“There are six of you standing here before me.  One of you is the killer. And one of you is the victim.”  This pronouncement by Detective Sergeant Trotter, midway through Act Two of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, fixes the inhabitants of Monkswell Manor as precisely as butterflies pinned to the board of a science fair […]

“Each game of chess / Means there’s one less / Variation left to be played; // Each day got through / Means one or two / Less mistakes remain to be made.”  These opening lines from “Prologue”/”The Story of Chess” point us to the inevitable—but not predictable—conclusion of Chess, the 1988 American version of Tim Rice, Benny […]

Most of us are familiar with Shrek the movie, Mike Meyers’s 2001 smash (complete with Smashmouth’s cover of “I’m a Believer” as the credits roll). Some of us are familiar with Shrek the book, William Steig’s 1990 children’s tale that features a much more repulsive, cruder ogre who saves, then marries his equally repulsive bride […]

What’s a great antidote for overcast days, long nights and bone-rattling cold?  A good post-Valentine’s laugh, of course, and that’s exactly what The Waterworks Players’ current production provides.  Small Doses, a sampling of 10-minute plays by Brett Hursey, is just what the doctor ordered. Crisply directed by Hursey, these seven vignettes paint our all-too-human foolishness […]

Driving Miss Daisy is a curious theatrical event.  Because of the hugely popular movie version that reprised Morgan Freeman as chauffeur Hoke Coleburn and featured Jessica Tandy as the redoubtable Miss Daisy—the role for which, at 81, she finally won a well-deserved Oscar—many Daisy lovers have never experienced Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play as a […]