If there’s one thing the New Vic Theatre in Kalamazoo does exceptionally well, it’s down-home folksy storytelling with music. And that’s exactly what they have with “Radio Gals,” by Mike Carver and Mark Hardwick, which takes us into a delightfully kooky sort of Americana by way of retired music teacher Hazel Hunt’s front parlor where the Hazelnuts, a motley crew of local Arkansans, put on a radio variety show for the fun of it with a Western Electric 100-watt radio transmitter on their very own WGAL.

Perhaps what’s most striking about Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play “Angels In America” is how quickly it has become an American classic.

In Oscar Wilde’s triumphant Victorian novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray," the character Basil Hallward offers the critique that “(w)e live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography.” It was, no doubt, a jab at his critics, who couldn’t help but see his own story emerging in many of his literary works. Wilde also offered that “(t)he true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything.”

After finally seeing Into the Woods — it’s been on my bucket list for a while now — it both met and exceeded my expectations. The play honors the classic fairy tale stories like Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood, but also gives each character a more modern take on their traditional outfit, speech and general personality.