Greater Cincinnati theaters are finally returning to pre-pandemic attendance levels with full seasons over the past 12 months. This is my roundup of especially good offerings on local stages, but I first need to mention two small companies that are producing shows worth seeking out. Falcon Theatre, performing in a storefront on Newport’s Monmouth Street, is a destination for thought-provoking works: Last January it staged a very good production of a one-man show about artist Vincent van Gogh; in March, Breaking the Code, the story of British mathematician and code-breaker Alan Turing was excellent. Covington’s Carnegie Center offered a fine summer season with a rollicking, sold-out run of The Rocky Horror Show (planned for revival in 2025), Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick…Boom! and an excellent rendition of Beautiful: The Carol King Musical.
The early months of 2024 saw three excellent productions featuring characters of color. Cincinnati Shakespeare Company produced James Baldwin’s gospel-flavored Amen Corner in January. Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati mounted a February production of August Wilson’s How I Learned What I Learned, featuring an insightful and powerful performance by guest actor “ranney” as the legendary Black playwright. On the Cincinnati Playhouse’s Shelterhouse Stage in March, Zora Howard’s Stew portrayed three generations of Black women in a kitchen, preparing an important meal.
April brought a world premiere comedy at Ensemble Theatre, The Match Game, by Ohio playwright Steven Stafford about a dysfunctional family struggling to rely on one another. Also in April, the Playhouse staged The Chosen, based on Chaim Potok’s 1967 novel about fathers and sons from different branches of the Jewish faith. Broadway in Cincinnati delivered the touring production of Six, a set of pop concert musical portraits of the wives of King Henry VIII with sparkling costumes and lots of dance moves.
Know Theatre of Cincinnati spent the spring identifying and hiring a new artistic director, Bridget Leak, who worked with several local theaters for more than a decade. She brings new energy to the city’s most adventurous avant-garde producer. Her staging of Bess Wohl’s Camp Siegfried, a complex drama about fascism and romance, for Know in September was a welcome sign of more ambitious theater at this Over-the-Rhine alternative stage. In June, Know produced the 21st annual Cincinnati Fringe Festival, managed for the third time by veteran performer Katie Hartman. She recently moved from New York City to Cincinnati to handle full-time marketing for Know’s year-round season. Still a stage veteran, in late October, Hartman performed a one-night encore of her past Fringe hit Edgar Allan, a fantasy imagining of the boyhood of Edgar Allan Poe.
Over the summer Cincy Shakes toured its annual free Shakespeare in the Park show, a staging of Hamlet, a precursor for several subsequent productions in 2024-2025. James Ijames’s Fat Ham, a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy, translated the story into a lighter but thought-provoking tale that unfolded during a backyard barbecue with a Black Alabama family. (Hamlet is also the inspiration for an upcoming January production of Lauren Gunderson’s A Room in the Castle, telling Shakespeare’s story from the perspectives of two female characters.) Cincy Shakes also offered a frothy summer comedy in August, the world premiere of Alice Scovell’s Kindred Spirits, a brand-new sequel to Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit.
Other theaters kicked off their fall seasons in September. The Playhouse’s Shelterhouse production of Mr. Parent was a humorous one-man show (by actor Maurice Emmanuel Parent) about his career move from being an actor to an elementary school teacher. Ensemble Theatre began its 2024-2025 season with The Garbologists, an engaging two-hander about two mismatched city workers played expertly by Torie Wiggins and Nathan Neorr. After butting heads while making the rounds picking up trash, they found a path to mutual support.
The Playhouse made big news in October with a pre-Broadway audition of Rutka: A New Musical. Based on the diary of a teenage girl in war-torn Poland in 1943, coping with fascism and a world at war, using an indie-rock score. This story seems likely to make its way to New York City. The Playhouse’s new mainstage, Moe and Jack’s Place – The Rouse Theatre, was designed to be the launchpad for such productions.
Cincy Shakes gave theater lovers October thrills with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by David Catlin, conjuring a group of poets, writers and lovers who enact and invent the classic tale of a monster and his creator. A co-production with Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Massachusetts, this Gothic story is another reminder of the versatility of the classic theater company.
A fall highlight was a tour stop by the Improvised Shakespeare Company for two performances at the Aronoff Center’s Jarson-Kaplan Theatre. This veteran troupe of improv performers takes an audience suggestion for a title and spins out a 90-minute play in Shakespearean style. It’s a remarkable feat, and hopes are high that the troupe will return to Cincinnati before too long.
Also at the Aronoff this fall was a very satisfying touring production of Funny Girl, the 1964 musical about early Broadway star Fanny Brice (that provided Barbra Streisand with her first starring role). Another musical hit from the past, Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town from 1953, was staged by director and choreographer Diane Lala at UC’s College Conservatory of Music. It was the capstone of her 36-year career at CCM.
Holiday shows are presently underway at the Playhouse (A Christmas Carol), Ensemble Theatre (Alice in Wonderland) and Cincy Shakes (Every Christmas Story Ever Told – And Then Some). Know Theatre’s inventive team has assembled a raucous new seasonal offering, Die Hard is a Christmas Movie (onstage through Dec. 22). Keep an eye out for explosive humor.
This story is featured in CityBeat’s Dec. 25 print edition.
This article appears in Dec 11-24, 2024.
