The promise of turning over a new leaf and forming a different identity is frequently an appealing one, but sometimes it can be a necessity for survival. At least, that’s how it seems to Arlie, who has just been released from prison, and plans to get through life as her better, more respectable half, Arlene. Of course, all of this is easier said than done in Getting Out, a challenging work being produced by the…

New Yorker fiction pieces can be predictably melancholy. Sample plot: the narrator discovers a personality flaw, or flaw in her love life – “flaw” is the key word here—and the reader is left feeling seasick by the end. Luckily, a few amusing anecdotes have slipped into print along the way, and Theatre J has adapted some of these collected memoirs by Laura Shaine Cunningham into Sleeping Arrangements. Pain, failure, and all things deserving self-pity are…

Many critics accused the recent hit movie Little Miss Sunshine of borrowing stock eccentric characters from the abstract Land of Generic Quirk. The same might be said of Martha, Josie and the Chinese Elvis, a play with characters who seem to be a conveniently thrown-together group of wackos rather than anything resembling a realistically dysfunctional family. We’re talking a dominatrix, a possibly-retarded sister, an obsessive-compulsive cleaning lady, and naturally, the Elvis, to name a few….

Before there was Lois and Clark, Hepburn and Tracy or David and Maddie, there was Beatrice and Benedick. Shakespeare’s comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, now being staged at the Folger Theatre, gave us the original archetypes who proved that if a couple doesn’t wittily express their initial hatred before eventually realizing they’re nuts about each other, they’re really not all that interesting to watch. And Folger’s duo is certainly more than interesting enough to keep…