Trying out different concepts I was still missing the real thing. The turning point was when I found the Neptune/Posseidon background image - just what the doctor ordered! The design process sped up and the site started coming to life.
To avoid clutter I organized the plays so that each of them appears only once on the home page. Every item comes with a short excerpt and with a review chunk (if any), so they give a brief introduction to the visitors. The Masonry jQuery plugin was used to make the layout look less regular.
On the detail pages images, videos and critics are collected from various performances. Such organization allows easy information lookup and it is just perfect for this kind of content. Much better than having the oldschool Plays, Gallery, Videos and Reviews pages, isn't it?
A new logo was also designed. It is type-only — the "Establo" font I used is so characteristic and recognizable that I felt in love with it instantly :)
Update 2018: the site was moved from WordPress to a static site created with Eleventy. It's blazing fast now and very lightweight.