Did any among us who lived through the 1980s ever think we’d long for them again? Who knew, thirty years later, the Reagan era would, indeed, appear to be a sexier time?

In Waitress, most of the show’s action takes place in Joe’s Diner, where three of the musical’s main characters — Jenna (Desi Oakley), Dawn (Lenne Klingaman) and Becky (Charity Angel Dawson) — are waitresses. But the diner does much more than just serve Jenna’s infamous pies to its customers. It’s where love is found, discoveries about the characters are made, fights are had, and yes, a lot of pies are baked.

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us,” is a bit of wisdom attributed to Alexander Graham Bell. “The Conviction of Lady Lorraine,” written and performed by Dwandra Nickole Lampkin, is evidence of what wonderful things can happen when a driven, curious and inventive artist, amid a dream project, gets told no.

Our attraction to the Victorian super sleuth Sherlock Holmes shows no signs of waning, though the character’s resurgence in the form of various American and British film and television adaptations has been underway for a good five years.

Grand Rapids Civic Theatre’s “All The Way” opens with the three dramatic gunshots that killed President John F. Kennedy, the mood was set somber as Vice President Lyndon Baine Johnson was sworn in as president.

“Everyone loves Tchaikovsky,” declared a man in the DeVos Performance Hall mezzanine on Friday evening. Whether this statement is true or not, Grand Rapids Symphony (GRS) Music Director Marcelo Lehninger knows his audience. Better yet, their tastes align with his own.

Julia is extraordinary, and, at 53, she should be tired of hiding. This is what the voices in her head tell her, anyway. They’ve kept her from sleeping for more than a week, and everyone she encounters lets her know how terrible she looks.

The fierce protagonist in Dominique Morisseau’s brilliant play “Sunset Baby” was named after Nina Simone. She was able to turn “the madness that rages inside” into power, “and that’s what we wanted for you,” Nina’s estranged father tells her.

Though relatively new to working in Muskegon’s downtown entertainment scene, Eric Messing recalls it as the place where he was first exposed to the performing arts.

Russian playwright Anton Chekhov and his life will be recreated onstage this month in a one-man drama, Anton, Himself: First and Last.