Articles by: Holly Quinn

Holly is a Wilmington-based freelance writer and a Delaware Arts Info blogger. When she's not writing, crafting, or covering the arts in Delaware, she spends most of her time hanging out with her husband and tween son.

As Bootless Artworks continues its move toward its permanent venue in Newport, it has taken on one of the most challenging and thought-provoking musicals I know, the Tony and Pulitzer prize-winning NEXT TO NORMAL, a show that fearlessly deals with mental illness, grief, and suicide. It’s a tough, emotional show, [...]

The 1980 film XANADU never quite lived up to the sum of its parts. It featured a heavy-hitting cast, including the wildly popular Olivia Newton-John, icon Gene Kelly, and music by Jeff Lynne (of Electric Light Orchestra fame) and John Farrar. But its roller disco theme made it seem dated [...]

Some plays are designed to whisk you away to a fantastical world, an alternate reality where folks spontaneously break into song. And then there are plays like 12 ANGRY JURORS, Chapel Street Players’ spring production: an ultra-realistic fly-on-the-wall reality play. Originally set in 1956 and titled 12 ANGRY MEN, the [...]

The Delaware Theatre Company’s production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s SOUTH PACIFIC, the passionate wartime musical that’s been entertaining audiences for over 60 years, marks a new and exciting turn for the professional theater by the waterfront. If you’ve ever thought of DTC as Wilmington’s Broadway, this large-scale production confirms it [...]

LEGALLY BLONDE, New Candlelight Theatre’s spring offering, is one of those shows that might sound less great than it really is. The musical is based on the popular 2001 film starring Reese Witherspoon (which is based on the novel by Amanda Brown). Like the film, the musical is fun and [...]

Director Doreen Weiss describes Leonard Gershe’s BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE, Wilmington Drama League’s current production, as a fairytale love story, a play that clearly had a great impact on her young life. It’s not exactly a fairytale in my eyes — it’s better than that. Unlike fairytales, you see young love [...]

Wilmington’s Bootless Stageworks has been homeless for years, but it’s never stopped the small, edgy professional theater company from presenting some of the most memorable shows this town has had to offer, from the strikingly dark PILLOWMAN to JERRY SPRINGER – THE OPERA, PASSING STRANGE, STAR WARS – A NEW [...]

A young divorcee, an art student, a gang girl, a breast cancer survivor, nervous brides, mothers, daughters, sisters — Delaware Theatre Company’s special presentation of LOVE, LOSS, AND WHAT I WORE hits on a range of women’s experiences so broad and so basic that it speaks to virtually everyone. A [...]

One of the measures of a successful Shakespearean production is the reaction of the audience — after all, poorly delivered Shakespeare loses both its poignancy and humor. Chapel Street Players’ THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, a straight-up comedy, leaves no confusion: it’s straight-up funny and entertaining, with few slow moments. [...]

The premiere run of ON THE AIR, City Theater Company’s original musical about a 1941 radio soap, is something of an experiment. Still in the workshop stage, it’s a work in progress, and the company wants audience feedback to polish it up and help it evolve into a finished piece. [...]

There’s a reason Mel Brooks gets away with even the most crass, offensive-in-any-other-context material in his work: he has mastered the art of satire. In THE PRODUCERS, the first show of the 2013 season for New Candlelight Theater in Arden, Delaware, he’s created a satire about satire that’s created completely [...]

As soon as you take your seat for BOEING BOEING, the latest offering at Delaware Theatre Company, you know you’re in for a nostalgic treat. The set, designed by Stefanie Hansen, is like looking 50 years into the past: every detail of the 1960s apartment has that old-fashioned modern feel, [...]

C.S. Lewis’ classic children’s tale THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE is one of the most ambitious stories to put on stage, with elaborate costumes and sets, special effects lighting and a full-blown battle scene. Dramatized by Joseph Robinette, and directed by first-time director Zack Langrehr and Crissy Montgomery, [...]

‘Tis the season for adaptations of Charles Dickens’ immortal A CHRISTMAS CAROL, and if you think you’ve seen it all before, just wait until you see Patrick Barlow’s new adaptation, makings its world premiere at The Delaware Theater Company through December 30. This version of the classic Christmas ghost story [...]

There’s nothing like a cozy evening in Middletown, Delaware, for an opening night at the Everett Theatre. There’s a lot to love about the Everett, a beautiful historic theater that dates back to 1868 and sits on Middletown’s Main Street, a stretch so charming it’s nearly exotic to an upstater [...]

City Theater Company’s BAT BOY, THE MUSICAL is a show that should top your list of holiday-season entertainment, even though (or maybe because, depending on your feelings about holiday shows) there is nothing “holiday” about it. It’s a masterfully done musical with an offbeat subject, black humor, sex and violence [...]

At one point in Bruce Graham’s THE OUTGOING TIDE, Delaware Theatre Company’s 2012 October production, the character Jack, played by Ian Lithgow, explains to his mother — and, by extension, the audience — that the phrase “happy as a clam” is incomplete. The full saying is “happy as a clam [...]

If you’re familiar with Wilmington’s Bootless Stageworks, you know it never shies away from controversial work—and JERRY SPRINGER, THE OPERA is one of the most no-holds-barred shows they have done yet. The British opera (based, of course, on the American “trash-TV” show) has met with protests in the UK since [...]

In another example of a hot show coming to Wilmington, Margaret Cho hit the duPont Theatre for a midweek stop on her MOTHER comedy tour. Best known for her many television roles over the years (including her Emmy-nominated guest role on “30 Rock” and a featured spot on “Dancing with [...]

The story of Gypsy Rose Lee, the legendary burlesque star of the 1930s and beyond, begins with a scene that looks like an early 20th Century “Toddlers and Tiaras” — a little girl in ribbons and curls and a glitzy cupcake dress with an aggressive stage mother determined to make [...]