Wow! 4-Star Comedy Smash Hit at Barn

by Warren Francke

It’s too bad Ben Beck wasn’t overweight when he started rehearsing as the leading man in The 39 Steps. He’d have shed any extra pounds during its six-week run at the Blue Barn.

Instead he gains the chance to be a 1930s Hollywood hero ala Alfred Hitchcock, whose portly presence even shows up silhouetted in as fast-paced an action comedy as you’ll ever see on stage. He’s helped by a comely and curvaceous Kirstin...

-“Recommended?” Yes to Premiere Play

by Warren Francke

by Warren Francke

Recommended Reading for Girls completes a remarkable pairing on the two stages of the Omaha Community Playhouse. While another world premiere, the screwball comedy A Night with the Family, continues on the main stage, Omahan Ellen Struve’s original play runs in the more intimate Howard Drew.

It’s a tribute to the confidence of the Playhouse leadership that they booked two unproven plays,...

Playhouse Premieres Family Fun

by Warren Francke

It’s tempting to play doctor and diagnose the world premiere play that opened at the Omaha Community Playhouse last weekend. But that urge doesn’t happen until late in the second act of A Night with the Family.

For the entire first act and well into Act Two, you’re having way too much fun to even think about what it might take to make an entertaining evening even better. Playwright Matthew Ivan Bennett wasn’t...

Doin’ it for Sugar and Bette Swanson

by Warren Francke

The musical Sugar sports one song with a fighting chance to send you home singing its title, “Doin’ It For Sugar.” Change that slightly to “doin’ it for Bette” and it comes closer to the spirit of a preview performance at the Bellevue Little Theatre.

A pre-show tribute honored Bette Swanson, its producer who is stepping down from that role after producing 27 years at the BLT, including two earlier goes at this...

Lion King Roars Its Return to Orpheum

by Warren Francke

The creative unity of Disney’s The Lion King is greater than even its wonderful parts. Its greatness, more than any blockbuster musical before, requires no starring celebrities; its success was assured before casting.

And its magic begins in the very beginning, when the sage monkey woman Rafiki, a South African named Nteliseng Nkhela, slashes the air with her piercing call to all the other creatures.. The...

Brigit Lives Up to O’Neill Classic

by Warren Francke

We’re warned of the fog shrouding the Tyrone family’s summer home each time the fog horn blows. The fog inside the house rolls in on wings of whiskey and morphine, sounding its warning with angry words of blame followed by regrets and apologies.

Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night isn’t a bit foggy about the dysfunctional family’s complaints as the drug-addicted mother and the alcoholic father and...

‘40s Songs, Great Voices, Comedic Magic

by Warren Francke

Mix the magic and affirmative smiles from the mute narrator with well-cast voices and all you need are the familiar songs. The only problem All Night Strut: a Jumpin’ Jivin’ Jam posed for me was to keep from singing along.

The heart of this 1940s song-and-dance show came from the World War sections and the most moving moment before intermission found Erika Hall as Rosie the Riveter leading the full ensemble over...