The Saints & Poets Production Company’s production of The Witches hauls out a big trunk filled with theatrical effects and unpacks them all for our delight. Director Kevin Christopher and the energetic 13-member cast use everything from video to puppetry, plus a dollop of special effects, to present David Wood’s theatrical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story of a boy thwarting a group of witches.... Read more

Less is decidedly more in Heat & Hot Water’s production of Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries, now playing at Burlington’s Off Center for the Dramatic Arts. The production and the script are the theatrical definition of bare bones: simple props, a black-box theater, two characters. But from this austere plain rise two brilliant performances that create some of the darkest and funniest moments you will ever see on stage.... Read more

Which is tougher: moving up and out of a poor neighborhood, or staying put to make a hardscrabble life there? For the people in the working-class “Southie” neighborhood of Boston in David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People, getting ahead isn’t a matter of making good choices. Sometimes it depends on having any choices at all.... Read more

Listening to stories is the essence of entertainment: Your own troubles drift away and another person’s trials or triumphs take center stage. And, if the mood is right, the storyteller will forge a connection with you.... Read more

Put together two people from opposite ends of a spectrum, and first you see their differences. Give them a reason to stay together, and eventually their similarities emerge to produce a full portrait.

This is playwright Amy Herzog’s technique in the warm, rich comedy 4000 Miles. She separates a grandson and grandmother by 70 years, then lets him end a Seattle-to-New York City bike trip with a spontaneous 3 a.m. visit to her Manhattan apartment. What begins as an overnight stay quietly extends into weeks as Leo and Vera build an understated companionship.... Read more

David Mamet’s Race, now playing in a powerful, professional production at Northern Stage, lays down a challenge: Arrive with an open mind, then learn how closed it really is.... Read more

Consider the difference between a woman struggling to make a difficult decision and one who appears never to decide at all. The results are similar: little happens. But for an audience, it’s the difference between engagement and distance. In the University of Vermont’s production of Wendy Wasserstein’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Heidi Chronicles, faculty director Peter Jack Tkatch doesn’t quite succeed in helping his cast locate their characters’ goals.... Read more

Why is it so hard to clean out our closets? Well, just about any article of clothing can carry a story, and preserving the tangible signs of a lifetime of emotional attachments may be the secret purpose of closets. It’s also the clever organizing principle of Love, Loss and What I Wore, currently staged by Girls Nite Out Productions at Main Street Landing’s Black Box Theater in Burlington.... Read more

Playwright Donald Margulies’ Time Stands Still tells the story of two war veterans, but not the sort you expect. Sarah, a photojournalist, and James, a freelance writer, are in their eighth year of living and working together. Which makes it their eighth year of putting off getting married. After ample experience covering the world’s wars and atrocities, Sarah and James are well schooled in pain meds, deadlines and the chaos of war correspondence. The play begins as they return from assignment in the Middle East to their Brooklyn loft.... Read more

The first thing you notice about Michael Arnowitt’s music room, aside from the Steinway grand piano, is that there’s a lot he doesn’t notice about it. He’s concentrating on playing music. And Arnowitt is nearly blind and unable to spot the clutter on the floor, the letters stacked on a table, or the view outside three shuttered windows — of Montpelier, from a fine vantage point overlooking the Winooski River. While he can’t fully savor this sight, living in central Vermont means more to Arnowitt than seeing a landscape.... Read more