“Tradition!” The word immediately invokes the venerated pillars of faith, family, and friendship. But in the Russian shtetl of Anatevka, Tevye the milkman and his wife, Golde, must walk the fine line of balancing tradition with turn-of-the-century progressiveness. A deeply moving tale about community and generational values, Fiddler on the Roof is a heartwarming story of fathers and daughters, husbands and wives, and love and laughter. “L'Chaim!”

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Fiddler on the Roof

Cleveland Play House

The holiday season always brings the unexpected when friends and family gather to celebrate! Alan Ayckbourn, Britain’s most successful comedic playwright, turns his satiric eye to this yearly gathering when fun and games can lead to the most unpredictable and hilarious results. Christmas comes a little tardy this year in Cleveland, as the Class of 2026 navigates this mayhem of misunderstandings, botched romances, and even a few puppets!

Season's Greetings

In the world of basketball, LeBron James is the king. But to die-hard Clevelanders like Shawn and Matt, “King James” is a god, and their fandom forges their unlikely bond. Set in a bar in Cleveland Heights and spanning LeBron’s rookie season to the 2016 NBA Championship, the men navigate their turbulent friendship through their shared love of the game. From the first quarter to the final jump shot, King James comes in clutch as a riveting love letter to our beloved home, “Believeland.” Filled with humor, jab steps, offensive fouls, and great poignancy, this energetic new play by Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph is an intimate exploration of the place that sports occupy in our lives and in our relationships with others.

King James

Shakespeare’s Hamlet has been invited to the backyard barbeque! Get your plate ready for a slab of smokin’ hot revenge, served with a hefty scoop of vengeance, and a side of karaoke. Without spilling too much of the sweet tea, a visit from beyond the grave reveals family secrets and scandalous generational trauma. How will “Juicy,” a queer Southern Black mama’s boy, reconcile the truth in service of his own liberation? This Pulitzer Prize-winning play is a delicious, outrageously, heaping hot mess of hilarity!

Fat Ham

Cleveland’s favorite holiday tradition is back by popular demand! One boy. One holiday wish. And a world conspiring to make sure it doesn’t come true. The record-breaking show returns to the Allen Theatre in all its pink-bunny-suit, glowing-leg-lamp, triple-dog-daring glory. The perfect holiday treat for the entire family!

A Christmas Story

The Cherry Orchard follows a family of down-on-their-luck aristocrats as they grapple with the prospect of selling their beloved estate. As the cherry trees blossom, so do the complexities of love, loss, and the relentless passage of time. This theatrical masterpiece explores what happens when echoes of the past meet the inevitability of change. The Cherry Orchard reveals complex and colorful characters that blend humor and heartache as they encounter the absurdities that abound in simply leading one’s life.

The Cherry Orchard

Playwright Heidi Schreck’s boundary-breaking, Obie Award-winning play breathes new life into the United States Constitution and imagines how it can shape the next generation of Americans. Fifteen-year-old Heidi competed for college scholarships by participating in Constitutional debate competitions across the country. In this hilarious, hopeful, and achingly human new play, Heidi recalls the profound relationship between four generations of women and the founding document that shaped their lives. A 2019 Tony Award nominee and 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist.

What the Constitution Means to Me

Jane Austen’s most beloved work brought to life! The outspoken and ﬁercely independent Elizabeth Bennet is determined to remain single, despite mounting pressure from her hovering and meddlesome mother. How will she be able to resist love in Regency-era society, even from the amusing, handsome, and somewhat aggravating Mr. Darcy? This classic English love story is a surprisingly hilarious, refreshingly modern romcom that celebrates the thrills of ﬁnding your perfectly imperfect match.

Pride and Prejudice

Deep into her 3rd (and final) act of being a person, Kathryn Grody investigates an eclectic, devastating, and hilarious potpourri of shocking discoveries as she finds herself — at 75 — becoming not quite old, but elder. Another Boomer that didn’t think the aging process would apply to her, Grody enters elderhood with equal parts empowerment and bewilderment. Marching onward through crumbling democracy, a boiling planet, and an increasingly dead roster of friends and colleagues, she is buoyed by discovering parts of herself she didn’t know were in hiding, waiting for this period to bloom. Mother, artist, wife, grandmother, friend, and accidental social media influencer, Kathryn Grody is astonished with her life, your life, and the stunning, deeply-felt, heart-breaking impermanence of it all.

The Unexpected 3rd

What leads someone to become a standardized patient, engaging in role play to help doctors develop a compassionate bedside manner? Listening to the humorous and heart-wrenching stories from the actors he’s interviewing, Derrick, a documentary filmmaker, quickly learns about the roots of empathy, how unsympathetic doctors can learn kindness, and what happens when the line between reality and fiction starts to blur. When his subjects start inquiring about his own medical history and trauma, Derrick is forced to reckon with a form of healing that goes beyond the mere physical.

Standardized Patient

An idealistic young congresswoman meets her nemesis, a tech billionaire, who blindsides her with a bizarre proposal: to create a town in America that has no guns. Her journey is both a personal story of how loss provokes a search for meaning, and a hilarious examination of the complicated issue of gun control in our country — complete with outlandish personalities, comic reversals, and a gaggle of singing children.

To Keep and Bear

On the cusp of the Civil War, slavecatchers are infiltrating Cleveland, Ohio, trying to kidnap Black individuals escaping to freedom in Canada. Everyone wants local barber John Wheeler to protest these abductions, but he resists becoming an activist. Is he trying to placate his white clientele, or are there deeper reasons for his silence? And how will his reticence affect his romance with a young teacher who wants him to take a stand? With suspense and high stakes, The Price of the Ticket explores the dilemma of when to speak up and when silence has power.

The Price of the Ticket

The unbearable July heat has the denizens of NYC’s Washington Heights neighborhood in the streets shouting, “Que calor!” Several established businesses have closed. Housing costs – and racial tensions – are on the rise. And the once vibrant, now dwindling community must rally together to preserve their culture and their way of life. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s music-filled love letter to the community of his youth, In The Heights, tells the story of the corner bodega where the coffee is hot, light, and sweet, the apartment windows that are always open, and the cool breeze that carries the percussive rhythm of the bustling city and three generations of dreams. And for this community on the brink of change, it tells a story of hope, heritage, and healing love.

In The Heights

Why does God grace some individuals with talent and genius, but render others dull and mediocre? This is the question that plagues Italian composer Antonio Salieri as he chases after fame and fortune in 18th and 19th century Vienna. Frustrated by his plight, Salieri becomes obsessed with ruining a young rival composer — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — in a deadly game of deceit and revenge. Musical history is re-orchestrated in Peter Shaffer’s Tony Award-winning tale of music, malice, and madness — Amadeus.

Amadeus

Welcome to Middletown, USA. Population: Stable. Elevation: Same. It’s an ordinary small town. With ordinary people. All living seemingly ordinary lives. And yet, from all this ordinary emerges the extraordinary—the absurd, the comedic, and the beautiful moments of lives being lived. Told with humor and deep compassion, this spiritual successor to Our Town shows us the joy, sadness, small victories and defeats we experience as we go through the ups and downs of being human. This production will introduce the CWRU/CPH MFA Acting Program’s Class of 2026 to local audiences.

Middletown

Get ready for a night of mishaps, mischief, and madcap mania! It’s the opening night of the Cornley Drama Society’s newest production, “The Murder at Haversham Manor,” and things have quickly gone from bad…to utterly disastrous. The troupe’s ambitious 1920s whodunit has everything you never want in a show: falling props, collapsing scenery, an unconscious leading lady, a corpse that can’t play dead, and actors who trip over everything…including their lines. How will this eager ensemble battle against all of the disastrous odds? Will they make it to the final curtain call? An international hit that’s equal parts Monty Python and Sherlock Holmes – The Play That Goes Wrong is full of hilarious perfection.

Cleveland Play House

Apr 26 - May 18, 2025

Fiddler on the Roof

Mar 26 - Apr 5, 2025

Season's Greetings

Cleveland Play House