Michelle Obama called it the best piece of art in any form that she’d ever seen in her life. Its popularity is unprecedented, a cultural phenomenon that reinvigorated public interest in both musical theatre and American history.

• theatre
• Broadway Grand Rapids
• theatre reviews

In the ten years since Hamilton debuted, nothing in musical theater has emerged to challenge it; there has been nothing with as sweeping a scope, as grand an ambition, or as deep an impact. 

• DeVos Performance Hall
• theatre
• Broadway Grand Rapids
• theatre reviews
• Hamilton

On December 21st, 1981, a review of the new musical Dreamgirls appeared in The New York Times. “When Broadway history is being made,” wrote its author, Frank Rich, “you can feel it. What you feel is a seismic emotional jolt that sends the audience, as one, right out of its wit. While such moments are uncommonly rare these days, I'm here to report that one popped up at the Imperial last night.” He was referring to “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” the fierce and defiant song closing out the first act of Dreamgirls.

• theatre
• Circle Theatre
• theatre reviews

“When do we add tension and stress?” The asker is serious: She’s wondering at what point she needs to perform a series of stiff, striking motions.

• dance
• St Cecilia Music Center
• Ballet
• Deos Contemporary Ballet
• Web Exclusive

“Look at me! Look at me! Look at me NOW! It is fun to have fun/ But you have to know how,” declares the Cat in the Hat in Dr. Seuss’s original children’s book, and that playful spiritedness and imagination is what drives The Barn Theatre’s colorful production of Seussical the Musical. 

• theatre
• theatre reviews
• barn theatre

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure raises important questions about justice and how some succeed as well as fail. “Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall,” is but one truism that speaks to political leadership today as much as it did in 1604, the year the play was first produced. 

• theatre
• theatre reviews
• Interlochen

We rely on stories to connect us, to share human experiences that may or may not be our own, and to teach us, again and again, what it means to be human. But rare and perhaps most lasting are the stories that remind us of what we all too often forget: that above all, humans are kind.

• Mason Street Warehouse
• theatre
• Saugatuck Center for the Arts
• theatre reviews
• Come From Away
• Musicals

In 1990, David Hockney turned down a knighthood. His reason? He doesn’t “care for a fuss.” Offered the opportunity to paint Queen Elizabeth II, he demurred, citing a busy schedule.

• visual art
• Grand Rapids Art Museum
• GRAM

How dare they? This isn’t one of your regular bards we’re talking about. This is the bard, the immortal bard: the one and only William Shakespeare, The Greatest Writer In The English Language (™), the…the…the Shakespeare of his time. Well, dare they did. 

• theatre
• Circle Theatre
• theatre reviews

Making your way through the world can be a frightening thing, which is one of many insights into the human heart driving Waitress, the 2015 musical based on Shelly’s final film. It’s small in scale but big in emotion, humor, and something far too rare in Broadway musicals: genuinely good songs (music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles). With strong direction by Allyson Paris and memorable singing and acting by, well, everyone onstage, Grand Rapids Civic Theatre’s production (June 6th-29th) traffics in both the sweet and savory, telling a story of people as flawed, and as good, as we ourselves are.

• Grand Rapids Civic Theatre
• theatre
• theatre reviews
• Waitress