Moby Dick
Stratford Shakespeare Festival - Studio Theater

 To be fair and honest, I should begin by noting that I am not an admirer of the much-acclaimed playwright and director Morris Panych, neither as a playwright nor as a director. I usually find his work to be arch, pretentious and clumsy. However, this work is so intertwined in its direction, movement and choreography, it is almost impossible to determine who created what; so I suppose I must credit Panych with this Moby Dick's overall inventiveness and fascinating movement and design as well as blaming him for its ultimate incoherence and tedium.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
August 2008
Vanities
Pasadena Playhouse

 "Do no damage," Hippocrates advised his fellow doctors. The same could be said, in a theatrical context, for Vanities, the wildly popular 1976 comedy that ran for 1,785 performances Off-Broadway and has now been turned into a musical.

In development for the past two years, Vanities – A New Musical checked into the Pasadena Playhouse for a six-week pre-Broadway run. 

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Palmer Park
Stratford Shakespeare Festival - Studio Theater

 Playwright Joanna McClelland Glass refers to Palmer Park as a "Lament for a Lost Ideal," and it is a very personal lament as well as one with universal significance. The title of her Tony-nominated play from the 1980s, Play Memory, comes to mind because this is a memory play about a group of idealistic young Detroit parents in the 1960s who tried to combat the artificial integration of bussed school attendance and create instead a genuinely integrated community reflected in the diversity of its integrated public schools.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
August 2008
Home
Actors Theater of Louisville

 Cephus Miles, the sweet-natured, simple hero of Samm-Art Williams' Home, is an African-American farmer who loves his land of hot, sticky tobacco fields in Cross Roads, N.C. He just wants to marry his girlfriend Pattie Mae and stay there always. But fate propels him into prison when, as a Vietnam War draftee, he refuses to kill because he cannot go against his Biblical teachings to "love thy neighbor." His odyssey takes him to a big city where he finds work loading trucks at a shirt factory but is fired when his employer learns he is an ex-convict.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
January 2000
Homework
Crossroads Theater Company

 TV standout Kim Coles ("Living Single") opened the Crossroads season with a comedy she co-wrote with Charles Randolph-Wright about three childhood girlfriends (all played by Ms. Coles) from Brooklyn. There is the beautiful Jamaican immigrant Angela, the intelligent and sassy Shakronda, and the sweet and naive Kimme. Ms. Coles' play follows the young girls through grade school, high school, college and their respective careers. It is a heartwarming story in which one finds fame, another success and the third finds herself. Ms.

Donald Collester
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Honky Tonk Angels
North Coast Repertory Theater

 They say that every country song tells a story. A quick scan of the song titles in North Coast Rep's latest, Honky Tonk Angels, does tell the story. Ted Swindley, who also created Always...Patsy Cline, picked the right songs for his three singers. "Stand By Your Man" and "Don't Come Home a Drinkin'" fit Angela (Kelli Maguire) who lives in a double-wide in Texas.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
Hoot Owl Hootenanny
Rosewood Center for Family Arts: Robyn Flatt Studio Theater

 Halloween theater fare has never been better than the Kathy Burks Theater of Puppetry Arts' presentation of Hoot Owl Hootenanny, created in 1992 by troupe members Ted Kincaid, Sally Fiorello, Patricia Long, Kathy Burks, and B. Wolf.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Hot Flashes
National Black Theater Festival

 Hot Flashes was the first half of an evening called "Divas of Performance," brought to the National Black Theater Festival by San Francisco-based Cultural Odyssey. A mainstay of that company, Rhodessa Jones uses her 50th birthday as a pretext for celebrating the mixed blessing -- and the scorching curse -- of menopause. Clad in flaming red vinyl, Jones has exuberance to burn.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Hotel Cassiopeia
Actors Theater of Louisville

 The late Joseph Cornell, a strangely shy textile worker (though from a comfortably middle-class family until his father died) who collected bric-a-brac, cut-outs of birds, movie images, doll heads, small wrapped packages, and star maps along with other ephemera and preserved them in artfully arranged wooden boxes he made in his basement, is on display himself now at Actors Theater of Louisville.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Hotel on Marvin Gardens, A
Cabot Theater - Broadway Theater Center

 The official opening of Milwaukee's fall theater season now opens in August, a month when many Milwaukeeans are still distracted by a nice day at the lake, or perhaps are planning to attend one of the superlative summer festivals that enliven the city at this time of year. In mid-August, there's also a very popular food and music festival at the local zoo, which packs in thousands of visitors and probably makes the animals wonder what in the world is going on.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2002
House And Garden
Goodman Theater

 Alan Ayckbourn must be as fond of puzzles as Anthony Shaffer was reputed to have been. Having demonstrated his expertise at writing comedies that leap through time, he now presents us with two plays that leap through space. The plot of House and of Garden concerns itself with crises affecting participants in a spring fair on the country estate of a British bigwig. House shows us the events unfolding indoors, and Garden, those occurring outdoors at the same time.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2001
House Of Blue Leaves, The
Bunbury Theater

 The House of Blue Leaves, John Guare's sad/funny, tragically hilarious farce, garnered some impressive awards, including best American play of the season, in its 1971 off-Broadway debut. Bunbury Theater's splendid revival of this now-classic work doesn't miss a beat while propelling the audience through a roller-coaster ride that could go off the track at any moment. Guare's plot, he has said, stemmed from a real-life visit by Pope Paul VI to New York in 1965 when the Pontiff's motorcade passed along Queens Boulevard on the way to the United Nations.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
June 2000
House of Yes, The
Poway Performing Arts Company

 Dysfunctional (def.): Malfunctioning, behavior patterns that undermine the stability of a social system.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
House of Yes, The
Off Tryon Theater

 To see outstanding talents struggling with a flawed script, head up to Off-Tryon Theater in NoDa and you'll find a powerfully acted production of a dubious comedy, Wendy MacLeod's The House of Yes. Meghan Lowther stars as Jackie-O, prime nutball in a radically dysfunctional household. MacLeod's weird walpurgisnacht on the 25th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination is lashed by incest, infidelity and a hurricane. Glenn Griffin directs grimly, so the eccentrics onstage never strike us as witty or goofy.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
How I Learned To Drive
Florida Studio Theater

 Within an environment of autos, their parts, and everything `60s that can be associated with them, in pastels scratched out from beneath an inky surface, we witness Li'l Bit's ride down her life's highway. Born to a family that assigned nicknames on the basis of genitalia, Bit boasts an outstanding bosom, whose most ardent admirer is Uncle Peck, a pedophile who'll co-map her journey.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
How I Learned To Drive
Summerfun Theater

 Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, which has won a slew of prestigious drama awards including a l998 Pulitzer, explores the causes and effects of an incestuous relationship on the lives of a young girl (Li'l Bit) and her Uncle (Peck). Narrated by the l8-year-old Li'l Bit, the play presents multiple perspectives through a series of flashbacks spanning the 60s and 70s, which allow the viewer to construct their own understanding of what occurred.

Kathryn Wylie-Marques
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
How I Learned To Drive
Booth Playhouse

 Long before her bra cup size reaches full flower, the well-endowed Li'l Bit is persistently pursued by her Uncle Peck, and moderately -- but not brutally -- violated. Peck pounces during the climactic driving lesson while Li'l Bit's hands are holding on tight to the steering wheel of a moving car. It's a strange, eerie little scene, queasily staged by director Steve Umberger. The lasting effect of this backroad groping is memorably articulated by Li'l Bit in her narration: "That was the last day I lived in my own body." But Vogel short circuits a fierce visceral response.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
May 1999
How I Learned To Drive
Arena Stage - Kreeger Theater

 During the powerful last scene of Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, in the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage, Rhea Seehorn astounds as the Teenage Greek Chorus playing the heroine as a child. Although in her twenties, she looks preadolescent as she stares out wide-eyed at the audience, wearing a smocked dress and bobby socks. A few feet away, her adult alter ego, Li'l Bit (Deidre Lovejoy), reenacts her molestation at the age of eleven by Uncle Peck (Kurt Rhoads) during her first "driving lesson," which marked the last day she remembers inhabiting her body.

Barbara Gross
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
How I Learned To Drive
OnStage Playhouse

 Paula Vogel's difficult-to-watch, Pulitzer–winning How I Learned to Drive, is the current offering of On Stage Playhouse. The piece is not recommended for the under-17 crowd for good reason; Vogel explores pedophilia in depth.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
How The Other Half Loves
Poway Performing Arts Company

 In comedy, timing is everything. Of course, it also helps to have a brilliantly written script, crisp, properly-paced direction and a cast totally into their roles. PowPAC's production of Alan Ayckbourn's How the Other Half Loves meets all of this criteria. The script calls for the living areas of two families with action in both areas at the same time. Both areas occupy the same space -- the breadth and depth of PowPAC's stage. James Caputo's set accomplishes absolute separation of living spaces, as realized by Rosemary King's excellent crafting of the walls.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2002
How The Other Half Loves
Sunshine Brooks Theater

 I visited an old friend last night, born 36 years ago, sired by Alan Ayckbourn. This friend, currently at the Sunshine Brooks Theater in Oceanside, is How the Other Half Loves. I usually fret over shows repeated ad nauseam, year after year. This show, last seen six years ago at PowPAC, is a welcome, if belated, repeat.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
How The Other Half Loves
Venice Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 Despite the tackiness of their respective yellow and purple living areas, wealthy Frank and Fiona are upscale, while recent parents Bob and Teresa are on the way up in the same business. On the sly, Fiona and Bob have been up to some monkey business. To excuse their dalliance, they tell their respective spouses that they've been out late with a different couple in marital difficulties. As farcical luck would have it, the latter get drawn into the former couples' duplicities when invited to their homes for dinner.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Scripps Ranch - Legler Benbough Theater

$ucce$$!

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2002
How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 Golden Apple takes a period musical with book and score as fresh as today and demonstrates How to Succeed in (Show) Business -- with an exclamation point! Seldom have a cast been so uniformly right for their "jobs," led by appealing comer Finch (Larry Raben, like his role, a star at whatever he does). You agree as he sings to himself, "I Believe in You." What fun to watch Finch climb the corporate ladder, while nepotistic nemesis Bud Frump keeps sawing away at the rungs.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2001
Hurlyburly
Le Chat Noir

 In the canon of Hollywood-is-full-of-greedheads plays, David Rabe's 1984 excoriation of tinseltown decadence ranks as one of the most potentially tedious, its boys-will-be-pigs antics nowadays almost as quaint as those of Sinatra and his frat buddies.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
June 2002
Hysteria
Florida Studio Theater

 Having been asked by Florida Studio Theater not to reveal the identity of the character who gets the action going in Hysteria, as well as not to talk about the play's surreal elements, what's a critic to do? Well, I can tell you that it imagines how, in Sigmund Freud's last days living in London, while suffering from cancer of the jaw, he deals with visits from his doctor, a mysterious woman, and Salvador Dali.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Hysteria
Steppenwolf Theater

 You are in my study, not some boulevard farce! protests the Father Of Modern Psychology, but nowadays, the mere mention of Sigmund Freud's name constitutes a joke, and so a certain vaudeville atmosphere is unavoidable.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
I Am My Own Wife
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz Theater

 This story within a story in I Am My Own Wife is of the playwright discovering Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, whose story he dramatizes both directly and through an intermediary. As a boy named Lothar, Charlotte donned his lesbian aunt's clothes and felt, with her encouragement, the woman he really was and would be. Eventually as Charlotte, he spent a life in drag. And what a life!

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
I Am My Own Wife
Actors Theater of Louisville

 Lothar Berfelde, the German boy who reinvented himself as transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, managed the astounding feat of living openly as a cross-dresser through two of the world's most repressive regimes -- the Nazis and the Communists. "It seems to me you're an impossibility. You shouldn't even exist," playwright Doug Wright wrote her in seeking her cooperation for doing a play about her. That now-famous play, I Am My Own Wife, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the 2004 Tony Award, is receiving an arresting production at Actors Theater of Louisville.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
I Am My Own Wife
Dallas Theater Center

 I Am My Own Wife is a one-man tour-de-force covering the life of East German transvestite, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (nee Luther Berfelde.) It is superbly enacted by up-and-coming Canadian actor, Damien Atkins, who plays 35 different roles. Atkins is an incredible mimic and turns in a highly nuanced performance.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
I Did! I Did!
Theatrx

 First there was The Fourposter, then along came I Do! I Do!, and now it's I Did! I Did! In the last year the singing/acting couple, Cheryl and Sam Warner, have performed the last two shows -- earlier, the always-popular I Do! I Do! at Patio Playhouse and currently, I Did! I Did! at Theatrx.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2002
I Do! I Do!
Patio Playhouse

 I Do! I Do! is, like Love Letters, a very personal experience. Each production takes on much of the personality, and interpretation, of the players and director. Patio Playhouse's current production is under the directorial leadership of Jay Mower and stars recent newlyweds Cheryl and Sam Warner. Add choreographer Kathleen "Kat" Perhach, music director Marianne Kripps, and the talents of accompanist Dylan Snodgrass, and Patio has a winner.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
I Got Merman
Majestic Theater

 Thanksgiving came early to the Dallas Summer Musicals on October 28, 2003 in the form of a turkey called "I Got Merman". The loosely-woven framework masquerading as a book is one of the worse attempts at a book musical I have ever encountered. A more apt title for this show would be "Four Very Talented Singers in Search of a Musical." The premise is three female singers (Becca Ayers, Cindy Marchionda, and Carol Swarbrick) channeling Ethel Merman during a rehearsal for a show about her career. Mr. Fisk (Jeffrey Biering) is their accompanist.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
I Hate Hamlet
Royal George Theater

 Since closing in New York amid extracurricular scandal, I Hate Hamlet has played all over the country, even in theaters that haven't yet done Lend Me A Tenor. And why not? Paul Rudnick's satire-and-sentiment play pokes fun at crass Hollywood commercialism and pretentious New York artsiness. It promises fulfilling sex to the young and old, the chaste and unchaste, the living and the dead.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 1995
I Hate Hamlet
Royal George Theater

 I Hate Hamlet is a sitcom with a gimmick: the ghost of great American actor John Barrymore. As long as Barrymore's on stage, flamboyantly declaiming, the show has some entertainment value. Otherwise, Paul Rudnick's sometimes funny and literate comedy, is safe, routine stuff. The new occupant of an apartment once owned by the Great Profile is Andrew, a young TV star. Andrew is now fearfully preparing to play Hamlet in a theatre-in-the-park revival. During a seance conducted by Andrew's real estate agent, Barrymore emerges from his full-length portrait over the fireplace.

Richard Allen Eisenhardt
Date Reviewed:
December 1995
I Love New York
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 What could have turned into a logistical nightmare - culling just the right songs out of 1500 devoted to or mentioning New York City - has become a dream for those who love that "Wonderful Town." Of course that song's included in this revue centered on the area extolled in another hit tune: "Manhattan." Two vibrant couples trip the light fantastic not only on the "Sidewalks of New York" but also in "The Bowery," on "42nd Street," right on through "East Side, West Side."

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2005
I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change
Florida Studio Theater Mainstage

 Reportedly, this pleasant but innocuous compilation of skits and musical numbers is tops among nonprofit shows nationwide this season. A company of four portray twosomes, with the unifying theme being heterosexual(!) relationships from dating through marriage to geriatric widowhood.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2000
I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change
Theater Three

 At Friday's opening of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change at Theater Three, when musical director Terry Dobson asked the capacity audience in T3s 90-seat downstairs theatre, how many people had never seen this play, only about 20 raised their hands. This attests to the popularity of this humorous musical revue about the relationships between the sexes. First produced at Theater Three in 2000, it ran continuously for three years. Each year, T3 artistic director Jac Alder reprises it for a limited run.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change
Mary G. Steiner Egyptian Theater

 Last summer the Egyptian Theater Company got a great idea: Why not stage a couple of musicals in repertory throughout the summer? That way, short-term visitors would get to enjoy one show, and residents or those who were around longer could see a couple of them. They called the program Summer TheatreFest, and the idea was so popular, this season it returns with two new, quite diverse musicals.

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
I Ought To Be In Pictures
Scripps Ranch - Legler Benbough Theater

 Neil Simon usually reveals our foibles, while making us laugh. I Ought To Be In Pictures explores the relationship between a father and his daughter, whom he hadn't seen in 16 years. Herb (David Gallagher) left his family in Brooklyn for the fast lane of motion pictures in Hollywood. Unannounced daughter Libby (Michelle DeFrancesco) enters his life. Herb, a writer with massive writer's block, is facing problems in his relationship with Steffy (Connie Terwilliger).

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2002

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