I had a trip around the world on Sunday afternoon, thanks to the World Choir Games. It includes stops in South Africa, the Netherlands, Venezuela, Switzerland, and the Chinese cities of Guangdong, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Hangzhou. The program, playing to a completely sold-out house at the Aronoff Center's Procter & Gamble Hall, was a chance for eight choirs, each champions in one or more ...  

I’ve seen Ken Shue’s 1984 comedy The Foreigner in several good productions. It’s one of the funniest plays I know, a well-oiled laugh machine, but if you anticipate what’s happening, you’d think it would diminish the humor.   

Despite the 100-plus heat on Friday evening, on my way to a World Choir Games concert at Over-the-Rhine's School for Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA) I took an extra half-hour to wander through the renovated Washington Park, which officially opened earlier in the day. What an incredible scene! Hundreds of operagoers were streaming through the park on their way to see Porgy and Bess ...  

On Thursday evening I slogged through the humid, 100 degree soup of downtown Cincinnati to hear a World Choir Games concert at the Masonic Center on Fourth Street (next door to the Taft Theatre). I've lived in Cincinnati for 32 years and covered lots of arts events, but I've never set foot inside this honeycomb of stages, halls and meeting rooms. The sold-out event I attended, "Global Harmony...  

Opera always struck me as a strange, overblown cousin to musical theater. I told people that I had to “turn off my theater filters when I went to see opera.” But then I spent several seasons working for Cincinnati Opera, and my eyes were opened to the reasons people react so strongly to that art form.  

Larry Shue’s 1984 comedy The Foreigner is one of the funniest plays you’re likely to find on any stage. When painfully shy “Froggy” LeSeuer accompanies a friend on a fishing trip in rural Geor  

It’s a weekend of last chances, as several shows that have been entertaining audiences wind up their runs just before Independence Day. Let’s start with The Second City 2: Less Pride … More Pork. If you haven’t yet caught this evening of poking fun at our local foibles and sacred cows, you have only until Saturday. The cast of five from Chicago’s legendary comed...  

Last weekend a dozen Cincinnati-area community theaters competed in the annual Regional OCTA Fest, each presenting 30-minute excerpts of shows that had been produced sometime during the 2011-2012 season. Performances were presented on Thursday, Friday and Saturday; the final day was capped by the annual Orchid Awards recognition program on Saturday evening, where more than 60 productions rece...  

If you haven’t yet caught this hilarious evening of poking fun at Cincinnatians’ foibles and sacred cows — or should I say pigs? — you have only a few more days. The team, a product of the leg  

If you can land a ticket for Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati’s revival of the Tony Award-winning musical next to normal, that’s what you should be doing this weekend. I saw it on Tuesday night, and it’s even better than it was last September. It’s the story of a wom...