about being human.

Theatre Six was at the far end, around a corner. The nearest exit would have dropped me straight outside. Instead, I walked all the way back to the lobby, where the employees were waiting for the next group of patrons to arrive.

I said “Thank you” and wished them a good day. I just couldn’t bear to walk out of there completely alone.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

I’m terrified of drag queens.

Not in the pearl-clutching way that cares far too much about people in over-the-top costumes reading storybooks to children. My fear is about being singled out. I think of drag queens as bold. Aggressive. Intimidating. I worry they might try to embarrass me for laughs. Make me part of the act, without my consent.

So when the Cagelles came down the aisle at the top of La Cage aux Folles at The Carnegie, I thought: here we go.

The show starts before the theatre doors even open. The lobby bar space has been transformed into a pool deck — with cabanas and deck chairs and actors in caftans and lifeguard costumes dancing and having a good time. Eric Byrd, a frequent artist at The Carnegie, directed the pre-show, which I watched from a safe distance. One of the actors said to me, “There’s a party going on in there!” and I said, “Yep, which is why I’m out here.”

I tend to avoid things that are too immersive.

But the show itself is designed that way.

Rachel Stevens stages the show so that The Carnegie feels like a nightclub. Her direction is assured and, as always, story-first. Every character is clear. Every transition moves quickly, and several of them are inventively staged.

The plot is simple: a gay nightclub owner, Georges, and his partner and the star of the drag show, Albin, learn that their son wants to marry the daughter of a politician who would legislate them out of existence if he could. So, Albin is asked to hide to avoid angering the bride-to-be’s family.

It’s easy to follow. A little thin, even. That means every emotional beat has to matter to justify the big production numbers in between. Stevens makes sure they do, and her cast earns the sincerity the material requires.

If there was just one reason to see this show, it would be Josh Walden’s performance.

They are mesmerizing, hilarious, and moving, sometimes all at once. Their physicality is exact. Their commitment to character never wavers. And then there’s the voice — huge, full, and startlingly powerful without ever sounding forced.

There are actually many reasons this production is excellent, but here’s what I kept thinking about after it was over:

Walden doesn’t play Zaza as the kind of drag queen I fear. And they don’t do the easy thing, playing Albin as fragile and Zaza as strong. Instead, they inhabit the character as an authentic, multi-dimensional person who happens to be a remarkable performer. When Albin asserts himself, it’s strong without being scary. It could so easily have been binary: meek in the apartment, ferocious in the wig. Instead it’s one continuous person, full of nuance and humanity.

(By the way, Walden also choreographed the show, which is a remarkable feat. The choreography is everything you’d want and more, and they did it while carrying the lead of the show.)

Now, for those other reasons:

Kevin Kelly is the perfect straight man to Walden’s Zaza — pun intended. While funny in his own right, he understands the assignment is to keep things grounded and in doing so makes sure Albin is the one we’re watching. No matter how good Walden is, without a solid Georges, there’s no reason to care about any of it. Kelly’s performance gives us that reason.

Jack Haroutunian’s Jean-Michel continues a run I’ve been watching with real pleasure. From Grease at The Carnegie to Percy Jackson at CCM, he continues to excel as a performer. His future is bright.

Arden Allmon plays Anne, and every time I’ve seen her, she is always fully present. I never catch her not acting, but I never catch her acting either.

Denton Yockey and Sarah Folsom are hilarious as the Dindons, and watching Yockey’s character get exactly what’s coming to him is one of the great pleasures of the evening. Max Cadillac’s Jacob is ridiculous in the best ways. Brittany Hayes is strong as Jacqueline.

Sean Miller-Jones plays the stage manager and several other roles while understudying every adult male lead in the show, which is an absurd amount of work. He’s consistent the way he always is — he elevates everything he’s in. Kat Moser-Priddy, Jameson Zoller, and Morgan Lindell all fill out the world with professional-level performances.

And don’t forget the Cagelles (Connor Austin, Zoo Finkelstein, Benji Godley-Fisher, Sheldon Mba, Zay Tucker, and Way Wagoner). In a theatre this size, the big production numbers feel exactly right. The dancing is fabulous; these queens are the pulse of the show.

Kora Sline’s drag wig and makeup design, Candace Leyland’s additional wigs, and John Faas’s costumes are eye-popping. Tyler Gabbard’s set may be the best work he’s ever done. (I think I might say that every time, but it’s always so good.) Julie Cowger’s lighting and Dani Lobello’s sound are professional as always, and Jacob Priddy’s music direction holds the whole score together. Given the band is on two separate platforms, this is a remarkable accomplishment.

Somewhere during the show, I stopped worrying about the drag queens.

It happened naturally, as I was settled in, watching people do their jobs extremely well. At one point my face hurt from smiling and I guess I forgot that I was supposed to be worried about possibly being the butt of someone’s joke.

Then Babette, played by Zoo Finkelstein, came down the aisle and sat on my armrest.

On another night, with a different show, a moment like that could have ruined my night. But I was having too good of a time to care. (Plus, I was still in awe of some of the acrobatics Finkelstein pulled off earlier in the show.)

I actually kind of enjoyed it.

I realize my fear of drag queens is irrational. But I spent a long time in the closet and one of the things the closet does is teach you that being queer and visible is dangerous. The safest version of yourself is the smallest one.

Turns out, you can come out and still carry that baggage for years.

I think my fear might be because drag queens don’t seem to be afraid of anything. That confrontational energy scares me. But the thing this show argues — with nuance — is that queer joy isn’t just defiance. It’s also domestic. Albin isn’t only making a statement. He’s loving his kid and his husband and going to work. I really like that.

I went in with my guard up.

I left with my heart full.

That makes for a pretty special piece of theatre.

La Cage aux Folles runs through August 23rd at The Carnegie. Tickets and more can be found here.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

I had a dilemma while purchasing my ticket for TheatreLab Dayton’s Spring Awakening. The seats I would prefer – up close to the stage – were labeled as a “student section,” and while I could argue that I’m constantly learning, I am fifty years old this year and pretty distant from any sort of formal student status. So, instead of breaking a perceived rule that might lead to an uncomfortable conversation upon arrival at the theatre, I chose a seat that was in the traditional theatre-seat section. You know, like an adult.

But what that did was create distance between me and the stage. I like to sit close. Part of that is because I am easily distracted. And part of it is because I like to pretend that it’s just me and the performers on stage having a moment. I don’t like being too far back.

I’ve written over half a dozen reviews of Spring Awakening in the decade and a half that I’ve covered theatre. It’s my favorite show of all time. I struggle with finding something new to say.

So, maybe I needed some distance in order to write this piece.

Usually, I’ve been focused on the story of Wendla and Melchior, and the character arcs of Moritz and Ilse and Martha and Hänschen and Ernst and the rest — the teenagers navigating adolescence with virtually no parental oversight or support.

But from a distance, today I reflected on the grownups in this show.

Robin Shank played the Adult Women and Tyler Kirk played the Adult Men. Mother, father, teachers, doctor, pastor — and they were excellent. Every word of their difficult dialogue was clear — they maximized both the comedy and the cruelty across the show. Watching them, I understood the structure more clearly than ever.

Adulthood in this show isn’t a person. It’s a position.

Every adult in Spring Awakening is afraid. Afraid of what the children might discover, who they’re becoming, what they might say out loud to challenge their comfort. The rules, the punishments, the doctrine — it’s all just fear.

I have never seen myself in Melchior, and I never really related to Moritz. If anything, I’m somewhere between Hänschen and Ernst. Hänschen, a little too full of himself, a little domineering, willing to manage people to get what he wants. Ernst, the soft one, who underneath it all just wants to be loved. He says he wants to be a country pastor; I literally attended Bible College.

I’m both of those boys.

Griffin Greear played Hänschen fearlessly. Professional, locked in, and unafraid of what the role asks – and it asks a lot. Hunter Gee gave Ernst the innocence the role requires, and together their chemistry was magnetic.

CCM grad Philip Drennen’s direction felt intentional and clear; a first-timer could follow it all with ease. Not every choice served the story — some blocking, the mic stand handling, and an inflated ensemble slowed the momentum. And the song tempos dragged, losing the driving pace of Duncan Sheik’s score. But the cast was excellent. Elliot Chilcote (Melchior), Maggie Weckesser (Wendla), Luca Meyers (Moritz), and Greear were especially watchable. Aaron Hill’s (Georg) vocals gave me goosebumps. And I thought the number, “My Junk,” was as audacious as I’ve ever seen it.

But it was the adults who captured my attention today.

I’ve been an adult for a very long time. But turning fifty has made it feel more real. More official, somehow. I just hope I never get so detached from youth that I become afraid. I hope I don’t lose my curiosity, my empathy, my sense of self-discovery.

I wonder what I’ll discover the next time I see this show. What lens will I see it through?

Next time, though, I’ll sit closer.

TheatreLab Dayton is producing an entire season of coming-of-age shows. More information can be found here.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

At the end of tonight’s performance of The Sunset Limited, the standing ovation continued long after the actors had left the stage. I joined the applause because it was deserved. But what I really needed was a minute. More than a minute, actually, to process everything that had just happened.

Before the show started, I ran into an old friend.

I was sitting in the center section of the church-turned-theatre space. My friend was seated stage left. I waved. He got up and came toward me, and we met in the middle. I stuck out my hand, but he said he was hugging me. I was happy he did.

I met him thirty years ago. Back then we attended — and later both worked and taught at — the same Bible college. I always thought of him as one of those guys who had it all together. He was cool. Popular. A true leader. A real Christian. I was always just a little intimidated by him, which was not in any way his fault.

I have no idea what he thought of me. I do know that being a closeted gay man in the evangelical world made me hard to get to know, a bit prickly, and in other ways, a little over the top.

I haven’t seen him in at least ten years. A lot has changed in that time. I’ve come out of the closet. I wrote a memoir, Jesus & Me, about deconstructing my faith. He and his wife are still inside the evangelical world, but from everything I can see, they inhabit it with grace and love. They’re the kind of “religious” people I can still sit across from.

Fitting, since we were about to watch two men sit across from each other and argue about God.

Cormac McCarthy called The Sunset Limited a novel in dramatic form. Two men, one room, no intermission, real time. A man named Black has pulled a man named White off a subway platform, seconds before the train hit him, and brought him back to his apartment. Black believes in God. White does not. To say more would spoil the experience.

I was a terrible student, but I did learn a few things about apologetics — the art of arguing in defense of faith. And as a therapist with over twenty years of experience, I’ve sat across from people in pain, trying to help them see possibility. Hope.

I think that’s what hit hardest about this play for me; I have sat on Black’s side of the table more times than I can count — across from someone who has decided that their life is over, that there’s nothing to look forward to, no reason to live, while I do everything I can, never entirely knowing whether I’m reaching them.

But I’m sometimes like the character, White, too. I spend my days preaching intimacy and vulnerability, but struggle to engage in it. I have days where everything feels too hard. And while I’ve never stood on a subway platform ready to jump, I understand why someone might. White’s eloquence about all of that terrified me.

Sylvester Little, Jr. plays Black and Michael G. Bath plays White, both appearing courtesy of an arrangement with Actors’ Equity Association. Little’s physicality is subtle but precise. The eye contact he makes with Bath is unflinching, and his eventual breakdown is well-earned. Bath shows great restraint until he doesn’t — and his final rant is perfectly executed. I believed both of these performances, and they are magnificent together.

The script features ninety minutes of dense, lofty, difficult language, and in less careful hands it could just be two guys reciting well-written lines of dialogue. But these two spoke it with intention.

And that’s a result of the direction. Rupert Spraul built this play so that the intensity keeps climbing all the way to the last line, and never lets the literature win out over the people saying it. Together, the entire team made every moment resonate.

After the show I found my friend again. He was quiet. Contemplative, maybe. Me, too. After all, we had reconnected in an old church while watching two men who could not quite reach each other, no matter how strong their arguments were.

The characters are called Black and White. The material is anything but.

One Off Productions’ “The Sunset Limited” runs through Saturday, August 8, at Gabriel’s Corner. More information here.

This play deals directly with suicide. If you’re struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text, 24 hours a day.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

I often tell people that I prefer to keep the drama on the stage and not in my life. But I also say that I think feeling sadness increases my capacity for joy — and so that’s why I consume emotional entertainment as a way to grow my empathy muscle. I use that muscle every day professionally, because in addition to being a theatre journalist, I am also a mental health counselor.

And while the job of a counselor is actually not to always console their client (the best work often comes in the uncomfortable moments), I am only human — and sometimes I have to almost restrain myself from going up on stage and embracing a character who is in the midst of a moment.

Dear Evan Hansen is full of moments like that.

The production at The Carnegie is a regional premiere; I’ve never seen the show and have intentionally avoided spoilers. I’ll also avoid sharing them here — but here’s what you should know: Evan Hansen is seventeen and lonely. His anxiety makes the small things — a conversation, a crowded hallway — feel impossible. A therapist gives him an assignment: write letters to himself, little pep talks to start the day. Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day, and here’s why.

One of those letters slips out of his hands. A grieving family reads it and finds proof of a friendship they didn’t know their son had. Evan doesn’t correct them. He can’t, and then he won’t.

The lie gives him the one thing he has always wanted — to be seen, to belong — and it keeps growing, pulling everyone along with it. The ending is a little too tidy; I’m not the first person to say so.

That said, this is an excellent production.

Starting with the performances: The Murphys give the evening its gravity. Denise Devlin’s Cynthia is subtle and powerful — a mother holding her composure while the floor drops out beneath her. Eric Byrd, who we’ve mostly enjoyed as a director lately, proves he never lost his performer’s roots; his Larry carries a warm, lived-in dad energy that arrives right on time for Father’s Day weekend.

Adrian Graff makes Jared Kleinman as funny, obnoxious, and despicable as the arc demands, with sharp timing and irresistible charisma. Sean Young (as Connor Murphy) looks every inch the brooding depressive — until he and Sanders break into their duet, and the gloom gives way to a real vocalist and a nimble mover.

Jordyn Amani Jones has stood on this same Carnegie stage as Celie in The Color Purple, and Alana Beck could not be further from that role; “versatile” undersells her. Alana may be the most underwritten part in the show, but Jones makes the most of every second, and the moment she’s handed a song she reminds the house why she’s so often the strongest voice on the stage.

Hannah Grace Ervin seems made for Zoe Murphy. She begins cold and guarded, then opens degree by degree, in some of the finest interior work I’ve seen — her vocals always clear and soaring.

Rachel Dudt plays Evan’s working-class mom with sincerity and authenticity. The quick defensiveness, the scatter of single parenthood, the ferocious and tender way she loves her son — all of it rings true. And she can sing!

And then there’s Tommy Sanders. He’s a deeply physical actor, and Evan hands him everything to use: the nervous tics, the fingers worrying the hem of his shirt, the halting and sideways way the words come out. He has a glorious voice. But it’s the way he embodies the character fully that makes my heart sing. I felt it watching him last month in The House on Watch Hill at Ensemble Theatre, and he's even more vulnerable here. The way he wears emotion is what undoes you. This show only works if its Evan is impossible not to love. Sanders is the perfect choice.

The design holds all of this up with nuance and proficiency. As always, Julie Cowger’s lighting finds the right moments and accentuates them. Dani Lobello’s sound is practically invisible — the highest compliment I can pay a mix — and even from the front row the balance was dead-on. Tyler Gabbard’s set is deceptively complicated, and the media design he built with Angel Hardy is ambitious, deeply technical, and executed without a seam. Jeff Shearer’s costumes are easy on the eye and honest to both the characters and the present-day world they live in.

Music direction can make or break a musical, and Jacob Priddy’s is the backbone of this one. After the dress rehearsal, an audience member commented on social media that the cast sounded like they were recording their own cast album — and that’s about right; the vocals are that precise, that assured. The live orchestra meets them note for note. Take the music away and this show loses its heat. Priddy’s work is the reason it never does. Also, Kim Popa’s restrained, intentional choreography is tasteful and does precisely what it’s supposed to.

At the helm of it all is director Joe Bertucci. He draws committed, fully inhabited performances from the ensemble, and he keeps the story’s emotional engine running hot. The overlapping dialogue is marvelous and feels realistic, while the transitions flow seamlessly.

By the final scene, Evan Hansen, the character, has a lot of explaining to do. The script doesn’t really allow him to. It’s a shame, because I think a darker ending would make this show far more interesting. Still, I was hooked and leaned in, heart-racing as the fallout was revealed. It’s a gutting, heavy show dealing with the most serious of subject matter. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea — but if you enjoy musical theatre executed at the highest level, this is a show you should go out of your way to see.

In the end, I didn’t rush the stage to hug anybody — but I sure wanted to.

DEAR EVAN HANSEN plays at The Carnegie in Covington, KY through June 28th. Tickets and more information can be found here.

Dear Evan Hansen deals directly with suicide and mental health crisis. If you or someone you love is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is free, confidential, and available 24/7. Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

This year’s Cincinnati Fringe Festival is now concluded - and I wanted to reflect a bit on this year’s festival and what it means to the landscape of Cincinnati’s arts and culture scene.

This year’s awards went to:

The Henrietta Barlag Spirit of the Fringe Award: Neil Batra
Volunteer of the Fringe: Pann & Terry Webb
The David C. Herriman Artist’s Pick of the Fringe: Colonial Circus
The Linda Bowen All-Access Pick: Tapped In
The Rick Pender Critic’s Pick: A Hollywood Horror Story
The Dr. Robert J. Thierauf Producer’s Pick: Papa
Audience Pick: Locusta’s School for Assassins

Congratulations to all of these amazing shows!

Every show in this year’s lineup was reviewed by a team of people from the League of Cincinnati Theatres. I even stepped in as a guest reviewer there this year. Check out the Fringe grid here.

This year I saw Fringe from a new angle — as a staff photographer, in addition to my usual coverage. But I still did what I always do: see as much as I could without running myself ragged or overcommitting. To the shows I missed, I heard so many good things - and I hope maybe I can catch an encore somewhere, sometime!

Here’s a recap of the shows I did see:

White Whale — Sean Mette turned a forgotten scrap of Cincinnati history — an 1877 scheme to display living beluga whales in the Queen City — into something charming and inventive. Puppetry and practical effects on a shoestring, and an ending that landed with real weight.

Unreconciled — Jay Sefton’s autobiographical show about a boy cast as Jesus by a priest later defrocked for abuse was the most powerful thing I saw all festival. A dozen characters at a breakneck pace. The gut punches arrived before I could brace for them.

A Hollywood Horror Story — Ingrid Garner became Maila Nurmi — Vampira, television’s first horror host — so completely I forgot I ever watched her play Eleanor. A total transformation. I kept lowering the camera just to watch.

Papa — A clown show about Frankenstein’s monster that’s secretly about being somebody’s child. Madeline Rowe played the creature with precision and sweetness, and Jay Eisenberg was the perfect foil. One of my favorites of the festival.

1 Gay Wedding and Absolutely No Funerals: Reception to Follow — Goofy, farcical, and fully committed to its own absurdity. You walked in a theatergoer and walked out a wedding guest.

BOMB! An FBI Memoir — One of the strangest musicals I’ve ever seen, silly and serious in the same breath, directed by Gina Kleesattel and written by Liz Coley, based on her brother-in-law’s actual memoir. Sean Miller-Jones anchored the whole thing. He’s always good, but here he was miraculous.

Quiet Coyotes — Three summer camp counselors and a wildfire that reveals their true character. Ellyn Broderick’s comic timing, and the easy rapport with Cary Davenport and Monica Tenhover, made me invest right away.

Modern Butchood — A smart, funny, surprisingly dark solo show from Molly Gloeckner. Hannah Einbinder meets Fleabag. It’s about a monster — just not the one you expect.

The Boy from Bantay — Jeremy Rafal’s warm, moving piece about a boy, a piano, and the classical music hiding inside his Saturday-morning cartoons. He holds a doctorate in piano, so when he played, we were hearing the real thing.

Memento Holly — A beautifully written two-hander about two people, one car, and a shared loss. Zoë Peterson and Sawyer Pardo were locked in from the first moment. It made me laugh and it made me cry.

The Mad Women’s Ball — InBocca Performance’s socially conscious devised theatre that’s also genuinely fun, directed by Caroline Stine. Katie Scarlett anchored as Dr. Charcot, and the choreography by Kate Stark, Perry Hensley, and Courtney Duncan gave the whole thing its charge.

Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside Revue: The Saints — A kooky look at some Catholic saints, with strong musical numbers.

Good…Girl? — In this Fringe Development piece, Lucía Duque held four people inside one body. I didn’t get it all, but I loved all of it.

trueFRINGE — Four artists, one story each about their artistic paths. This year’s storytellers were Katie Melby of Champagne Dreams, Sachin Sharma of Colonial Circus, Fringe photographer Jeff Burkle, and Hannah Sage From of Appalachian Songcatcher. I love hearing artists talk about their creative journeys.

Jon Bennett: This Will Only Ever Happen Once - My first time seeing a Jon Bennett show, after three years of rave reviews. He’s got a way with words - and images - that will keep you laughing all night.

The Other Half

The shows are only half of Fringe. The other half happens after the lights go down — and this year I got to photograph a lot of it.

The Fringe Dance Party — It took a minute for the floor to fill, but when it did, it held every kind of person you could picture: all ages, all genders, regulars and first-timers, everyone just dancing. For me, that floor is the whole festival in miniature.

The Gay Spelling Bee — Ben and Justin Present know exactly what they have, and their fourth outing with the format came right down to the wire. Thanks to “Auntie Fringe” Karen Brinkman for sponsoring the night.

The Flashlight Cabaret — A low-tech, gloriously under-rehearsed night where artists do something other than their show. This year: a gorgeous ballet number, a reunion tour of an animal band, and a burlesque turn from Nosferatu, among others.

Awards Night — The night the festival says thank you and hands out the hardware — the same awards up at the top of this post.

Every year I come to Fringe for the shows, and every year I leave talking about the people.

The benches outside the Know are where my favorite moments often happen. The 60 Second Previews, where a room full of artists cheers for work they haven’t even seen yet. The friends I only catch once a year, and the “what did you see tonight?” that turns into “you HAVE to see this one.” A festival this size could feel like a chore. This one feels like a neighborhood. That isn’t an accident — it’s curated creatively, but it’s also nurtured with intention, every year, by a handful of people who hold the whole thing up.

By name: Katie Hartman, Fringe Producer. Bridget Leak, Producing Artistic Director of Know Theatre. Shea Haney, Development Manager. Ri Moodie, Managing Director. Becca Armstrong, Production Manager and Resident Stage Manager. Drew Homan, Technical Director. And volunteer coordinators Sienna Glaze and Danitza Piper.

Thank you — for the long hours, the problem-solving no one sees, and the festival you build for the rest of us.

This year’s festival is over. I’m already looking forward to next year. See you there?

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critic/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

We are now on the back half of Fringe — just one week to go, and this year feels extra special. So many amazing shows, a record number of sell-outs, and a growing community of Fringers are testaments to the hard work of Katie Hartman, Bridget Leak, and the rest of the Know Theatre staff.

Friday night, I saw “Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside Revue: The Saints.” I thought the musical numbers were the strongest aspect of the show. Then, I was behind the camera for the Fringe Dance Party. It took a minute, but eventually the floor filled up with every kind of person you could picture: all ages, all genders, regulars and first-timers, everybody just dancing and having a good time. For me, this is the embodiment of what Fringe is really all about.

Saturday took me to Gabriel’s Corner for InBocca Performance’s The Mad Women’s Ball, directed by Caroline Stine.

Katie Scarlett is always a standout — I’ve never not enjoyed her work — and here she pulls double duty, anchoring the stage as Dr. Charcot while also sharing a writing credit on the piece.

The other highlight was the movement. The dance numbers, choreographed by Kate Stark, Perry Hensley, and Courtney Duncan, gave the show its real charge, and the dancing from ensemble members Duncan, Stark, Hensley, Ian Forsgren, Ashley Morton, Peyton Pope, Tamara Sanow, and Casey Jo Miller brought the whole thing together.

What I admire about InBocca Performance is that they make socially conscious, devised theatre that’s also genuinely entertaining — the ideas and the fun never seem to be fighting each other.

I closed out the night back behind the camera for The Gay Spelling Bee from Ben and Justin Present. The mileage these two get from their twist on the spelling bee is golden. This year’s installment - their fourth at Fringe - was especially thrilling! It really did come down to the wire at the end. Thanks to “Auntie Fringe” Karen Brinkman for her sponsorship of the event.

One programming note worth repeating: Saturday set a record for sell-outs, and I’d bet on more of the same all week. If there’s a show you’ve been meaning to see, buy the ticket now. The walk-up line is a gamble these days, and I’d hate for you to get turned away at the door.

Also, aren’t sure what to see? Check out the reviews at the League of Cincinnati Theatres and see what resonates.

I’ll be around throughout the week and next weekend. See you there?

The Cincinnati Fringe Festival runs from May 29th - June 13th, produced by Know Theatre of Cincinnati. Tickets and more information can be found at cincyfringe.com.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critic/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

Opening weekend is in the books, and I am tired.

Three days. Ten shows. Two photoshoots. Two after hours events. And definitely not enough water. As we’re often reminded, Fringe is a marathon, not a sprint. Hydration is imperative.

Also imperative is getting tickets early for things you wanna see. There have been so many sellouts already!

I’ve already written about the shows I saw on Friday and Saturday, so I won’t rehash — but if you missed those recaps, go back and read them. Today I caught two more shows (“The Boy from Bantay” and “Memento Holly”) that I’ll be reviewing in depth over at the League of Cincinnati Theatres. Those reviews are coming soon, but know that I recommend both pieces.

So instead of reviews today, here’s where things stand — what’s buzzing, what’s flying under the radar, and what you should be paying attention to as we head into the weekday stretch.

The Buzz

Colonial Circus is getting raves and selling out. If you want to see it, don’t wait.

Transcendent has some serious buzz building. Same with Private Equity: The Musical.

What Art Is and What Art Is Good Art sold out today — I’ve heard great things, especially if you like Ben Dudley’s specific sense of humor.

And the shows I’ve been championing — BOMB! An FBI Memoir, Quiet Coyotes, Unreconciled, A Hollywood Horror Story among others — are all being well-received by audiences. That tracks. They’re all excellent.

The Under-the-Radar Picks

Two shows I think deserve your attention:

Modern Butchood is smart, dark, funny, and full of surprises. I liked it a lot. My full review is coming at LCT — but take a chance on it, especially if you like solo shows that aren’t based on a true story.

Memento Holly is a beautifully written two-hander that mixes humor and heaviness in ways that sneak up on you. Review also coming to LCT soon. It made me laugh, and it made me cry. It’s very well acted.

A Note About Papa

Papa had to cancel today’s performance due to illness. That means they’ll need crowds for their remaining shows to make up for the lost performance. If you haven’t seen it yet, please go. It’s one of my favorites of the festival. Remaining performances: Wed June 3 @ 7pm, Fri June 5 @ 8:45pm, Sun June 7 @ 4:15pm at Gabriel’s Corner.

There are still shows that haven’t even opened yet. The festival is just getting started. My day job will keep me occupied for the next few days, but I’ll be back next Friday at with more updates! Stay tuned.

See you there.

The Cincinnati Fringe Festival runs through June 13. Tickets and passes at cincyfringe.com.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critic/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

Today’s shows were all about what happens when pressure reveals who you really are. Sometimes that’s heroic. Sometimes it’s not. And sometimes maybe it’s both.

I started the day with “BOMB! An FBI Memoir.” This is one of the strangest musicals you will ever see. It’s based on the autobiography of real-life FBI bomb detective Kirk Yeager — who happens to be playwright Liz Coley’s brother-in-law — and it is simultaneously very silly and very serious. There are songs that will make you laugh out loud sitting right next to moments that will make you hold your breath. That tonal balance is deftly handled by director Gina Kleesattel; I never felt pulled out of the story despite the unusual structure of the script.

The story centers on the tension between career and family — what it costs to be the person who wades into carnage and chaos for a living, and what it costs the people waiting at home. The ensemble (a trio of FBI agents played by Zak Kelly, Maya Norman, Jordan Whittaker, plus Kimberly Borst as “Annie”) is strong across the board, but Sean Miller-Jones (“Doc”) delivers a performance that anchors the entire production. There’s a groundedness and emotional depth to his work that makes you forget you’re watching an actor. You’re just watching a man trying to hold his life together. Sean is always very good, but he’s miraculous in this piece.

Next up: “Quiet Coyotes” by Green Fuse Productions.

Three summer camp counselors are left in charge during a wildfire emergency when their boss disappears into the chaos. The stress of it all affects each of them differently: Logan keeps joking, Blair comes apart, and it's Sam who steps up. In this case, the fire reveals who they were all along.

It’s a charming, well-constructed piece of theatre with performances that transcend the storefront theatre space. The easy rapport among the three actors — Ellyn Broderick (Blair), Cary Davenport (Logan), and Monica Tenhover (Sam) — gives the show a warmth that makes you invest in these characters immediately. Broderick’s comedic timing elevates every scene she’s in, and the romantic chemistry between Davenport and Tenhover is undeniable.

The show also weaves in lessons about plants and environmentalism, which in lesser hands could have felt like a lecture or a children’s show. It doesn’t. Tenhover handles what could have been a preachy monologue with skill that ensures it feels as organic as playwright/director/producer Robyn Novak intended. (That pun was also intended.)

I also caught “Modern Butchood” by Molly Gloeckner — a smart, funny, surprisingly dark solo show. I liked it a lot; I’ll have much more to say about it in my review over at the League of Cincinnati Theatres. For now: the pressure faced by the main character, played by Gloeckner, reveals things I never saw coming.

And then we ended the night with The Channel Fringe Hard Hitting Action News, followed by Fringe-a-oke.

My new novel, Rope Burn, sponsored this year’s karaoke night, and I’m happy to report that I sold a few copies. The official release date is June 16th, but I’ll have some with me — so if you see me at the festival and want one early, just ask.

For the record, I did not sing. The hosts and other special guests did read some random excerpts from the book between songs. I promise Rope Burn reads better in context.

Today, a bomb detective had to choose between duty and family. Three counselors faced wildfires and more. And the woman at the center of Modern Butchood — well, you’ll have to see it to learn what pressures reveal about her.

For me, though, I’m feeling the pressure of heavy eyes and another full day of Fringing tomorrow. See you there?

“BOMB! An FBI Memoir” runs at Know Theatre. “Quiet Coyotes” runs at Miami University Space. “Modern Butchood” runs at Miami University Space. Cincinnati Fringe Festival, May 29 – June 13. Tickets and passes at cincyfringe.com.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critic/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

I started Day One of Fringe early with another photoshoot. This time, the tech rehearsal of Ingrid Garner’s brand new show, “A Hollywood Horror Story.”

If you’ve been coming to Fringe the last couple of years, you know Ingrid from “Eleanor’s Story,” her award-winning adaptation of her grandmother’s memoir about growing up as an American girl in Hitler’s Germany. It’s a show about survival, told with restraint and emotional precision. Nothing about Eleanor was overtly sexual.

So imagine my surprise when Ingrid walked onstage as Vampira.

Before Elvira. Before Morticia became a household name. There was Maila Nurmi — a Finnish-American actress who created television’s first horror host in 1954. Vampira was striking, subversive, and unapologetically sexual in an era that didn’t know what to do with that. Nurmi moved through a Hollywood that included James Dean and Ed Wood, and her story is the kind of wild, tragic, fascinating tale that feels impossible until you learn it’s true.

Ingrid Garner IS this character. And I don’t mean she plays her well — I mean she becomes her in a way that makes you forget you ever saw her as Eleanor. It’s a complete transformation: the physicality, the voice, the danger of it. The writing is sharp, the multimedia elements are gorgeous, and Ingrid’s passion for this material radiates off the stage. There were times I stopped shooting and just watched.

It’s another must see.

After the shoot, I grabbed dinner (a Detroit-style pepperoni pizza at Taglio) and then headed over to Gabriel’s Corner for the evening shows.

First up: “Papa.”

I generally hate audience participation. I don’t want to be touched, spoken to, or pulled out of my seat. But Madeline Rowe, who stars as Frankenstein’s creature in this inventive clown show, has a gift for making you feel safe enough to play along. There’s an Igor-like assistant — think Teller of Penn & Teller — and together they create something that’s physically precise, deeply silly, and surprisingly sweet. The audience is never the butt of the joke. You’re part of the show, not the target of it. Rowe did something similar in “Knight, Knight” a couple of years ago, and they’ve only gotten better. I’ll have a lot more to say about “Papa” in my review over at the League of Cincinnati Theatres — stay tuned.

Then came “1 Gay Wedding and Absolutely No Funerals: Reception to Follow.”

Ben & Justin Present won the Audience Pick of the Fringe last year with the first installment, and this sequel — sorry, “second act” — picks up at the reception. It’s goofy. It’s farcical. The cast commits to the absurdity with an energy that makes the whole thing feel like a giant party - but a party that involves a dead maid of honor and her severed hand in an ice bucket.

There’s audience participation here too, starting mild and turning decidedly less mild by the curtain call. I won’t spoil it. But you’ll walk in as a theatergoer and walk out as a wedding guest.

After the shows, my friend and fellow theatre journalist Liz Eichler and I hopped on the Gest electric car complimentary shuttle (sponsored by Artswave) back to Know Theatre for the 60 Second Previews. If you haven’t experienced these, picture every artist in the festival getting one minute to pitch their show to a room full of patrons and fellow artists. The energy is warm, supportive, and genuinely encouraging — people cheering for each other’s work, getting excited about shows they hadn’t considered.

This is the part of Fringe I look forward to the most. The after hours gatherings. The benches outside the Know. The quiet conversations with people I might only see once a year. The catching up. The “what did you see tonight?” and “you HAVE to see this one.” Fringe is a theatre festival, yes. But for me, it’s always been about connecting with friends and making new ones.

Day One is in the books. I’ll see a bunch more shows tomorrow and then Rope Burn - my new novel - is sponsoring Fringe-a-oke in the Know Underground around 10pm.

See you there?

“A Hollywood Horror Story” runs at Know Theatre. “Papa” and “1 Gay Wedding and Absolutely No Funerals: Reception to Follow” run at Gabriel’s Corner. Cincinnati Fringe Festival, May 29 – June 13. Tickets and passes at cincyfringe.com.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critic/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.

It’s sorta hard to photograph a show when you’ve got tears coming out of your eyeballs. But I managed to push through and capture the tech rehearsal for “Unreconciled,” one of this year’s must-see shows at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival.

This year, I have the privilege of serving as a staff photographer, shooting a few shows and special events in addition to my usual media coverage of the event. (And my new novel, Rope Burn, is sponsoring Fringe-a-oke on Saturday night, too!) What I love most about this role as photographer is that I get to experience seeing how it all comes together. Fringe is guerrilla-style theatre in many ways. Minimal tech, tight timelines.

That rawness often creates an environment for the most creative theatre.

I was thinking about the two shows I shot so far this week — “White Whale” by Autumn Kaleidoscope and “Unreconciled” by the Unreconciled Project — and at first was struck by the contrasts. “White Whale” is a charming, meticulously researched dive into a piece of Cincinnati history I had no idea existed: a local businessman’s attempt to display living beluga whales here in the Queen City in 1877. The cognitive part of me resonated with the historical storytelling. Meanwhile, “Unreconciled” grabbed my heart and squeezed.

But then I thought about Sean Mette’s visual inventiveness in the show. How he creates gorgeous stage pictures with puppetry and practical effects on a shoestring Fringe budget. How the ending lands with real emotional weight.

And then, I thought about the important work “Unreconciled” is doing to teach us about clergy abuse, accountability, and the failures of institutions that were supposed to protect children — work that has real-world stakes beyond the stage.

Both are solo shows. One person, one story, everything on their shoulders. And both blend information with narrative in a way that feeds your head and your heart at the same time.

Sean Mette has been bringing his signature brand of wit, research, and award-winning puppetry to Fringe since 2016. If you’ve seen his past work, you know what you’re in for. If you haven’t, “White Whale” is a great place to start.

Jay Sefton is an actor and licensed mental health counselor who co-wrote “Unreconciled” with Mark Basquill. The show tells Jay’s autobiographical story of a boy cast as Jesus in a school play directed by a parish priest — a priest who was later defrocked for abusing the kids in his productions. He performs it at a breakneck pace, playing over a dozen characters, mixing unexpected hilarity and devastating honesty so seamlessly that you don’t see the gut punches coming. The irony of this particular show being performed in a church sanctuary isn’t lost on me, but no matter the venue this show is powerful.

Local 12 recently covered Jay’s story and its connection to a former Tri-State priest nearing release from prison. There’s also a special talkback after the Sunday evening performance on May 31st at 5pm.

The Cincinnati Fringe Festival opens tomorrow - Friday. Throughout the festival, I’ll be writing - sometimes here on Off Book Cincinnati and sometimes as a guest reviewer for the League of Cincinnati Theatres. I’ve got a few more shows to shoot, too.

I’ll try to keep my tears to a minimum.

“White Whale” and “Unreconciled” both run at First Lutheran Church in the Sanctuary as part of the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, May 29 – June 13. Tickets and passes at cincyfringe.com.

Kirk Sheppard is a proud member of the American Theatre Critic/Journalists Association. He writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.