Northlight Theatre

The Angel Next Door – Northlight Theatre – Through May 10, 2026

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Little did Hungarian Ferenc Molnar know in 1920, when he wrote “Játék a Kastélyba” (Play at the Castle), that it would be the basis for plays that would be making audiences laugh over 100 years later, first in P.G. Wodehouse’s 1924 adaptation, The Play’s the Thing (riffing off Shakespeare), later in Tom Stoppard’s 1984 Rough Crossing, and, most recently in Paul Slade Smith’s The Angel Next Door.

The current production is a nice, fun farewell, as Northlight’s last one before moving to its new castle in the fall. As mentioned in the dialogue, sometimes a couple hours of escapist humor is just what the doctor, or audience, ordered.

The show is a particular treat for people who enjoy theater about theater, complete with an inside joke referencing a 1920 Hungarian play (hmm) and recurring jokes about breaking the fourth wall, though not really, but also is reliant on the relationships between husband and wife playwrights, an actress and her lothario co-actor (as in Lothario, a character in Nicholas Rowe’s 1703 play The Fair Penitent) and the same actress and her would-be suitor, a novelist, whose book the playwrights have adapted for a play, not this one (that might be too much).

But, as good as all those actors were (the real ones, not the ones they were playing), the show is stolen, and at least partly handed to thanks to the script, as comedies often are, by a “secondary’ character, namely the maid, Olga, played in a tour-de-force turn by Erin Grennan, who, in real life, is married to the playwright Paul Slade Smith, which seems only right, as one of the male leads (the play’s playwright) is played by Sean Fortunato, who is married to the play’s director Linda Fortunato.

The First Lady of Television – Northlight Theatre – Through Oct. 12, 2025

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Gertrude Berg was a television pioneer, but her accomplishments in that regard are totally overshadowed by the real story of the play, the blacklisting that took place in the entertainment industry in the 1940s and 50s.

I’ve seen several movies on the topic – The Front, The Majestic, The Way We Were, Trumbo and Good Night and Good Luck (GN&GL) immediately come to mind, but this was the first time I’ve seen a stage presentation, if you don’t count the filmed version of the recent Broadway production of GN&GL.

Though Berg is the title character, Phil Loeb, who played her husband on The Goldbergs, is the focus of attention. I’d never heard of him before, even though, I’ve now discovered, Hecky Brown, as played by Zero Mostel in The Front, was loosely based on Loeb.

The Goldbergs was a sit-com. The First Lady of Television is not, despite some amusing moments, such as the recreation of a commercial presented by Berg, humorous because it was so corny, not because it was laugh-out-loud funny like the Vitameatavegamin one presented by the second, first lady of television on I Love Lucy.

Rather, the play, as described by the director, presents themes that “are chillingly prescient and sadly so.” One only has to read the daily headlines to agree.

2 Pianos 4 Hands – Northlight Theatre – July 27, 2024

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Two pianos, four hands, and a hundred twenty minutes of entertainment.

Years ago, when I first saw this show, I had not yet started my adult piano lessons, so, although I enjoyed it, obviously enough to see it again, a lot of what I heard and saw I took on faith, given that the piano teacher I had for two years as a child had the pedagogical skills, though not the charisma, of someone who might have studied with Harold Hill at the Gary Indiana Conservatory, gold medal class of ’05.

This time around I could appreciate everything even more, though I missed the overhead mirror that the earlier production used to help the audience better see the pianists’ hands at work.

Adam LaSalle and Matthew McGloin are both accomplished musicians, who also displayed excellent acting chops while inhabiting several characters each, along with the main roles as they aged from childhood prodigies to adults.

McGloin, in particular, showed off a range of physical movements that highlighted the action in a story where there really is no action other than at the keyboard.

Another ability that both men portrayed was to play below their obvious talents, as occasionally required by the story.

The final classical duet of the night was spotless, even to the point of my inability to decode any subtle signals they were giving each other from across the room, behind their respective instruments.