Vermont Stage Company is staging its first-ever musical -- sorry, play with music. And while the concept leaves much to be desired, Quilters at FlynnSpace is well worth a look.

The play, by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek, is based on Patricia Cooper and Norma Bradley Buferd's 1970s oral history entitled, The Quilters: Women and Domestic Art. Newman and Damashek use scraps of documented conversations between female quilters to piece together a patterned story of life on the prairie during the 19th and early 20th centuries.... Read more

Why would anyone create a stage adaptation of The Breakfast Club? Co-director Shawn Lipenski jokes the decision came after drinking rather too much whiskey. But his fellow director Seth Jarvis notes there were sensible reasons to transform John Hughes' 1985 teen film fave for live actors: It basically came down to "the unity of space and time that are similar to theater," he says. In other words, because a movie that is set almost entirely in one room -- a high school library -- is relatively easy to realize on stage.... Read more

An ambitious variation on Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's literary masterpiece Uncle Vanya is currently in residence at FlynnSpace, adapted by Kathryn Blume and produced by Vermont Stage Company. Transplanted from Russia to rural Vermont, Vanya/Vermont is a glimpse of financially challenging country living and the effect of celebrity blowing into town. In its original translation, Vanya has the potential to be a poignant slice-of-life tragicomedy that leaves you begging for more. This ultra-modernized adaptation, however, leaves a bad taste in the mouth.... Read more