Lou Harry

At the beginning of this IRT season, Peter Amster directed “Our Town,” in which a knowing narrator gave a worldly perspective to the follies and joys of a young couple in love. As the season closer at the IRT, Peter Amster directs “The Fantasticks,” in which a knowing narrator gives worldly perspective to the follies and joys of a young couple in love. This time, there’s music. I don’t say this to trivialize either production. Rather, these additional levels are…

Hear the word “lace” and you’d be justified in thinking of such terms as “delicate,” “elegant” or, if you were in a whimsical mood, even “doily-esque.” Hear “knitting” and you are likely to imagine a grandmotherly woman working on a shawl. That assumes, of course, that you haven’t already been to the Indiana State Museum to see the new exhibit “Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting.” Hear those words after visiting and you’re likely to have other ideas. The exhibition, organized…

Heading to New York on business or pleasure? Here are four new shows from the current theater season-three on Broadway and one off-Broadway-worth catching. While “South Pacific” may seem like a staple show out here in the Heartland, the new production at Lincoln Center is its first B r o a d wa y a p p e a r a n c e since it debuted in 1949. And a glorious production it is, offering breathtaking set design, lighting…

A little bit of history before I get to the specifics of American Cabaret Theatre’s production of “Victor/Victoria”: The movie on which it is based, concerning a woman who finds success-and romantic complications-pretending to be a female impersonator, proved a surprising cinematic hit for actress Julie Andrews and her director/husband Blake Edwards in 1982. Thirteen years later, again directed by Edwards, the movie was turned into a musical for Andrews, who hadn’t been on Broadway since “Camelot” in 1963. The…

The sun was pretty close to shining in when the audience emerged from the midnight performance of “Hair” April 18 at Purdue University. But the nodoubt Red Bull-fueled crowd didn’t seem to mind. College students, of course, are used to keeping these sorts of hours. But even those of us accustomed to more traditional curtain times came out exhilarated. The drive-and the groggy Saturday morning-were well worth it. So why did Purdue’s student production of the 40-yearold, easily dated musical…

OK, so maybe what follows isn’t the absolute best of the Indianapolis International Film Festival. After all, with 137 movies in the lineup, it would be a full-time job to screen everything being shown at this year’s event, which runs April 23-May 3. However, we did get our eyes on many of this year’s offerings and picked films well worth your festival time. Think of these widely varied films as strong anchors for your IIFF experience this year. Look for…

At times, “Looking Over the President’s Shoulder” (at Indiana Repertory Theatre through May 3) feels less like a play and more like a very good afterdinner speech. The speaker in this one-man show, penned by IRT playwrightin-residence James Still, certainly is worth listening to. He’s Alonzo Fields, an Indiana native who spent 21 years as a butler in the White House, serving four administrations. A humble, hardworking man, Fields has snippets to share – about Churchill’s nude swimming habits, Errol…

Yes, we are still early in the calendar. But it would be unfair of me to expect to see anything on stage in Indy this year that is more beautiful, more h e a r t – w r e n c h i n g , more exquisitely executed, and more complete than the third movement of “Tangled Web,” offered March 20-23 by Dance Kaleidoscope as part of its “The French Connection” program. I try to refrain from loading…

Like the people who can solve a Rubik’s Cube behind their backs, origami artists have thought processes the rest of us mere mortals can’t fathom. Even more so than with chess masters, it’s difficult not to be awed by people who can think 50 steps ahead in order to make recognizably representational beasts out of paper, without the use of scissors. The new Indianapolis Museum of Art exhibition “Squares-Folds-Life: Contemporary Origami by Robert J. Lang” (through July 20) illustrates the…

It wasn’t by design, but this week I happened to find myself in the company of three different sets of young theater audiences. The good news: All were better behaved than most adult audiences with whom I’ve spent time-there was limited candy wrapper crinkling and not a stray cell phone ring in the bunch. Plus, each broke with the stereotype of uninterested youth, proving generous and very open to the events on stage. First was “The Piano Lesson” at Indiana…

For the second time in as many months, a one-word, Pulitzer-Prize-winning play is being presented to Indy audiences. For the second time in as many months, audiences are eating it up. Both the Indiana Repertory Theatre’s “Doubt” and Theatre on the Square’s “Proof” (running through March 15) are good examples of what has become a necessity in contemporary theater-the smart-but-not-intimidating, relatively easy-to-produce, small-cast, audiencefriendly, short-enough-not-to-challengethe-bladder, more-laughs-than-you’dexpect-given-the-subject-matter drama. “Proof”-which theater junkies may remember from the Phoenix’s outstanding production a few seasons…

Usually, the only souvenir you can take home from a gallery exhibition is an artists’ catalogue. Visitors to “Karl Wirsum: Winsome Works(some)” at the Herron Galleries can also buy Karl Wirsum ball-and-paddle toys. Get the message? This show is supposed to be fun, folks. And it is-without diminishing the fact that it celebrates the work of an important artist-in some ways the Midwest’s answer to Andy Warhol. Like Warhol, Chicago’s Karl Wirsum makes significant use of flat, bright colors with…

Let us now give two cheers to the good-enough musical. The good-enough musical usually has some fun songs, some laughs and maybe a sweet moment or two. The good-enough musical demands very little of its audience. The good-enough musical may do OK on Broadway despite harsh words from the critics, but it has a longer life in regional theaters, and community productions. The good-enough musical depends on a good-enough production to work. When it’s got one-and your expectations aren’t too…

Perhaps the most remarkable achievement of John Patrick Shanley’s play “Doubt” (now playing at the Indiana Repertory Theatre), is how quickly it transcends its hot-button issue. Yes, this is a show built around the suspected despicable actions of a parish priest, but it’s really not about that. It’s about, as its title bluntly states, doubt. And it’s about certainty. And it’s about faith. And it’s a show I’d love to see again, since I suspect the show will get even…

If you’ve seen stage farces under less-than-optimal conditions, you know how difficult they can be to pull off. Off-color jokes slide into offensiveness. Characters slip into stereotypes. And the harder the push for laughs, the more desperate it all seems. Because in farce, it’s not about unique characters, it’s not about surprising plots and it most certainly isn’t about any sort of insight into human behavior. It’s about creating a mechanism that makes an audience laugh until its collective sides…