Once Upon a One More Time
Marquis Theater

Mix the fairy-tale revisionism of Into the Woods with the tween pop jukebox format of & Juliet, add a dash of female empowerment from Six and a smidge of meta story-within-a-story sensibility from Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, and you have Once Upon a One More Time, the derivative but entertaining new musical at the Marquis. Employing “the music performed and recorded by Britney Spears” for its score, Once has a built-in audience of the Britney Army, but for non-inductees it’s still a fizzy summer delight. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Wet Brain
Playwrights Horizons

After you’ve seen as many dysfunctional families plays as this critic has, you may begin to doubt the absolute truth of Tolstoy’s famous maxim that each unhappy family is unique. They tend to blur together, and you can’t tell one weepy clan stage saga from another. The woes of the Hispanic, Arizona-based family in John J. Caswell, Jr.’s surprisingly spicy, funny, and gut-wrenching play Wet Brain, a co-production of Playwrights Horizons and MCC Theater, may be familiar, but the way Caswell conveys their fractured dynamic is inventive and different.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Days of Wine and Roses
Atlantic Theater - Linda Gross Theater

The potential was there: a musical based on “Days of Wine and Roses,” the searing 1962 film detailing an alcoholic couple’s smash-up and painful partial road to recovery. The creative team and cast are impressive. The score is by Tony winner Adam Guettel (The Light in the Piazza, grandson of Richard Rodgers and son of Mary Rodgers), the book by Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss, Blue Window), direction by Michael Greif (Rent), and to star two of the brightest musical performers on the boards today—Brian d’Arcy James and Kelli O’Hara.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Surfer Boys, The
Florida Studio Theater - Goldstein Cabaret

Basically a concert show, The Surfer Boys is Brian Noonan’s conception of a tribute to The Beach Boys and an attempt to create music, especially their hits of the 1960s. All but a few of the included tunes are earlier and later. Everything typifies the
performers’ styles and their era’s concerns, but there’s little drama in the music or snatches of plot.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Symphonic Tribute to Elvis
Pavillion

As one of the world’s premier outdoor amphitheaters since Frank Sinatra was its Grand Opening star on April 28, 1990, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands, Texas, has had no shortage of blockbuster talents gracing its stage. And while Elvis Presley had long before predeceased the arrival of this splendid venue, it seemed very much as though he arrived there last Wednesday night.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Holmes and Watson
St. Christopher's Episcopal Church

Acacia Theater Company, Milwaukee’s Christian faith-based theater company, offers theatergoers a scintillating mystery by playwright Jeffrey Hatcher in Holmes and Watson. The play conjures yet another adventure of the great fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his right-hand man, Dr. Watson. And more than a few mysteries are uncovered along the way.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Tootsie
Marcus Performing Arts Center

Milwaukee’s current season of Broadway shows ended in mid-June with a non-Equity production of Tootsie, which recently closed at the Marcus Performing Arts Center. Tootsie the musical is based on the 1982 hit film, starring Dustin Hoffman, in which he attempts to overcome obstacles to get hired as an actor – even if it means posing as a woman.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Shear Madness
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

The landlady of Shear Madness beauty salon has just been scissored to death outside. Who dunnit? If you attend Florida Studio Theater’s “Shear Madness” production, you will decide. First, a “pre-show” introduces six living characters as they appear with voiced-over biographical detail in a bright salon with working sinks, etc. Then the activity turns into action as the search for the murderer begins.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Grey House
Lyceum Theater

You know you’re in trouble when one of the first lines of a thriller is “I’ve seen this movie before.” That unoriginal piece of dialogue is spoken by Henry, half of a pair of classic victims, as he and his wife Max stumble into a remote mountain cabin after crashing their car. Anyone who has ever watched a horror flick will known something very bad is going to happen. This is the overly familiar premise of Levi Holloway’s bizarre, limp spook show Grey House now at the Lyceum, though probably not for very long.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Parade
Ambassador Theater

Alfred Uhry’s musical Parade, co-conceived by Hal Prince with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, is now playing to sell-out crowds and rave reviews, and back on Broadway after 25 years (for a limited run through Sunday, August 6) at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater. The musical took its first Broadway bow at Lincoln Center Theater in 1998 under the direction of Prince where it won a Tony Award for best score and book. It ran 39 previews and 84 regular performances.

Ed Rubin
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Authentic Tribute to Cash and Orbison, An
Crighton Theater

An assortment of out-of-town commitments had taken me away from Texas for just over two years, so it was a dream come true to at last find myself back enjoying a fine meal at Joe’s Italian Restaurant in Conroe, before taking an after dinner stroll past the inviting town’s various gift shops, pubs, and antique stores, on the way to the historic and beautifully restored Crighton Theater for the evening’s concert.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, The
James Earl Jones Theater

When it opened in 1964, Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window must have been quite jolting. The playwright’s 1959 Broadway debut A Raisin in the Sun was somewhat challenging. As the first play by an African-American woman to play what was then known as the Great White Way,  Raisin may have shaken traditional theatergoers with its predominantly black cast and tackling of such issues as housing discrimination and institutional racism.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
June 2023
New York, New York
St. James Theater

 I'm not originally from New York, but having lived here for fifty years, yes! I am a New Yorker. This is very much in the spirit of New York, New York, when the finale rings out over the audience, and there is singing, cheering, and standing in the house. True, this is not the finest musical ever presented, but there are familiar songs ("Marry Me," "A Quiet Thing," "The World Goes 'Round") and the leading lady, Anna Uzele, gives a performance that no theater goer should miss.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Drowsy Chaperone, The
Class Act Theater

It was exactly one quarter-century ago when I had the first of what would be dozens of opportunities to review the splendid musical productions of the Class Act company. Now, 25 years later, the organization continues to amaze with the astonishing, Broadway-worthy musical productions it produces year after year. The latest such success story is its absolutely wonderful The Drowsy Chaperone, now playing for one last weekend at the Class Act Theater in The Woodlands, Texas.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Greatest Hits Album: Side B, The
Music Box at Queensbury Theater

A brief transportation delay in reaching the new location may have caused me to miss the first moments of the Opening Show from the Music Box Theater in its cozy and attractive new house located in the Queensbury Theater complex of Houston’s chic and increasingly popular CityCentre neighborhood.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Club Dada / Kabaret Kaput
Dixon Place

Club DaDA/ Kabaret Kaput is appearing for five performances at Dixon Place in NYC. It calls itself "a 'cabaret' in the Kurt Weil Weimar sense of the word,” but audiences expecting the Kit Kat Club from Cabaret will be disappointed. The two performers haven't bothered to hire a trio or even a pianist; they sing accompanied by recorded instrumentals. When an audience buys tickets to a cabaret, they expect cabaret, not karaoke. Singing to recorded tracks is unacceptable at open mic night; in cabaret it's unknown.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical
Broadhurst Theater

Like most jukebox bio-musicals, A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical is an excuse to play the subject’s song catalogue to an audience of rabid fans. Anthony McCarten’s book hits the usual bullet points—rise to fame, troubled marriages, conflicted and reflective old age—and provides intros to the smash hits. All is staged smoothly by Michael Mayer.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Shucked
Nederlander Theater

Wanting nothing more than to crack some jokes and entertain us, Shucked offers us a heaping helping of hospitality and plenty of yucks. That’s all and, in this case, it’s enough.

Set in the mythical rural paradise of Cobb County, somewhere Down South, this hootenanny of hilarity is thin on story but heavy on puns and one-liners. The plot centers on a failed corn crop, blighted romance, and a visiting con man who is less honorable than Professor Harold Hill.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
New York, New York
St. James Theater

The Playbill for New York, New York lists the show as being “inspired by” the 1977 flick of the same name.” That Martin Scorsese opus wasn’t an ode to the glories of the titular burg, as the stage musical ascribes to be. The movie was basically a weepie, detailing the rocky courtship, marriage and break-up of volatile bandleader Jimmy Doyle (Robert DeNiro) and scrappy chanteuse Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli). The new book by David Thompson and Sharon Washington loads on three more main plotlines and provides a racial twist to the prime story.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Rent
Hobby Center

It was bold. It was brassy. It was rowdy. It was brazen. It was "in-your-face." And for much of the time, it was musically quite loud.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Bad Cinderella
Imperial Theater

Unfortunately, Bad Cinderella is just not any good. It's hard to believe this is from the pen of the brilliant and acclaimed Andrew Lloyd Webber. The songs are immediately forgettable, and the plot is stodgy and depressing. There's a whiff of & Juliet, but none of the playfulness.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Knight of the Burning Pestle, The
Lucille Lortel Theater

Shakespeare eclipsed the other Elizabethan dramatists, but their plays are nonetheless very rewarding. If they're less rewarding than Shakespeare, they're also less challenging — the syntax is simpler. And being more accessible is itself a strength.

Francis Beaumont was one of the best of these playwrights He wrote The Knight of the Burning Pestle in 1607. It's a terrific comedy. It uses the technique of a play-within-a-play several years after Shakespeare experimented with it (and then abandoned it) in The Taming of the Shrew.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Man of La Mancha
Florida State University for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Asolo Rep claims its version of Man of La Mancha is modern and different from the original play and musical, set in Spain at the time of the Inquisition. It’s still structurally and meaningfully a play within a play about a hero who writes his dream about a character who pursues an “impossible” one. Both author Cervantes and his idealistic—if quite unrealistic— “quester” Don Quixote have to convert their greedy fellow prisoners so that they supplement the lead’s dramatic roles rather than take his possessions or power.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Anything Goes
Class Act Theater

It was Thomas Wolfe who famously wrote, "You Can't Go Home Again." But I'm thinking that maybe he was wrong, because after two of our nation's Pandemic Years and assorted family matters that required my presence back in New York, I find myself blessed to finally be back in Texas reviewing a marvelous Class Act Production, as I have been able to so many times since back in the 1990's. This time around it is the always delightful Cole Porter musical, Anything Goes, which I last saw this group perform more than a decade ago back in 2012.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Peter Pan Goes Wrong
Ethel Barrymore Theater

“Dying is easy; comedy is hard.” So spoke actor Edmond Gwenn at the end of his life. No further proof is needed than Peter Pan Goes Wrong. The actors run up and down the aisles yelling before the play begins. Then, they run around the stage yelling their lines as they perform slapsticks to the shrieking delight of the audience.

Before the play even begins, the set gives away what’s to follow. It’s decidedly wonky, with broad pink stripes, a triple bunkbed, a huge trunk, and bowling pins far stage left.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Summer, 1976
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

David Auburn’s Summer, 1976 is not exactly shattering but does offer amazing actors Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht a chance to display their incomparable skills in bringing two keenly observed women to life on stage. Auburn’s two-hander produced by Manhattan Theater Club chronicles the friendship of Diana (Linney) and Alice (Hecht) which lasts for a few weeks during the titular season at an Ohio university. Diana is an art teacher and Alice is the wife of an economics professor.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Prima Facie
John Golden Theater

Handing in one of the acting highlights of this or any other Broadway season is Jodie Comer in Suzie Miller’s explosive solo play Prima Facie, at the Golden Theater after an Olivier-winning run in London. Comer runs the proverbial gamut of emotions from A to way beyond Z as Tessa, a high-powered British barrister who mostly represents criminal defendants accused of sexual assault. The tables are turned when Tessa herself is the victim of an attack by a fellow lawyer and she must undergo the degrading process of seeking justice in a male-dominated court system.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Hadestown
Marcus Performing Arts Center

When this critic first saw Hadestown on Broadway (with fellow UW-Madison alum André de Shields in the key role of Hermès), it didn’t seem like a show with a broad-enough appeal to tour. But what do I know? Hadestown won 8 Tony Awards and became a sensation that still draws crowds of nearly 100% of capacity on Broadway.

It seems as though the ancient Greek love story between simple Orpheus and strong-minded Eurydice resonates with audiences everywhere. The national tour that played in Milwaukee recently had its final performance on May 7.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Good Night, Oscar
Belasco Theater

The 2022-23 Broadway season ends with a trio of productions--Prima Facie, Summer 1976, and Good Night, Oscar--featuring dazzling star-level performances. Sean Hayes delivers one of the most powerful and versatile turns in a straight Broadway play in many seasons in Doug Wright’s somewhat flawed, but ultimately absorbing and entertaining play, Good Night, Oscar, now at the Belasco after a run at Chicago’s Goodman Theater.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
White Girl in Danger
Tony Kiser Theater

Throwing in just about everything including the kitchen sink in its examination of how African-American characters are marginalized in mass media, White Girl in Danger, Michael R. Jackson’s riotous follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning A Strange Loop, is a piercingly satiric send-up of soap operas—with more stories than the Freedom Tower. We’re inside a TV drama universe ruled over by the Great White Writer.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
May 2023
Sweeney Todd
Lunt-Fontanne Theater

I am now a confirmed, dyed-in-the-wool Grobanite. How anyone can experience the current production of Sweeney Todd and not be totally blown away by the performance of Josh Groban is beyond me. This is not, as advertised, “a musical,” but rather, an opera, with Groban’s clear baritone voice (some style him as a tenor) ringing out through the theater.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2023
Parade
Bernard B. Jacobs Theater

Perhaps the most powerful moment in Parade, the stunning revival of Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown’s 1998 musical about the infamous Leo Frank case, is a silent one. Ben Platt, who gives a stirring performance as Frank, a man falsely accused of murdering a young girl, sits silently high up on Dane Laffrey’s evocative set, lit by Heather Gilbert to suggest a jail cell. Platt remains seated at a simple table throughout the intermission with a look of desperation on his face.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2023
Good Night, Oscar
Belasco Theater

Who would have thought? Super adorable Jack McFarland of “Will & Grace,” who had all of us convulsed with laughter because of his inimitable comic timing, would star onstage and blow us all away with his brilliant performance as witty, neurotic Oscar Levant? Would we even know that this is Sean Hayes? Who would have thought that he’d have the audience transfixed by playing “Rhapsody in Blue” on the piano, and that he’d have a roaring standing ovation?

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2023
Dancin'

(see review(s) under BOB FOSSE'S DANCIN'

Bob Fosse's Dancin'
Music Box Theater

It’s the casual, seemingly unobserved movements that makes the spectacular revival of Bob Fosse’s 1978 revue Dancin’ so special. Yes, there are thrilling feats of terpsichory with backflips, leaps, jetes, and extensions all over Robert Brill’s set of moving, towering scaffolds, but there are just as many small, intimate gestures that sent a thrill up my spine.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2023
Sweeney Todd
Lunt-Fontanne Theater

At the 1988 Tony Awards, the big battle was between shows composed by the two respective behemoths of the American and British musical theater: Stephen Sondheim’s twist on fairy tales, Into the Woods, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s take on a horror classic, Phantom of the Opera. Despite winning Best Book for James Lapine and Best Score for Sondheim, Woods lost the Best Musical prize to Lloyd Webber’s more popular Phantom, which is finally closing soon after a 35-year run.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2023
Bad Cinderella
Imperial Theater

At the 1988 Tony Awards, the big battle was between shows composed by the two respective behemoths of the American and British musical theater: Stephen Sondheim’s twist on fairy tales, Into the Woods, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s take on a horror classic, Phantom of the Opera. Despite winning Best Book for James Lapine and Best Score for Sondheim, Woods  lost the Best Musical prize to Lloyd Webber’s more popular Phantom, which is finally closing soon after a 35-year run.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2023
Coast Starlight, The
Lincoln Center - Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

Theater is the ultimate medium of the imagination, more so than film or TV. With the latter two, there is the potential to travel literally anywhere in the world (or the universe in fact), but the audience must work their minds to transform the four corners of the stage into the four corners of the earth. The stage provides more magical experiences than the ones offered before the large or small screens since you are a collaborator on making the trip and not just a viewer looking through the cinema camera lens.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2023
Life of Pi
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater

Theater is the ultimate medium of the imagination, more so than film or TV. With the latter two, there is the potential to travel literally anywhere in the world (or the universe in fact), but the audience must work their minds to transform the four corners of the stage into the four corners of the earth. The stage provides more magical experiences than the ones offered before the large or small screens since you are a collaborator on making the trip and not just a viewer looking through the cinema camera lens.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2023
Camelot
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

Camelot, the musical adaptation of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, has always been a “problem” show. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s lush, romantic score which includes such evergreen standards as “If Ever I Would Leave You,” “How to Handle a Woman,” and the optimistic title tribute to an idealized socially just society, has been overshadowed by Lerner’s confusing and diffuse book.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2023

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