Ben instructs his wannabe comedy writer grandsons, Eugene and Stanley Jerome, in Simon's "Broadway Bound" now at the Monomoy Theatre: "If you make it funny enough, CBS won't even notice!"   Grandpa, who hasn't laughed since the stock market crashed, is an avowed socialist.  Ben is disappointed that his daughter Blanche has married the richest man in the garment district, thereby "starving half the country." Be...

It’s tough being a teenager, it’s tough living with a teenager. Teenagers in both mind and body are on the brink of adulthood and torn between that and their childhood. In the latest production at the Cape Cod Theatre Company, Home of the Harwich Junior Theatre, the usual angst of being a teenager is even more complicated. In “Selkie, Between Land and Sea” written by award-winning playwright and young adult...

HARWICH – Go figure. She’s the only person in her family who doesn’t wear glasses, and now Dr. Ashley Jadene Stevens is an optometrist. Having graduated in May from the New England College of Optometry in Boston, Stevens is now in practice with Sheinkopf and Tomasik Eye Care Associates in South Yarmouth. Dr. Sheinkopf has recently retired, which leaves plenty of work for his newly-minted colleague. This is ...

Who doesn't love Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” now at The Monomoy Theatre, Chatham? It was Shakespeare’s last play and in some respects the Merlin-like enchanter, protagonist Prospero, is the bard himself, using and then relinquishing his powers for one last time. “The Tempest” is a complex fairy tale: Prospero (Bernard Cornwell), the Dumbledore of his time, uses magic to cause a tempest which shipwrecks his tr...

Joshua Dykens, 23, was taking a semester off from Cape Cod Community College (CCCC), working in a West Chatham gas station, when he had an epiphany. “By the summer I realized I didn’t want to be doing this for the rest of my life, the next 40 years,” Dykens said during a recent interview in the West Chatham Dunkin’ Donuts. Up until then Dykens, a personable young man with infectious enthusiasm and drive, ha...

Chatham resident Elizabeth Rudnick Hessler recently published a new novel, “Pete's Dragon: The Lost Years,” a kind of prequel to Disney's 2016 remake of “Pete's Dragon,” which will be released in theaters, including the Chatham Orpheum Theater, this Friday. On Saturday, Aug. 13, Hessler will be at the Orpheum at 6 p.m. to sign copies of the new novel. We recently spoke with the author at the Lazy Lobster, whic...

In “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast,” the musical based on the 18th century French fairy tale now playing at the Chatham Drama Guild, Belle, a sweet young woman who loves to read, is admired as a “Beauty” but considered  different from the peasants in her provincial village. Through the woods lies a castle in which a callous young nobleman lives. When he insults a magical being, she casts a spell over him, turning ...

Artistic Director Alan Rust re-introduces to Monomoy Theater audiences to the world famous quixotic musical "The Fantasticks" set in a beautiful beguiling Chekhovian forest of tall, cylindrical white birch trees. Nicole Bianco's forest and scrim with mini stage are top notch and becomes your first impression of what is to come. Alex Allison's finely detailed costumes are trimmed even to the male actors uniq...

We all grew up with fascinating fairy tales to entertain us: “Cinderella,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and so much more. In local playwright Steph DeFerie’s “Nick Tickle, Fairy Tale Detective,” Old Granny Possum (Sage Barnes) can’t tell us her favorite stories because their most important objects have gone missing, including Cinderella’s glass slipper, the Three Bears’ porridge, and much more. ...

There’s nothing like watching a dysfunctional family in crisis to put one’s own problems into perspective. The Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater lures the audience into a world of family secrets in their new musical “Unexpected Joy.” This world-premiere musical brings together some acclaimed talents, and the net result is impressive. The book and lyrics are by Tony Award-nominated playwright Bill Russell...

The aptly named song “Greased Lightnin’” captures the spirit of the Academy of Performing Arts’ production of “Grease,” with its enticing energy emanating from the stage and the natural chemistry apparent between cast members. From the start, “Grease” revved up its engine to break records. It was the longest-running Broadway show of its time, opening in 1971 and running for nine years. It was eve...

Children find magical worlds all the time in literature. Dorothy found hers over the rainbow, Alice fell down a rabbit hole and the Darling children literally flew there. In C.S. Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (and in the adapted play by Joseph Robinette), four siblings stumble upon the fantasy world of Narnia through the back of a wardrobe. Just as in Oz and Wonderland, there’s an evil queen, ani...