The Starlight Dinner Theater is virtually immune to theater criticism for the same reason as summer blockbusters: It has a built-in audience. Their latest production, “Opal’s Husband,” never aims to be more than artistically clear, formulaic comic fare.

After seeing “The Watch List” at Riverwalk Theatre, it is easy to tell playwright Eric Dawe is as big a fan of TV and film as he is of theater.

A comedy about staying alive after death, Ivan Menchell’s “The Cemetery Club” applies the sitcom formula to the latter stages of life. While Menchell focuses on three widows from New York, his jokes and sentiments are equally applicable to the women of the Midwest.

The central theme of "You Can’t Take It With You" is blatant: Enjoy every moment of your short life instead of trudging through until retirement. The script by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman is layered with strangely relevant libertarian values, but it is the endearing sto...

Commissioned by the Purple Rose Theater in 1998, Lanford Wilson’s "Book of Days" is a bitterly dark caricature of ignorant values set in a small Midwestern town.