Cincinnati’s fall theater season is in full swing. Here are excerpts from my reviews of three productions at Know Theatre, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and Falcon Theatre. MAKE BELIEVE Know Theatre of Cincinnati’s artistic director, Bridget Leak, landed a plum offering with Bess Wohl’s Make Believe, and she has personally staged a bravado production to kickstart the
Season Openers on Greater Cincinnati Stages Read More »
There’s just five more days of the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, which wraps up with several “Encore” performances on Saturday, June 13. If you have yet to see any of these well received and highly recommended productions, don’t delay. All three of them will be presented at Know Theatre (1120 Jackson Street in Over-the-Rhine) Champagne Dreams
Cincy Fringe in its Final Week Read More »
Throughout April 2026 I’m sharing the 2026-2027 seasons announced by each of Cincinnati’s professional theater companies. This week’s update is about offerings from Know Theatre, found on Jackson Street in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Know, the city’s black box professional theatre, is thriving as it looks to its third season under the leadership of Producing Artistic
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Every one of Cincinnati’s professional theaters produced memorable shows in 2025. My fellow critic Julie Carpenter and I picked a half-dozen for CityBeat‘s “year-in-review” issue — Primary Trust and English at the Cincinnati Playhouse, A Room in the Castle (photo below by Mikki Schaffner) and Mrs. Dalloway at Cincy Shakes, King James at Know Theatre
Great Cincinnati Theater Productions in 2025 Read More »
The ever adventurous folks at Know Theatre (of course, they are the producers of the eccentric annual Cincinnati Fringe Festival) have lined up an monthlong collection of spooky Halloween material — titled octKNOWber Nights that should please everyone who loves the weird that’s often Know’s stock-in-trade. Here are a few highlights:, but go to the
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Two more Cincinnati theaters produced shows recently, both small scale, but with some fine acting. Know Theatre launched its 2025-2026 season with Rajiv Joseph’s KING JAMES. It’s a clever two-hander about friendship, shaped by a pair of unlikely friends whose lives track along with NBA basketball star LeBron James’s on-again, off-again love affair with Cleveland,
“Small” Shows in Cincinnati – September 2025 Read More »
On Sunday, June 1, I saw four shows produced by the Cincinati Fringe Festival: “Somewhere Over the Holler,” “Arsenic and Old Spice,” “Me, Myself and Other,” and “Stuck.” You can read my comments via my website, www.RickPenderWrites.com. And if you’re interested these and other shows — the 22nd annual festival has more than 40! —
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The 22nd iteration of the Cincy Fringe kicked off on Friday, May 30; it will run until Saturday, June 14. Over the course of the next two weeks there will be 194 performances of 42 different productions in 34 time slots. This is an annual production of Know Theatre (1120 Jackson Street in Over-the-Rhine), the
22nd Cincinnati Fringe Festival (2025) Read More »
