Category: 2025-2026
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The Winter Wonderettes Headline Harper’s Hardware Holiday Happenings at Smithfield Little Theatre
*Note: As per the performance eligibility requirements laid out here, this production is not up for HRACT Award consideration.* Smithfield Little Theatre loves a four woman show, and this year, they filled their two weekend-only holiday spot with “Winter Wonderettes”, a show sprinkled with classic Christmas songs tied together with a loose plotline wherein the audience…
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PCT Tells a Scary Ghost Story (Along with some Tales of Glory) this Christmas Season with “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol”
This time of year, the world is flooded with versions of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” – and oftentimes, lost in the musical numbers and the production value, it is easy to forget that, at its core, this is a ghost story. Peninsula Community Theatre’s “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol”, told from the perspective of that…
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Just in Time for Thanksgiving, “Nolan’s Wake” Will Make You Thankful for the Family You Have
*Note: As per the performance eligibility requirements laid out here, this production is not up for HRACT Award consideration.* “Nolan’s Wake”, playing as part of the Curtain Up! New Play Series at Zeiders American Dream Theater, begins with a familiar scenario – a family showing up at a house they’ve rented, with immediate drama over who…
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Little Theatre of Virginia Beach Taps the Night Away with “Crazy For You”
A quirk in the scheduling of HRACT-Award eligible shows this year meant that it had been over two months since we’d seen a musical – “much too long” I said to my wife as we walked toward the Little Theatre of Virginia Beach to see “Crazy For You”. I do love a play, but there…
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Williamsburg Players’ Remarkable Acting and Strong Storytelling Will Keep You Guessing Throughout “Rehearsal for Murder”
Theatre, at its core, is a game of imagination. You have a group of people – large or small – on stage, pretending to do something, and hoping that the audience is interested enough in the game to stay for a couple of hours. Sometimes, you add fancy sets lit by the most complicated of…
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LTN Explores Addiction and Recovery in “Water by the Spoonful”
There are two main storylines in “Water by the Spoonful”, playing now at the Little Theatre of Norfolk, and they are cleverly separated by a screen which comes down and blurs the plotline taking place mainly in an online chatroom as the plotline taking place “IRL” plays out. The “IRL” (in real life) action centers…
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A Real Estate Deal, a Sexy Dracula, and a Woman Doctor (we just call that a Doctor): PCT’s “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors” has a Little Bit(e) of Everything
My high school assigned us Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” for summer reading prior to my senior year, but somehow never got around to the obvious autumn follow-up of Brahm Stoker’s “Dracula.” So I cannot tell you how strictly “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors”, playing now at Peninsula Community Theatre, sticks to the canonical text, but I’m…
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All Aboard! Hop on the Train at Smithfield Little Theatre to Experience Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express”
“The best food, the best beds, the best pillows, the best feathers inside of the pillows. It is poetry on wheels…” says Constantine Bouc, the man in charge of the Orient Express, as he sets expectations for famous detective Hercule Poirot (and the audience) for what they will see when the curtain opens. An ambitious…
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Generic Theater’s “Clyde’s” Serves Up Sandwiches with a Side of Hope
Photo courtesy of J. Stubbs Photography (https://jstubbsphotographyvb.com/) “Sandwiches are the most democratic of all foods… a whole meal in your hands” says Montrellous, the kind-hearted, philosophical convicted felon who serves as the de facto leader of the all-felon kitchen staff of Clyde’s, a greasy spoon sandwich stop which has become a favorite of truckers passing…
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“Sleuth” Out the Truth at Little Theatre of Virginia Beach
A few of the leaves on the crepe myrtle outside the window of my condo have just begun to change to a reddish-orange color, which can mean only one thing – we have moved on from the summer musical season into the murder-mystery season at our local community theaters. Though maybe not fitting directly into…
HRACT Awards 