![\"\"](\"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WITCH2026-\u2013-Pygmalion-Productions-2-scaled-e1791157483170-1536x865-1.jpg\")
<\/a>The contemporary reworking of The Witch of Edmonton follows a devil bargaining for souls in an English village.<\/p><\/div>\n
Witch<\/strong><\/p>\n In Jen Silverman\u2019s Witch<\/em>, presented by Pygmalion Productions at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center\u2019s Leona Wagner Black Box and directed by Morag Shepherd, the devil arrives in Edmonton looking for souls and finds plenty of prospects in the small English village. Silverman\u2019s play is a contemporary reworking of the 1621 Jacobean drama The Witch of Edmonton, but its bargain is familiar enough: tell the devil what you want and name your price.<\/p>\n Elizabeth should be an easy mark. The village has already labeled her a witch and cast her out. She has little reason to feel loyalty toward the people who despise her and even less reason to believe the world is arranged justly. Yet her soul proves surprisingly difficult to buy.<\/p>\n The devil has better luck elsewhere. The respectable people surrounding this dangerous outcast, victims of their individual ambitions, resentments and desires, are easy prey. Cuddy, a landowner\u2019s son, and Frank, his penniless rival for the father\u2019s favor, imagine wealth and status as the things they ought to want even as each harbors other desires he can barely articulate. They don\u2019t really need a devil. Just some permission.<\/p>\n Carrie: The Musical<\/strong><\/p>\n A couple of blocks away, at MadKing Productions\u2019 Fellowship Theater in the Gateway, another young woman has been designated an outsider.<\/p>\n Carrie White has been with us for more than half a century. Stephen King introduced the bullied Maine teenager in his 1974 debut novel, and Brian De Palma\u2019s 1976 film gave popular culture some of its most enduring horror imagery: the prom dress, the bucket, the blood.<\/p>\n First presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988, Carrie: The Musical<\/em> transferred to Broadway and promptly became one of musical theater\u2019s legendary flops, closing after 16 previews and five performances. But bootleg recordings circulated among theater fans, helping turn the failure into a cult object. Its creators eventually returned to it, substantially revising the script and songs for a smaller 2012 off-Broadway production.<\/p>\n That resurrected Carrie is the one MadKing Productions is staging under director Chad Henwood. Henwood is less interested in the famous bucket of blood than in everything that gets Carrie underneath it. \u201cBeneath the supernatural spectacle is an intensely human story about isolation, shame, cruelty and the need to belong,\u201d he says. His production focuses on Carrie and her classmates as \u201cimperfect, impulsive teenagers.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Facing East<\/strong><\/p>\n Andrew McCormick is dead. His Mormon parents, Ruth and Alex, are reeling from their son\u2019s suicide when they encounter Marcus, his partner, for the first time.<\/p>\n Plan-B Theatre\u2019s revival of Carol Lynn Pearson\u2019s 70-minute play, in the Rose Wagner\u2019s Studio Theatre, is dedicated to Pearson, who died earlier this year; philanthropist and LGBTQ advocate Bruce Bastian, who died in 2024; and Charles Lynn Frost, who created the role of Alex and died in 2021.<\/p>\n Jay Perry, who originated the role of Marcus, the lover, returns for this revival as Alex, the father, a bit of metatheatrical casting that puts the play\u2019s own passage of time onstage. The young man who once confronted Andrew\u2019s parents with the part of their son\u2019s life they did not know has, 20 years later, become the father doing the confronting.<\/p>\n When Pearson wrote Facing East<\/em>, the collision between Mormon family life and a gay son\u2019s identity was painfully contemporary. And remains so: Plan-B\u2019s entire run, including added performances, sold out before opening.<\/p>\n Very Like a Whale<\/strong><\/p>\n At Salt Lake Acting Company, death brings another family home.<\/p>\n In Troy Deutsch\u2019s Very Like a Whale<\/em>, the eccentric Sharp family reunites to sell their late father\u2019s lakeside house. Inside are whales, a busty mermaid portrait and, at some point, a dance for the seagulls. Outside the window is another disappearing presence: the Great Salt Lake.<\/p>\n Deutsch\u2019s play, directed by Alexandra Harbold, is a co-world premiere with Cadence Theatre Company in Richmond, Virginia, produced at SLAC in collaboration with Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory. It also reunites Deutsch, Flying Bobcat co-founder Robert Scott Smith and SLAC a decade after their collaboration on Climbing With Tigers<\/em>.<\/p>\n The seed for the new play was an 1890 newspaper article Smith brought to Deutsch. From that bit of Great Salt Lake lore, Deutsch has built what SLAC describes as a farcical comedy about grief, lineage and a planet in crisis. \u201cAs the world gets crazier and reality feels less and less recognizable, my writing seems to get more and more absurd,\u201d Deutsch says.<\/p>\n The Sharps have gathered to deal with what their father left behind. Families inherit stories and grievances, habits and obligations. And the lake outside the window belongs to another kind of inheritance\u2014something received from the past whose condition will be passed along to somebody else.<\/p>\n Witch<\/strong> Carrie: The Musical<\/strong> Facing East<\/strong> Very Like a Whale<\/strong> In October, you could walk a few blocks through downtown Salt Lake City and encounter a woman accused of witchcraft, a closeted Mormon man\u2019s grieving parents, a telekinetic teenager covered in blood and a family watching the Great Salt Lake disappear. Salt Lake\u2019s stages are having a dark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theatre"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-19 16:07:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/theater-collage-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106362"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106391,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106362\/revisions\/106391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nON STAGE<\/h3>\n
\nBy Jen Silverman
\nPygmalion Productions
\nLeona Wagner Black Box, Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City
\nThrough Oct. 17, 2026<\/strong> Pygmalion Productions<\/a>
\nPygmalion Productions<\/a><\/p>\n
\nBook by Lawrence D. Cohen, music by Michael Gore, lyrics by Dean Pitchford; based on the novel by Stephen King
\nMadKing Productions
\nFellowship Theater at The Gateway, 167 S. Rio Grande St., Salt Lake City
\nOct. 15\u201325, 2026<\/strong>
\nEvening performances at 7 p.m.; Sunday matinees at 3 p.m.
\nMadKing Productions<\/a><\/p>\n
\nBy Carol Lynn Pearson
\nPlan-B Theatre
\nStudio Theatre, Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City
\nOct. 22\u2013Nov. 8, 2026<\/strong> Plan-B Theatre<\/a>
\nThursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m.; Saturdays at 4 p.m.; Sundays at 2 p.m.
\nRun is sold out; waitlist available.<\/strong>
\nPlan-B Theatre<\/a><\/p>\n
\nBy Troy Deutsch
\nSalt Lake Acting Company, in collaboration with Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory
\nUpstairs Theatre, Salt Lake Acting Company, 168 W. 500 North, Salt Lake City
\nThrough Oct. 25, 2026<\/strong> saltlakeactingcompany.org<\/a>
\nSalt Lake Acting Company<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"