Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, May 2009 In April of 1921 popular author Elizabeth von Arnim*, then 55, widowed from her first marriage, divorced from her second, and being wooed by a handsome young man 30 years her junior, rented a medieval castello at Portofino, Italy with two other women.…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, October 2008 It’s a board game! It’s a musical! Its Clue: The Musical! Which should be titled Eight Actors in Search of a Script…and a Score. Let’s just make that Eight Actors in Search of a Show! There’s lots of talent on stage at the Ghent…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, March 2007 Tintypes is a pleasant little revue of music from the turn of the 20th century. If you have only a passing knowledge of those fascinating decades of American history between the Civil War and World War I, this show will strike you as a…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July 2005 Seeing the well received and lively opening night performance of Bye Bye Broadway at North Pointe last night took me back a quarter century or so to the summers when I used to write and direct my own original musicals. There is nothing so exciting,…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, March 2004 “Never mind the why and whereforeLove can level ranks and therefore…”– W.S. Gilbert On the off chance that you have not seen, heard, or heard of H.M.S. Pinafore in the 126 years since it first opened in London in 1878, the idea that love levels…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, September 2003 The frost was on the pumpkin, the wind was wild, and wispy streaks of grey cloud whipped past a luminous waxing Gibbous in the eastern sky. What a perfect night to walk into the Ghent Playhouse and see Dracula! On a versatile and gloomy…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, May 2003 The French find Molière and Jerry Lewis hysterically funny. I find them both mildy amusing but slightly inscrutable. Since my mother’s mother’s mother was French I have apparently inherited just enough French blood to get the jokes but not to laugh myself silly…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, November 2002 Sometimes, comedy writers just wanna have fun. Sometimes it is good to pick up your pen and be funny just because you can, not because you have to or because you are trying to sugar coat a darker theme, but because making people…
