Considering East Lansing’s role as a college town, particularly one that really, really enjoys celebrating the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament each year, MSU’s Summer Circle Theatre’s choice of a play called “The Drunken City” seems apropos. In reality, the play resembles the East Coast reality show “Jersey Shore” more than it does Spartan country.

I began my research at Club Xcel. The Male Review tradition began 17 years ago when Xcel was a gay bar called Paradise, and it continued under the current ownership of Tom Donell even as the club became a mixed-crowd bar. Now simple economics are driving the decision to drop the event.

While Studio 1210 in Old Town makes a nice art gallery, its limitations in lighting and its lack of a backstage make it a challenging venue for a play. Shortly into the work, however, emotional immediacy easily trumps environment.

Martavius Nelson (Derek Ovenshire) is on trial for assaulting attorney Sean Ruby (Tim Cody), the executor of Nelson’s mother’s estate. The play asks the audience to weigh illegal but justifiable actions against immoral yet legally acceptable practices.

The plot of Williamston Theatre’s latest offering, “It Came From Mars,” takes a standard screwball comedy plot and elevates it slightly into the realm of a meta-comedy.  It came from the mind of Joseph Zettelmaier, who co-authored a prior successful production at Wil...

Organizers Ben and Katie Corr are humble but passionate about their current project: to bring a modern-day vaudeville show to the Lansing area. The April 2 show at the Hannah Community Center is the third they’ve organized in the last year.

In the blood, in the dirt, in the gutter — it’s all the same for the protagonist of “In the Blood,” a Second Stage production of Michigan State University’s Department of Theatre.Inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel “The Scarlet Letter,” the play’s script is not nearly as kind to its Hester. This Hester (Piaget Ventus) endures a life closer to that of Job: God, man and fate heap suffering upon her fragile frame as if she is a plate on the buffet line of misery.

It is an ambitious goal to stage an intense work like David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” with a cast of college students. Yet it works, thanks to the combination of the intimacy of Lansing Community College’s Black Box Theatre, a phenomenal and atmospheric set, and a strong actor in the critical role.