Paul Haley

Latest Articles

Acorn bares souls in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Illusions + pretenses
Edward Albee's heavyweight Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a horror story.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 16, 2011

Review: Acorn camps, vamps in Shakespeare's Cymbeline

Poetic fetish
When the servant Pisania (April Singley) enters to herald the opening iambs of Cymbeline , her Elizabethan diction is bracingly offset by her skintight black vinyl and fishnets.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 12, 2011

Review: Ghosts, people, booze flow together in AIRE's The Seafarer

Mixing spirits
When it comes to ghosts and other supernatural catalysts, Halloween's theatrical repertoire is actually rivaled by that of the Yuletide season.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 03, 2010

An Irish classic

The strong ensemble of Juno and the Paycock
Matriarch Juno is the only one of the Boyles who brings in any coin: Her husband Jack is a drunken boor who, to avoid working, feigns aches in his legs.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 12, 2010

Spot on

Good Theater’s top-notch Frost/Nixon
After Watergate and an opened China, Nixon’s next most recognized legacy is probably the warning to make sure you know your medium: His infamously sweaty, maladroit television appearance in the Kennedy-Nixon debate was widely perceived to have cost him that year’s presidency.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 04, 2009

Rise and fall

Naked Shakespeare's Richard II
For years now, the Naked Shakespeare Ensemble has brought its signature fare — stripped-down productions and ravishingly acute attention to the Bard's language — into a slew of non-traditional settings, including the Wine Bar on Wharf Street, SPACE Gallery, and the Sacred and Profane festival.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 20, 2009

All in the timing

Acorn's Maine Playwrights Festival springs eternal
Acorn's Maine Playwrights Festival springs eternal
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 01, 2009

New and old

The best of 2008's theater productions
First, a tribute to a few of the year's newer theater ventures.
By BY MEGAN GRUMBLING | December 23, 2008

Right on target

AIRE’s Lonesome West hits home
Under Tony Reilly’s direction, the American Irish Repertory Ensemble makes rich, wicked, and poignant work of the brothers’ murderous one-upmanship.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 05, 2008

All in the family(1)

Lives and cultures clash in Lanyard premiere
“Home” isn’t necessarily a discrete, concrete place.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | August 12, 2008

Life is a highway

And Devil's Elbow is in the way
The fates of several Devil’s Elbow residents hang on the fate of an entrance ramp-to-be.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | August 01, 2007

Myth making

To thine own story be true
Middle-aged Michael O’Neal just wants a little bit of the epic in his life.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | March 21, 2007

Papa performances

Bringing Hemingway back to life
Concise and elegant, the prose of Ernest Hemingway in some ways resembles particularly beautiful stage directions.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 03, 2007

All in the family

The Lanyard deftly handles dysfunction
A therapist can't babble, Lawrence Kimball tells us.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | August 02, 2006

A Handy Guide to the Big Dig Screw-Up

Who was watching out for the integrity of the work on the Big Dig? Everyone and no one
As people try to sort out responsibility for the fiasco that led to the death of Milena Del Valle in the I-90 connector tunnel, you might have a hard time keeping the players straight.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | July 27, 2006

Playing with boys

Irish tongues are wagging
The cult of celebrity and sensationalism gets a rollicking and poignant treatment in John Synge’s classic comedy The Playboy of the Western World , directed by Tony Reilly for the American Irish Repertory Ensemble.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | May 24, 2006