It was Oscar Wilde who penned the phrase, "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

Only a fool would protest that that very phrase is the raison d'être behind this very section. So it's fitting that this item from the Wall Street Journal deals with the Great Lakes Theater Festival's repertory production of Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" and Shakespeare's "Othello."

Written by WSJ drama critic Terry Teachout, the review glowingly covers recent productions of the plays at Cleveland's Hanna Theatre in PlayhouseSquare.

"Cleveland's Great Lakes Theater Festival is mounting handsome stagings of both plays in collaboration with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, where the two productions originated this summer, and as I watched them in close succession earlier this week, I was struck by how smoothly they fit together."

Of the Shakespeare production, Teachout wrote, "This is a blood-and-thunder 'Othello' that roars down the track at several hundred miles an hour, and though it's short on poetry, it lacks nothing in the way of thrills and chills."

In addition to singling out for praise set designer Nayna Ramey, the critic goes on to wax poetic about the theater itself.

"Built in 1921, the Hanna Theatre was taken over two years ago by the Great Lakes Theater Festival. The original 1,421-seat proscenium-arch house has now been turned into a fully up-to-date 548-seat thrust-stage theater whose performing space and public areas flow together seamlessly, thus encouraging audience members to show up early and use the theater as a meeting place. (They do, too.) Rarely have I seen a happier marriage of old and new."

Read the rest of the playbill here.