Year in review/theater: Area troupes continued to bounce back as pandemic waned
Area theater rebounded in 2022, with audiences resuming theatergoing habits as the pandemic faded. Many shows went live onstage, and touring musicals and comedians drew crowds.
Productions ran the gamut from musicals to mysteries and included both classic favorites and original works. Here's a backward glance at some of the companies and shows that made 2022 a successful year for theater in the Columbus area.
Our leading professional troupes advanced
• CATCO, the city’s oldest professional theater in its 38th year, had great success with “School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play,” Ohio State University graduate Jocelyn Bioh’s off-Broadway comedy about high school girls struggling with body image. The production won the Greater Columbus Arts Council’s “Art Excellence” award.
CATCO also produced “Prima Donna,” Columbus writer Chris Leyva’s new Sherlock Holmes mystery, and the popular local premiere of the Broadway rock musical “Head Over Heels.”
• Shadowbox Live, a 50-member resident ensemble, connected to patrons with company-created new works and sketch-comedy-and-rock productions while reopening its Up Front performance space for other troupes. The troupe’s most daring premiere: “No Return: The Deadly Dance of Bonnie and Clyde,” a deft dance-theater piece about star-crossed 1930s outlaws.
• Short North Stage produced its first homegrown musical: “Surviving the Moonlight,” about love, loss and redemption in the theater. The 11-year-old company struck gold with box-office-record-breaking Garden Theater shows, including “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Rent” and “Spring Awakening.”
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• Evolution Theatre Company, a decade-old small professional theater, explored LGBTQ+ themes in newer works, most notably the premiere of “I’ll Take Romance, The Musical.”
Most semi-professional troupes recovered
Most of the area’s semi-professional troupes – which pay actors, but not as much as professional companies - also made strides. Here are updates on some of the most notable:
• CCT (Columbus Children’s Theatre), which entered its 60th year under the new, younger leadership of Artistic Director Zac DelMonte, expanded its educational programs while returning to its first live season in several years with a greater focus on musicals, starting with “Newsies” at the Southern Theatre.
• Actors’ Theatre of Columbus brought crowds back to Schiller Park with rarely seen period dramas, a new version of “Hamlet” and an area-premiere collaboration with PAST Productions Columbus on “King Hedley II,” August Wilson’s African American drama. The troupe also established a rare beachhead in the fall with a feminist “Dracula” at steady, new-works-friendly MadLab Theatre.
• Abbey Theater of Dublin continued to build a stronger North Side presence with new and newer works, most notably the popular world premiere of “The Duchess,” former Ohio Supreme Court justice Herb Brown’s political drama about scandal-plagued Ohioan Warren G. Harding. Abbey Theater hosted or co-produced Dublin Community Center premieres by several resident troupes, including Evolution and Original Productions Theatre (most notably, “Voice of the Net,” Otterbein University professor Jeremy Llorence’s chilling futuristic look at the dark side of the Internet).
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• Bolstering Artistic Director Eleni Papaleonardos’ efforts with Adam Humphrey assuming the new position of managing director, Available Light Theatre returned to live productions after a 2½-year hiatus with a three-show season, beginning with a popular area premiere of the darkly comical American play “Witch.”
* Gallery Players, in its 74th season as the Jewish Community Center’s resident company under manager Michael Solomon’s new leadership, was the first area troupe to honor Stephen Sondheim, following his death at 91 in 2021, with the Broadway tribute-revue “Sondheim on Sondheim.”
• Red Herring Theater Company, co-founded and led for nine years by Artistic Director Red Herring at several consecutive spaces, had hoped to build audiences with an ambitious 2022 season of 10 live productions, mostly Columbus premieres of recent plays. Most notable: “The Schedule,” a new Hollywood farce by Columbus writer/filmmaker Sheldon Gleisser; and “Airness,” an air-guitar-competition comedy and the troupe’s temporary finale. Yet the 9-year-old company is homeless again, going dark in the fall soon after losing its Great Southern Shopping Center space. Herring’s reinvented troupe aims to resume somewhere by next summer.
Touring musicals, comedians draw crowds
• Broadway in Columbus and the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts entertained theatergoers with the long-awaited first visit of “Come From Away,” a 9/11-inspired musical about human goodness and hospitality in the face of evil; the encore run of the Pulitzer-winning phenomenon “Hamilton;” and a bouncy revival of “Hairspray,” starring Columbus’ own Andrew Levitt (aka drag queen Nina West).
• Among the visiting comics generating laughs: Celeste Barber, Mike Birbiglia, Jim Jefferies, Sonja Morgan, Chris Rock, Iliza Schlesinger and arena-sized draws Dave Chappelle and Jeff Dunham, to appear in the final days of the year.
@mgrossberg1
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus theater scene makes comeback after pandemic in 2022
