Someone played a piano in the rehearsal barn while people waited for the show to start, sitting on benches under shady trees. Children worked the concession stand offering homemade strawberry shortcake.

The Hackmatack Playhouse in Berwick, Maine, is an old red barn with a faintly dusty smell, antique farming tools and exposed beams. It’s the perfect setting for “Our Town,” a play about the simple life. The first show of the season, it runs Wednesday through Saturday until July 4.

Locals can enjoy live performances of plays in high definition and surround sound through a new partnership between The Music Hall and one of the world’s leading theater producers of Shakespeare, international classic drama, and contemporary playwrights: the National Theatre of London.

The Victorian theater will be one of more than 100 venues around the world to broadcast the series, which kicks off on Thursday, June 25, with Nicholas Hytner’s new production of “Phèdre.” The other shows in the pilot season include Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well” on Thursday, Oct. 1 at 7 p.m., and “Nation,” about two teenagers thrown together by a tsunami, on Sunday, Jan. 31 at 2 p.m. Broadcasts will also feature behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with artists.

Larry McCullough presents solo dance works in Portsmouth

When dancer Larry McCullough steps in front of the crowd on June 19 and begins to move his body, it will mark his first public performance in 10 years—and his first ever on the Seacoast. The 60-year-old Eliot, Maine, resident has danced professionally in New York, Toronto, London, West Berlin and elsewhere, but he has not met a live audience since moving to the Seacoast in 2001.

“This is my first real public solo evening, and the whole evening is solo dance works,” McCullough said.

He will offer three performances at West End Studio Theatre in Portsmouth during the weekend of Friday to Sunday, June 19 to 21, debuting contemporary works collectively titled “Endangered Species.” McCullough wrote and choreographed the entire production, and he will perform it alone beneath the theater lights, aided only by inventive costumes and a classical music score.

The Hackmatack Playhouse of Berwick, Maine, comes back to life in June for its 37th summer season.

The playhouse is named after the Hackmatack tree, which loses its leaves each winter and looks dead, unlike most coniferous trees. Like the tree, the Hackmatack Playhouse reemerges every summer. The country theater seats 218 people in a renovated barn.
Executive producer Michael Guptill said the playhouse is a unique, quaint theater with a “down home atmosphere” that offers home-made desserts.

‘Julius Caesar’ at The Players’ Ring

The Players’ Ring in Portsmouth is in the midst of its annual Shakespeare offering, and this year they give us “Julius Caesar.” This show might have the same title and text as any other “Caesar” you’ve seen, but that’s where the similarities end. One of Shakespeare’s few historically factual plays, “Caesar” is based on the Roman leader’s assassination by his Senate. The last stab is administered by his beloved friend Brutus—the only person not acting out of envy or ambition, but out of fear for what Caesar has become.

This play may be the single most brilliantly executed and relevant performance I’ve seen in the last six years. Director Christine Penney turned this 410-year-old play into a commentary on modern politics with brutal, stark truthfulness. She is as fearless as she is talented, and the payoff for the audience is as gratifying as it is scary.

the Rep sets its sights on Mill Pond

The Mill Pond Center for the Arts in Durham closed in 2008 amid a spate of closures of performing arts venues across the Seacoast. Last year also saw the demise of The Bell Center in Dover, The Stone Church in Newmarket and Ioka theater in Exeter.

But fresh hope is emerging this spring. New tenants have leased The Stone Church with plans for a restaurant and music venue, and a potential buyer is campaigning to rescue the Ioka. More recently, the Seacoast Repertory Theatre in Portsmouth has announced plans to purchase the Mill Pond Center and put it back to use.

Seacoast audiences who missed Gary Sredzienski’s bizarre tales of creek swimming and accordion playing in York are in luck: Harbor Light Stage is extending its production of Sredzienski’s one-man play at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth.

“Creek Man: The Unbelievable True Story of the Accordion-Playing Merman” will run at Strawbery Banke for two weeks from Friday, May 29, to Sunday, June 7. The play, written and performed by Sredzienski and directed by Kent Stephens, premiered at the York Harbor Reading Room earlier in May. Among its viewers there was Strawbery Banke president Larry Yeardon, who invited Harbor Light to bring “Creek Man” to the Portsmouth museum.

Ogunquit Playhouse starts season with “A Chorus Line”

After a group of dancers at an audition is narrowed to 17, soon to be eight, the director instructs each of them to “be yourself” and tell the truth.

In an industry replete with makeup and costumes, stage names and false ages, being real doesn’t come naturally. The dancers in “A Chorus Line” become increasingly anxious, but soon begin to open up and share their stories, as though never asked before. Once the audience gets to know them all as individuals—with their complicated pasts, their failures and insecurities and, ultimately, their ambition to dance—the ensemble means so much more.

“A Chorus Line” begins the “feel-good” season at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit, Maine, running through June 13.

NHTP’s Senior Youth Repertory Company performs ‘Hamlet’

One of the bard’s more oft-told tales, William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet: Prince of Denmark” has a little bit of everything: love (no matter how incestuous), betrayal, revenge, corruption, and a touch of insanity, to boot. All of that is present in New Hampshire Theatre Project’s Senior Youth Repertory Company’s performance of the play at West End Studio Theatre in Portsmouth. 

Hamlet’s (Dan Kleinman) father, king of Denmark, has been murdered, and not long after the body turns cold, his mother, Queen Gertrude (the gorgeous Hannah Feintuch) marries his brother, Claudius (Gabe Dorfsman-Hopkins). One justification for this quick betrothal is that the long-awaited war with Norway, led by Norwegian Prince Fortinbras, is approaching, and the country should not be without a king.

new musical at the Rep delivers laughs

Imagine if you had to pay to pee. Now imagine, on top of that, you’re flat broke—and you’ve really gotta go.

That’s the condition many characters find themselves in at the beginning of “Urinetown,” which is running at the Seacoast Repertory Theatre in Portsmouth through May 31. A group of haggard, impoverished people stagger onto the stage, writhing and squirming as they wait their turns at the public amenity. The set includes a number of fetid toilets and a general atmosphere of squalor.

There’s been a 20-year drought, you see, and human waste threatens to contaminate the community’s dwindling water supply. The townspeople must pay a fee to use the toilet each day at the nearest public restroom, which is managed with an iron fist by Penelope Pennywise (Merrill Peiffer). She’s a singing, dancing Nurse Ratched who steadfastly espouses the dictum that “it’s a privilege to pee.”

The Players’ Ring offers sneak peak of its 2009-10 season

The action began when three actors filed wordlessly into The Players’ Ring and promptly collapsed on the floor. They lay motionless as a man in a white lab coat entered the room and announced, “I thought so. Looks like three dead bodies here.” The doctor proceeded to inspect each cadaver, describing their comically grisly wounds into a tape recorder. Within five minutes, all four actors filed back out, leaving the audience to ponder this small dose of a new play.

The performance was a sampling of “Evening Broadcasts II,” which will kick off the Ring’s 2009-10 season on July 10. The play will run for a single weekend, ushering in the Late Night Season, which continues with six other plays through the summer. Then begins the Ring’s Main Season, starting with “Crush Depth” on Sept. 4 and continuing with 13 other productions through June 2010.

Guests were treated to snippets of almost all these plays on April 30 during a season preview at The Players’ Ring, located in Portsmouth’s Prescott Park. Cast members from each show took the small theater’s floor—which was still painted like a miniature baseball field for the Ring’s recent production of “Play Ball”—and introduced their work with brief scenes and descriptions.

Late Night Season
• July 10-12: “Evening Broadcasts II” (Gill Street Productions)
• July 17-19: “Late Night Confessions” (Late Night Confessions Company)
• July 24-26: “The Last Week of the Torero” (Joe Gilbert)
• July 31-Aug. 2: “Improv Comedy Clash” (Stranger Than Fiction)
• Aug. 7-9: “The Trial of Christopher Walken” (Peter Louriero)
• Aug. 14-16: “Life Is Short” (Susan Chamberlin)
• Aug. 21-23: “The Hat” (Jennifer Cole)
 Main Season
• Sept. 4-20: “Crush Depth” (Gill Street Productions)
• Sept. 25-Oct. 11: “Darwin’s Waiting Room” (Darwin’s Waiting Room)
• Oct. 16-Nov. 1: “Serving His Master” (Rolling Die Productions)
• Nov. 6-22: “Hedda Gabler” (Phylloxera Productions)
• Nov. 27-Dec. 6: “Santa Come Home” (New York Theatre Company)
• Dec. 12-23: F. Gary Newton’s “Christmas Carol” (in collaboration with the Seacoast Repertory Theater—Black Box Theater)
• Jan. 8-24: “Of Mice and Men” (Players’ Ring)
• Jan. 29-Feb. 14: “A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and A Prayer” and “Love” (Players’ Ring)
• Feb. 19-March 7: “Dix Tableau” (Generic Theater)
• March 12-28: “Glengarry Glenn Ross” (Fleet Street Productions)
• April 2-18: “Having Our Say” (Jukwaa Mazoa)
• April 23-May 9: “Libertine” (Back Alley Productions)
• May 14-30 “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” (Enhanced Hum Productions)
• June 4-20: “Hamlet” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” (Players’ Ring)

Perhaps not since Swamp Thing has the world seen such an entity. He stalks the Seacoast’s estuaries like a water-dwelling cryptid, the slick sheen of his wetsuit cutting through the water’s surface. You can spot him from riverbanks during every season, navigating the currents of the Piscataqua or Lamprey. He toils vigilantly to guard the region’s aquatic treasures against pollution and development. He is Creek Man.

But unlike Swamp Thing, this hero was not the result of some kind of biological lab accident. Creek Man is the alter ego of Gary Sredzienski, who, despite his predilection for taking dips in ice-encrusted rivers, is really just an ordinary guy. He lives in Kittery with his cat.

“Everybody thinks I’ve gotta be some genetically altered kind of guy,” Sredzienski said. “I’m not. I’m really not.”

‘Is That Yours?’ Web series illustrates wealth of film talent on the Seacoast

A few years ago, Web TV existed on a miniscule level. Now, as rolling snowballs will, it’s gathering speed and picking up mass. It began with small bits shown by the average Joe on YouTube, then pieces like Joss Whedon’s “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” and shows like Felicia Day’s “The Guild.” The great news is—this ain’t just for Hollywood folk anymore. If you’ve got a good script, a camera, and some actors, you can actually have your own show. (Well, as long as you’re willing to work your butt off for months on end with equally talented friends by your side.)

Enter writer/film producer Anne Continelli, who’s worked extensively in this area. She’s done shows at The Players’ Ring in Portsmouth (“Gender Bender”) and taken plays by other artists from The Ring and produced them at the Boston Center for the Arts (“Just Say Love,” “Dear Daddy, Love, Cassie”). She’s also had readings of her plays staged at the Mill Pond Center for the Arts in Durham (“Absent Meaning,” “The Last Little Porn Shop in Manhattan”).

Ogunquit Playhouse announces feel-good season

Five feel-good productions are slated for the 2009 season at the Ogunquit Playhouse, running roughly from Memorial Day to Columbus Day.

“In choosing the 2009 season, we reflected on other challenging times and worked long and hard to present a season full of heart and shows that ride on positive feelings that will uplift our audience,” executive artistic director Bradford Kenney said in a press release.

Kicking off the season is “A Chorus Line,” on stage May 20 through June 13. This musical held the record as the longest running show on Broadway for 15 years and garnered nine Tony Awards. The show follows 17 dancers auditioning for a new Broadway musical, only eight of whom will make it.

An all-new production of “Shout! The Mod Musical” runs from June 17 through July 11. It tracks five girls as they come of age in the 1960s, going back to the music, fashion and freedom of that liberating decade. Packed full of songs and dancing, it features hits such as “Downtown” and “Son of a Preacher Man.”

debut director Liz Krane brings comedy premiere to life

The playwright and acting ensemble behind “Sharp Dressed Men” has returned this month with the tight and funny two-act “All the Rage,” and on opening night, it was hard to gauge who was most enthusiastic to see the troupe return. The actors seemed to truly enjoy every rapid-fire minute on stage together, while the audience showed its appreciation with long and loud laughs throughout the show.

“It was one of the best nights of my life, by far,” says director Liz Krane.

The second installment in a comedic trilogy by local playwright G. Matthew Gaskell marks Krane’s full-length directing debut.
“Throughout the entire process, I always felt there was something missing. Even though the show was hilarious and the actors were right on, at the end of each run it seemed like something was not quite right,” Krane says. “On opening night, I realized that we had been missing an audience. The show needs laughter. It’s the ninth character in the play.”

Irish stepdancing comes to Ogunquit

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, Ogunquit Performing Arts will host stepdancers from the renowned Stillson School of Irish Dance and show the Irish film, “Quackser Fortune has a Cousin in the Bronx.” This “Irish Evening” takes place at the Dunaway Center in Ogunquit, Maine, on Saturday, March 14 at 6:30 p.m.

The Stillson School of Irish Dance in Gorham, Maine, is under the direction of Carlene Moran Stillson and accredited by Ad Coimisium in Dublin, Ireland. Stillson started dancing at age 4 and has competed internationally.

The Seacoast Repertory Theatre’s Youth Mainstage production of rock musical “Aida” is based on the opera by Giuseppe Verdi and updated by Elton John and Tim Rice. The piece starts at a museum, whe`re Egyptian Princess Amneris (in her full glory in regal silks) is depicted in the center of an exhibit. A young woman and her child notice a young man and his child. Startled, they stare at each other. It’s as if they somehow know each other and have for a very long time. 

The New Shanghai Circus will bring a crew of 25 highly trained acrobats to the Rochester Opera House to perform feats of balance and control on Friday, March 6. Jugglers, contortionists, aerialists, plate spinners, hoop divers and dragon dancers will don brightly colored costumes as they show off their skills.

Hailing from China, the New Shanghai Circus puts a modern twist on a traditional form of Chinese entertainment that dates back more than 2,000 years. In early versions of the act, performers used common household items and farm tools like pots and grain sifters to execute unusual theatrics. The show in Rochester will add bits of modern technology to the traditional show.

The performers in the Shanghai troupe range in age from 13 to 45, and most of them have been training since they were 9 or 10 years old. Although they still live in Shanghai, China, they tour the United States for six or seven months each year, keeping a home base in Branson, Miss. They practice for several hours every day, maintaining their uncanny strength and flexibility.
The show begins at 8 p.m. at the Rochester Opera House, 31 Wakefield St., Rochester, 603-335-1992. Tickets are $22. Visit www.rochesteroperahouse.com.

actor Merritt David Janes creates a killer you can connect with

True, he slices people’s throats open with a shaving razor. True, he and his partner bake his victims into meat pies. True, he eats a pie made from the flesh of a priest. You might say Sweeney Todd is a tad unstable.

But actor Merritt David Janes, who portrays the demon barber in a Broadway musical coming to Portsmouth, thinks everyone is a little bit like Sweeney Todd.

“It’s a character that I try and make people identify with. That may sound strange, but when you look at the circumstances of Sweeney Todd, he’s had a lot of bad things happen to him,” Janes said in a recent phone interview. “He’s just a guy who’s reached a snapping point. Everyone has it, and it’s just a question of what they do when they reach it.”

Garrison Players in Rollinsford was the only Seacoast-based theater company to receive an award at the seventh annual New Hampshire Theatre Awards ceremony. The non-profit community theater group received 12 nominations for two of its productions and won the Overall Excellence in Community Theatre Award.

New Hampshire Theatre Awards is a non-profit organization that formed eight years ago to recognize community and professional theater companies around the state. A group of trained adjudicators nominated productions from 2008 for the awards ceremony on Feb. 6. More than 600 theater professionals and community theater volunteers representing 45 different theaters attended the seventh annual ceremony at the Palace Theatre in Manchester.

Steven Wright recently became the Boston Comedy Hall of Fame’s first inductee. When Wright took the stage during a celebration on Dec. 15, the audience may have been expecting a dose of his wacky deadpan comedy. But instead, Wright adopted a modest, sentimental tone, acknowledging the various comedians who had assembled for the occasion. First on the list was Mike McDonald.

McDonald met Wright while both were students at Emerson College (also alma mater of Jay Leno and Denis Leary). McDonald mentored the young comedian during his first shaky flirtations with live standup in the late 1970s, advising him to dump the bits that flopped and replace them with new material. They may not have suspected it at the time, but Wright and McDonald were about to help stage a revolution in the Boston comedy scene that would reverberate across the nation.

“That was really a very special time,” said McDonald, who will host the eighth annual Comedy Xxtravaganza at The Music Hall in Portsmouth on Friday, Feb. 13. “We didn’t know it at that point, because we were in it.”

Harbor Light Stage adds more play readings

Last year, Harbor Light Stage launched a full production Maine Stage Series, and the Kittery Point-based professional theater. is expanding again in 2009.

The not-for-profit organization has expanded its winter Bold Face Play Reading Series to include two performances of each reading. All readings will still be held on Monday nights at the Kittery Art Association, but weekly Tuesday night performances have been added at the Pearl in Portsmouth. Readings begin at 7:30 p.m.

Pontine brings original production to Portsmouth

Adults are not so different from children. Children make sense of the world based on the stories they are told, which is why they believe in good guys and bad guys, happily-ever-afters and flying reindeer. Likewise, grownups understand the world through the dominant stories that narrate the adult world, which are subtly repeated to them by other adults. Together, stories we hear from others and tell about ourselves shape our reality. Why, then, have people not shaped a more perfect reality?

Ballet New England finds new home in Portsmouth 

A month after the city abruptly forced Ballet New England to vacate its home of 28 years at the Connie Bean Community Center, the non-profit organization has leased a new, larger space in Portsmouth. Ballet New England is now hosting its dance classes at 1 Raynes Ave., off Maplewood Avenue, above Vision Fitness. 

The city cleared three floors of the Connie Bean Center on Daniel Street last month after safety inspectors deemed the building unsafe. Ballet New England signed a lease for the new space on Jan. 10 and began operating classes there within 48 hours.