37 stories by "Darleen Ortega"
Think you're too old for all the playful silliness in this cartoon musical comedy at Portland Playhouse? So why that big goofy grin on your face, oh-so-mature person?
Portland Playhouse and Portland Center Stage combine on a lively production of Jame Ijames' updated version of "Hamlet," set amid a North Carolina barbecue bash.
A staged reading of Sarah Overman's play at the new-works festival delves into the travails of Oregon's first woman lawyer, and the plight of women in the historic West.
Spring shows include powerful and inspiring performances of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' 'Come From Away,' and 'A Raisin in the Sun.'
The three-actor musical tale of a green-skinned boy emerging from his "outsider" shell soars with an intimate comic-book aura and a garbage-band vibe.
Review: In Sam Holcroft's tense and shifting drama at Third Rail Rep, truth is elusive and seeps out furtively, poking beyond the sharp eyes of the state's official censor.
Theater Review: Portand Playhouse's West Coast premiere of Pearl Cleage's pointed and funny play about Black women's power shimmers with insight, love, and hope.
Portland Center Stage's co-production with Seattle Rep hits all the wrong notes to perfection in this comedy romp in which anything that can go wrong hilariously does.
Mike Lew's canny and engaging comic battleground on the small Ellyn Bye Studio stage deftly dives below the stereotypes of Chinese American life and achievement.
The 1980s two-actor hit "A Tuna Christmas" is packing 'em in at Bag&Baggage with a sly mix of small-town meanness and tongue-in-cheek mockery of the same.
Review: PassinArt continues its long tradition with a gorgeous and moving production of Langston Hughes's gospel songplay, this year at Alberta Abbey.
Review: In Lauren Gunderson's stage adaptation, Louisa May Alcott plays a central role among her creations, bringing an old-favorite novel into the modern age.
Review: Portland Center Stage kicks off its season with Eboni Booth's 2024 Pulitzer winner, featuring Larry Owens of "Abbott Elementary" as a surprising and complex hero.
Portland Playhouse's not-to-be-missed production of Dominique Morisseau's brilliant "Paradise Blue" sets a private drama against the larger cultural crisis of a thriving Black community on t…
The final two shows of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2025 season rethink a classic Western and Cervantes' "Don Quixote" in fresh and stimulating ways.
In review: The festival romps into summer with three fine and funny productions, topped by the musical fairy-tale fantasy of a glorious journey "Into the Woods."
With "The Importance of Being Earnest" already playing at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Kamilah Bush's fresh adaptation for Portland Center Stage unveils Oscar Wilde's queer coding and gi…
Yee's undercurrent of humor cushions deeper questions about communism, capitalism, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the ways we live our lives.
In review: Damaris Webb goes camping in "Precipice: re-membering, forgetting, and claiming home"; comic actor Chris Grace cuts to racial realities in "Chris Grace: As Scarlett Johannson."
A brilliant 'Joe Turner's Come and Gone' at Portland Playhouse (even with its NEA grant pulled) Darleen OrtegaAs its grant goes on the chopping block, August Wilson's American classic gets a…
'The Brothers Size': Heartbreak, erasure, resilience and connection Darleen OrtegaTarell Alvin McCraney's poetical play at Portland Center Stage embodies memories of prison and mystical char…
Fertile Ground: 'Who's Who' across the decades Darleen OrtegaIn Marshall Welch's promising play from Rogue Pack, two girls "meet" through notes left 70 years ago in a library copy of "Who's …
'Julius Caesar' & 'The Importance of Being Earnest': Ashland reinvents the classics Darleen OrtegaWith a women and nonbinary cast for "Caesar" and an "Earnest" transported to the Malay P…
Oregon Shakespeare Festival strikes gold with a pair of plays about Black life Darleen OrtegaJames Ijames' "Fat Ham" and August Wilson's "Jitney" kick off the Ashland festival's 90th season …
Center Stage's searing 'Virginia Woolf': Why now? Darleen OrtegaEdward Albee's 1960s masterwork of two toxic marriages gets a bold and skillful new performance. Sixty years later, does its e…
