PYGmalion Theatre Company’s golden run in chamber theater excellence continues with exceptional production of Julie Jensen’s Last Lists of My Mad Mother

PYGmalion Theatre Company has been on a golden run in recent productions stretching to last season and its latest featuring Julie Jensen’s Last Lists of My Mad Mother is stellar in every measure.  Directed by Morag Shepherd, this one-act gem is carried by the perfect chamber theater ensemble chemistry of actors Reb Fleming, Tamara Howell … Read more

Courage, creative fire, innovation, enterprise: The Utah Review’s Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2023

This year’s selections in The Utah Review of the top ten moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2023, the ninth annual edition, were the easiest to curate in the nine years of publishing this annual list. Likewise, selecting the top moment among the ten was just as easy. In Utah, there are creative producers in … Read more

Outstanding performances propel Pygmalion Theatre Company’s first-class staging of Lauren Gunderson’s The Half-Life of Marie Curie

Some 60 years after Marie Curie died (in 1934) from a rare blood disorder caused by her work with radium and polonium, the French government had planned to move her body as well as that of her husband Pierre to the Panthéon. However, the team responsible for exhuming their coffins had to be extraordinarily cautious … Read more

Pygmalion Theatre Company’s world premiere of Lane Richins’ Near Mint gives baseball its unsullied nostalgic shine

As Lane Richins’ good-hearted play Near Mint opens on the Pygmalion Theatre Company stage, the sunny mood signals that ‘Cracker’ Jack Patterson, retired pro baseball catcher, feels his life is pretty close to ‘near mint’ condition. It is 1988 in California. With his best friend, Pepper Crawford, they host a popular AM radio show for … Read more

Love for baseball in its purest heartwarming form: Lane Richins’ Near Mint set for world premiere by Pygmalion Theatre Company

The regular sign off on the fictitious Cracker Jack and Pepper Radio Show neatly summarizes the theme of Lane Richins’ new play Near Mint: “Thanks for joining us, and remember, baseball isn’t life, but life’s no good without baseball.”  Along with the radio show, Pepper Crawford helps run her best friend’s baseball card shop. Her … Read more

Two outstanding premieres: Salt Lake Acting Company’s Hairy and Sherri, Pygmalion Theatre Company’s Mountain Meadows

SALT LAKE ACTING COMPANY: HAIRY AND SHERRI Watching Hairy and Sherri, Adrienne Dawes’ new play which is receiving outstanding acting performances in a premiere production by the Salt Lake Acting Company (SLAC), requires the audience member to focus on the characters’ nuanced body language and nonverbal actions. Those subtleties propel the significant epiphanies of Dawes’ … Read more

When suppressed truth becomes its own lie: Debora Threedy’s Mountain Meadows set for Pygmalion Theatre Company premiere

In a scene in the middle of Mountain Meadows, a new play by Debora Threedy, Nita tells a Mormon elder, “We can’t put Mountain Meadows behind us if we won’t even admit it happened.” He replies that no one has denied its occurrence and that not talking about it might be the “best thing for … Read more

A fine ode to motherhood and theatre in world premiere performance at Pygmalion Theatre Company of Julie Jensen’s Mother, Mother: The Many Mothers of Maude

When a play’s story arises from events or figures of Utah history, playwright Julie Jensen, whose works have been produced outside of Utah more frequently than any other local playwright, always succeeds in crafting a credible fictional narrative with a scrupulous eye toward framing the script’s framework with historical accuracy. In her award-winning play, Two-Headed, … Read more

Pygmalion Theatre Company set to open 2022-23 season with world premiere of Julie Jensen’s Mother, Mother: The Many Mothers of Maude

In the summer of 1914, The Green Book Magazine, then a widely followed periodical about the American theater, published installments by Annie Adams Kiskadden, who wrote about her life as an actor in Utah and in New York City. But, the real draw of these autobiographical installments was her daughter, the more famous performer of … Read more

Smart direction, strong cast carry excellent Pygmalion Theatre Company production of Annie Baker’s Body Awareness

Many of us overlook the fact that we do not live in a politically correct world. But, there also are numerous reasons why trying to be politically correct or censoring the words we believe might be too sensitive to discuss the topics that should be discussed ends up being nearly as bad. So we fall … Read more