Blossom picnickers love getting creative with their favorite spreads on the expansive lawn: It’s all part of the magical experience of attending a Cleveland Orchestra concert on a beautiful summer night.

The Blossom Musical Festival season started off with a big bang with four holiday concerts under guest conductors over the extended weekend. Now it’s time to look at this weekend, when Music Director Franz Welser-Möst takes the baton for concerts Saturday and Sunday at the Cleveland Orchestra’s summer home in Cuyahoga Falls.

Andrew Narten impressively walks a fine line between sanity and insanity with his paranoid character Clay in Matt Pelfrey’s dark comedy An Impending Rupture of the Belly at None Too Fragile Theater.

An American in Paris, whose national tour is now playing at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, is a glorious ballet musical full of intoxicating romance and stunning visuals.

9 to 5 was a goofy yet fun and popular movie when it came out in 1980, starring Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. It was considered the ultimate feminist revenge comedy at the time.

McGee Maddox, who formerly danced with the National Ballet of Canada, has always enjoyed playing dramatic roles in full-length ballets, including principal roles in Swan Lake, Onegin, The Winter’s Tale and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Recent St. Vincent-St. Mary High School graduate Annie Unk, 18, has come full circle with the musical Mary Poppins.

The title Lose Your Marbles, for Akron’s new dance-centric fringe festival, is both an homage to Akron’s toy marble-making history and a nod to how many artists must “lose it” a bit — or at least lose themselves in their work — in their quest to create something new.

Bobby Wesner, co-artistic director of Neos Dance Theatre, created the new event, which will run from 3:30 to 10:30 p.m. Saturday in downtown Akron, with the help of a $100,000 Akron Knight Arts Challenge grant. The pilot event is a one-day, curated festival that presenter Neos plans to broaden in scope next year over multiple days and venues.

Hairspray is a comedy-filled musical piled with bouffant-high fun. But its dark underbelly is a nasty tale of racial segregation in 1962 Baltimore, depicted mainly at plus-sized teen Tracy Turnblad’s high school and on the popular Corny Collins Show.

Last week, Live Nation announced a more restrictive policy on food, bags and other items that can be brought into popular music shows at Blossom Music Center.

The Akron Woman’s City Club announced Wednesday that Coach House Theatre will remain open with new management as the theater heads into its 90th anniversary season.

Theatergoers who attend Western Reserve Playhouse will see a spruced-up entrance inside the huge barn theater, including fresh drywall and freshly painted doors trimmed to replicate the look of a barn door, plus freshly cleaned and polished floors, raked seating atop a new platform and a new concessions bar.

Some theater here, a little opera there. Some dance here, a poetry reading there.

Congratulations go out to junior Reyna Moran of Akron School for the Arts at Firestone High School, who won best actress in Playhouse Square’s second annual Dazzle Awards on Saturday night at the Connor Palace in Cleveland.

The artists of New World Performance Lab have created a rich multi­media production that brings audiences into the heart and soul of Akron’s labor movement from 1932-1936.

Coach House Theatre is closing after a 90-year run.

Salvage is a three-woman character study that reveals moments of sheer desperation in a family basement.

Nothing at all dramatic happens in The Flick. But it’s a surprisingly absorbing work to watch, in spite of that.

The University of Akron and Playhouse Square announced the new 2017-18 Broadway lineup of musicals Tuesday evening, before the curtain rose on this season’s closing production, Chicago, at E.J. Thomas Hall.

Heisman Trophy winner Eddie George said performing in eight shows a week as shark lawyer Billy Flynn in the musical tour Chicago can be as grueling as his professional football career was, but it’s worth it.

The new Disney musical Freaky Friday is a fun and fluffy time, but a work of art it’s not. The musical at Cleveland Play House is a contemporary spin on the original 1972 novel by Mary Rodgers as well as the 1976 and 2003 Disney movies.

There are so many hilarious musical theater references cleverly enfolded into the wacky Something Rotten! — in both sly and obvious fashion — this show is a musical theater lover’s dream.

It’s pretty funny to imagine a “Renaissance showgirl” on stage. But that’s exactly what Findlay native Lucy Anders plays in Something Rotten!, the over-the-top ode to musical theater now playing at Playhouse Square’s Connor Palace.

The greatest story of all time, the last seven days of Jesus Christ’s life as told through Jesus Christ Superstar, is receiving an emotional treatment at Weathervane Playhouse during this Lenten season.

Employing visual imagery to enhance the listening experience will be a prominent theme for the Akron Symphony Orchestra’s 2017-18 season.

With The Devil’s Milk Trilogy now complete, local audiences have the opportunity to see three New World Performance Laboratory plays about Akron’s rubber history, written by Akron artists.

GroundWorks DanceTheater brings its spring program to E.J. Thomas Hall this weekend with three dances that all deal with connection and change in some way.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time begins with a sudden assault on our senses, with extreme sound and light ushering us into a stressful experience in protagonist Christopher’s life.

The play, a faithful adaptation of Mark Haddon’s best-selling 2003 novel, is highly physical theater that offers excellent ensemble storytelling as well as inventive staging and multimedia effects that create the world of 15-year-old Christopher’s mind. It runs through April 9 at Playhouse Square’s Connor Palace.

Against the stark desolation of Depression-era California in which Of Mice and Men is set, the play celebrates something very rare and beautiful for the time: a deep friendship — even love — between two men.

A Skull In Connemara is a sick play.

Heading into its fifth anniversary season, Rubber City Shakespeare Company on Friday night announced a name change, new educational programs and its new 2017-18 lineup of shows in downtown Akron.

It was Juilliard classmate Alex Sharp who first planted the seed that actor Adam Langdon should go for the challenging role of Christopher in the celebrated British play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Virtuoso didgeridoo player Stephen Kent says his instrument’s sound amplifies what the human behind it is projecting.

Musical theater lovers can’t get enough of Lin-Manuel Miranda these days. Tickets to his show Hamilton are impossible to get in New York and have sold like hotcakes in Chicago.

This weekend, Ballet Excel Ohio is reprising a company favorite, Little Mermaid, a ballet by Tom Gold based on the original story by Hans Christian Andersen that the troupe premiered in 2012.

The smash hit Hamilton isn’t coming to Cleveland until summer 2018 — Playhouse Square’s final show next season — but phones were ringing off the hook Wednesday, the day after the launch party at the State Theatre announcing the 2017-18 KeyBank Broadway series.

On Wednesday, Ohio Shakespeare Festival announced its first full outdoor-indoor season, which will run from late June through April 2018 at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens and Greystone Hall downtown.

Hamilton mania is coming to Cleveland for six weeks July 17-Aug. 26, 2018.

Gospel Meets Symphony is celebrating its 24th year, but in many ways the concert is new each year.

Gospel Meets Symphony timeline:

Heinz Poll’s perfectionism in choreography and dance has informed Andrew Carroll throughout his career, decades after he danced for the late German choreographer with the Ohio Ballet.

The musical Bring It On smartly manages to poke tongue-and-cheek fun at the cheerleading world while at the same time celebrating the spirit of competition and friendship.

Audiences have the opportunity to see two very different plays running in repertory through this weekend at Ohio Shakespeare Festival. One is a one-act comedy written in 1978 that’s set in Texas, and the other is a drama about Shakespeare’s personal life that premiered in 1996.

Watching two young New York couples navigate relationships, sex and love in the contemporary musical I Love You Because makes for a fun, light evening at Weathervane Playhouse’s Dietz Theatre.

The national tour of Lincoln Center Theater’s The King and I is a breathtakingly gorgeous production that appeals to our most romantic natures.

“Where are my wormers?’’ asked professional dancer Mary Elizabeth Fenn as 25 energized young dancers came together in a straight line during a choreography session for Top Notch Team (TNT) Jan. 27 at Cuyahoga Falls Dance Center.

It’s never too late to make meaningful human connections.

Jose Llana, a Philippine-born, naturalized U.S. citizen, says the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I made all his dreams come true 20 years ago.

The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2017 Blossom Music Festival has been designed to offer something for everyone, from an all-Tchaikovsky program and an evening of opera favorites to pop concerts in which the orchestra will bring to life timeless favorites by Carole King, the swinging tunes of Ella Fitzgerald and the full E.T. score by John Williams, played to the movie showing in HD.

None Too Fragile of Akron opens its milestone 30th show and fifth season this weekend with a character-driven play — the type that it does best ­­— Samuel Hunter’s The Whale.

It was a matter of perfect timing: Former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove and her husband just happened to have planned a stop in Akron on their way back from Chicago to Virginia to visit her aging parents the same weekend that pianist Lara Downes would be performing in a concert there as part of a project inspired by Dove’s poetry.

Coach House Theatre’s The Mousetrap starts out in the dark, with the audience hearing the tune Three Blind Mice, the thud of a body falling and then yelling, which segues into a radio report about a murder that has taken place in London.

It was fascinating to hear in the news last week that a pendant unearthed at the site of the former Nazi death camp at Sobibor, Poland, may be linked to Holocaust diarist Anne Frank.

The Night Alive is a very dark show by famed Irish playwright Conor McPherson about five characters who have few redeeming qualities.

Life is a rich, busy mix of performing and teaching for members of Imani Winds, the Grammy-nominated woodwind quintet that’s now in its 19th season.

At age 78, maestro Benjamin Zander doesn’t care about reviews, wealth, fame or power.

Who says that Broadway and the NFL can’t intersect?

Violin virtuoso Sarah Chang is doubly happy to be performing a violin concerto she loves under the baton of a colleague whom she adores on tour with the Prague Philharmonia.

Bob Belfance and his cast of four successfully navigate the tricky dynamics in A Kid Like Jake, a drama at Weathervane Playhouse about a 4-year-old boy experiencing gender identity confusion.

Fiasco Theater’s Into the Woods is a breath of fresh air, full of offbeat imagination and crystal-clear storytelling that makes for a stimulating evening with Stephen Sondheim’s most famous musical.

Dance Theatre of Harlem, founded by Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook in 1969 in response to the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, is now in its fourth decade.

Music director Evan Rees can’t say he’s ever seen the piano take center stage in a musical quite like it does in Fiasco Theater’s reimagined version of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.

I have a confession to make: I went on a live holiday show binge last Saturday.

Patrick Michael Dukeman is such a great comedian, he commands the stage completely on his own for more than an hour, uninterrupted, in Santaland Diaries at Weathervane Playhouse.

The Akron Symphony Orchestra will present “Home for the Holidays” at 7:30 p.m. Friday at E.J. Thomas Hall, including a selection of holiday favorites, inspirational songs and traditional carols. The concert also will feature The Akron Symphony Chorus, Gospel Meets Symphony choir, Akron Youth Symphony, dancers, vocalists, guest artists and a visitor from the North Pole.

Mackenzie Lesser-Roy, a self-professed musical theater junkie, put the part of Girl from Once on her dream role list when she was 16. Now, she’s living that dream.

Summit Choral Society will kick off its holiday season with the children’s choir program A Concert for the Holidays at 3 p.m. Sunday at Cuyahoga Falls High School, 2300 Fourth St. The children’s Performance Choir, Advanced Choir, Intermediate Choir and Beginning Singing Choir will perform.

The featured dances in Pennsylvania Ballet’s The Nutcracker are breathtaking and the sets, costumes and live orchestra are magnificent. But some static staging in the first act gets things off to a slow start at the State Theatre in Cleveland.

Richard Alfieri’s Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks breaks through negative stereotypes about both elderly and gay people while portraying the development of an unlikely yet beautiful friendship.

By Kerry Clawson

Beacon Journal arts writer

Kent native James Ihde, who has danced in The Nutcracker all 23 years of his professional ballet career, still finds it a thrill every holiday season.

The folks at Weathervane Playhouse are happy to announce that the perennial favorite Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is returning this week after a one-year absence in the holiday time slot.

Tuesday Musical audiences will get to hear a unique concert, combining world-class artists they wouldn’t see performing together anywhere else, with the “We Knew Them When” concert Tuesday, celebrating the arts organization’s scholarship program.

The world premiere of the Rev. Charles Myricks Jr. and Jesse Ayers’ There’s A Stirrin’ in the Water will be the focal point of the Akron Symphony Orchestra’s concert “From the New World: Legacy of the Spirituals” at 8 p.m. Friday at E.J. Thomas Hall.

Firestone Theatre is presenting Intimate Apparel, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage’s piece about African-American seamstress Esther Mills, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday.

When GroundWorks DanceTheater’s David Shimotakahara puts together a program, he wants audiences to go away well-fed.

Everyone knows art begets art, right?

In the two-person drama Annapurna, the kernel of a broken love has survived between Ulysses and Emma over the decades and across the continent, even though the two haven’t communicated in 20 years.

The most beautiful thing about the musical Finding Neverland is that every detail of both its story and stage production is created in the service of celebrating the imagination.

I’ve never seen a painting created live on stage during a theatrical production. When two actors take brush and paint to canvas during the drama Red at Weathervane Playhouse, this fascinating moment clearly represents a religious experience for the characters.

If a musical could be found criminally insane, Silence! The Musical would fit the bill at Blank Canvas Theatre.

Choreographing Finding Neverland has been a labor of love for Mia Michaels, and now she’s gotten to work on it three times.

Singer/songwriter Angie Haze leaned intently into a group of students sitting in an arc around her last week at the Miller South School for the Visual and Performing Arts auditorium, strumming her guitar and singing her award-winning Fireflies, as six girls jammed with her.

Audiences have one more weekend to see Ohio Shakespeare Festival’s inaugural show at Greystone Hall, Robin Hood: An Adventure with Music. The production features spectacular stage combat that’s the most intense I’ve seen yet for OSF, which has produced for 15 years at Stan Hywet.

The Knight Foundation asked artists in the Akron community to dream big for the second year of the Akron Knight Arts Challenge, culminating in the awarding of another $1 million to 19 new grass roots projects.

Last Friday, swords were hung neatly in a row in a dressing room, actress Kelsey Tomlinson continued sorting through hundreds of costume pieces in a backstage workroom, and actors Joe Pine and Ryan Zarecki labored away at constructing a two-story Elizabethan playhouse-style set at Greystone Hall downtown, the new indoor venue for Ohio Shakespeare Festival.

Akron guitarist Nick Greathouse has been living on a mile-long train off and on for the last two years.

After more than a year as an ensemble member and understudy in the smash hit Hamilton on Broadway, Kent native Seth Stewart has realized his ultimate goal of taking over the roles of Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette full time on the Great White Way.

Fun Home is a refreshingly different kind of musical with a story full of urgency and raw emotion that also evokes numerous tender moments.

Firestone Theatre launched its inaugural show in a spiffy new theater this week with the most passionate tragedy of star-crossed lovers — Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Here’s director Mark Zimmerman’s mission: “Taking that 400-year-old work and making it sound really modern coming out of these kids’ mouths, without changing any words.”

The campy Little Shop of Horrors is such a top-notch musical in so many ways at Weathervane Playhouse, audiences won’t want to miss it.

Murray Burns is a man of a million quips, an unemployed comedy writer who became so jaded writing for a kids’ television show, he quit.

Famed choreographer Bill T. Jones, known for his great intellectualism and intensity, has turned to the family history of his own loved ones to create a dance theater piece about perseverance and survival with Analogy/Dora: Tramontane, which his Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company will perform at the University of Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall.

When Ralph Cooley was a little boy, his mother couldn’t match his socks because he was too busy turning them into puppets.

Matthew Lopez’s The Whipping Man is a fascinating story about the complex and contradictory relationships between newly freed slaves and their masters right at the end of the Civil War.

As Fun Home star Kate Shindle began settling in for a five-week stay in Cleveland last week, she talked about the fun of launching a national tour.

Tuesday Musical of Akron’s new season will include some groundbreaking firsts, including the establishment of its inaugural quartet in residence, Escher String Quartet; the opening concert Tuesday featuring the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Shroud, performed by the Emerson String Quartet in its 40th anniversary year; and the first appearance in the classical music series by the venerable St. Petersburg Philharmonic.

When the Emerson String Quartet performs Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Shroud Tuesday night at E.J. Thomas Hall, Akron audiences will be the first in the world to hear the piece, before crowds in New York and London.

Akron native Paul Tazewell has been on an awesome creative roll this year, garnering multiple accolades for his renowned costume designs.

Swashbuckling adventure and romance will take the stage as Ohio Shakespeare Festival mounts Robin Hood: An Adventure with Music Oct. 21-30, its first show in its new performance space at Greystone Hall. The Family Theatre production is part of a season that includes traditional Shakespeare performances as well as contemporary plays, classics from other playwrights and even a musical.