Love, Sex And The IRS
Pocket Sandwich Theater

Pocket Sandwich Theater presents a hilarious and timely production of Love, Sex, and the I.R.S. by Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore. This play will never win a Pulitzer Prize, but when was the last time you saw a Pulitzer Prize-winning play that made you split your sides laughing for two hours? And who among us doesn't enjoy a laugh at the expense of the I.R.S.? -- especially at this time of year.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Lovers And Executioners
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Theater

Chalk up the current production of Lovers and Executioners as one of life's guilty pleasures. Set in the mid-1660s, this wacky period piece employs modern dialogue (and, sadly, modern profanity) to tell its goofy tale of a French feminist three centuries ahead of her time. The woman in question, Julie, is wrongfully left on an island to die by her jealous husband. She survives and is rescued by a passing ship. Vowing to get revenge, she returns to her homeland in disguise and wreaks all sorts of havoc on her husband's life before revealing her true identity.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Loves And Hours
Old Globe Theaters

The blue-carpeted stage is bare, with a multi-level apron extending to the first row. Narrow vertical panels suspended from the flies will slide in from the wings, at various depths, to define the playing area. Projections will illuminate the panels and the backdrop. The theater and stage darken and the cast of 11 enter, forming a wedding party. The stage lights come up, loves and hours [sic] has begun. This is not only Stephen Metcalfe's play title, it is a wonderful, humorous/serious exploration into what love is all about and those many hours we devote to love.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
Love's Fire
La Jolla Stage

Love's Fire examines Shakespeare's sonnets (118, 75, 140, 153 & 154) through the eyes of four contemporary playwrights: Eric Bogosian, Tony Kushner, Marsha Norman and John Guare. The results is four distinctly different looks at this thing we call love.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
June 2002
Love's Fire
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Love's Fire takes place on a revolving stage to one side backed by a screen for projections (mainly of places) and with room in front for a compartment-filled cage and/or furniture. On the other side, a scrim-screen (behind which a pianist will play music from classical to pop or painting will be highlighted) before other levels. (At one point a stream of water will fall between levels.) In between lies the space for varying props.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Love's Labour's Lost
Richmond Hill Barn Theater

With its four pair of witty lovers, Latin puns, dialect humor and spectacular fifth-act party scene, William Shakespeare's early comedy is rarely staged nowadays, being a cumbersome undertaking even for the most sumptuous budgets. As adapted and performed by the five-member Encore!

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Love's Labour's Lost
Shakespeare Theater

It has been nine years since The Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey last presented Love's Labour's Lost. Their labours are not lost. It is a terrific show.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 2004
Ruined
Manhattan Theater Club - Stage I

 It won't come as a surprise to learn that women and children are the ones who most regrettably suffer the consequences of wars that men make. That they are the most vulnerable victims of outrage and sexual brutality seems to be endemic. But if we do not meaningfully act in response to this horrifying aspect of life during war, civil or otherwise, especially in such places as the Democratic Republic of Congo, it won't be because playwright Lynn Nottage hasn't stirred our hearts and minds.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Battle Hymn
Inside the Ford

 Jim Leonard, author of such previous plays as The Diviners and Crow and Weasel, has built his new work around a kind of American Mother Courage, a young woman named Martha (the superb Suzy Jane Hunt). Unlike Brecht's tough, cynical heroine, Martha is idealistic, hopeful and ever-despairing of mankind's follies and inhumanity – to such an extent that, after having become pregnant during the Civil War, she won't give birth until the world becomes a better, kinder place.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Boleros for the Disenchanted
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

Both a lively Spanish dance and its music, the bolero, came to Puerto Rico influenced by African rhythms and took on a Latin-American beat and romanticism to become distinctive. Boleros for the Disenchanted dramatizes, like that music, a soulful as well as sensual experience of love interchanged. Whereas dancers in Spain stay apart, they dance bolero together in Puerto Rico, just as lovers begin and end up in Jose Rivera's play.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Report on the Banality of Love, A
Nova Southeastern University - Mailman Hollywood Center Auditorium

  If the title seems familiar, it's because A Report on the Banality of Love is an imagined version of the decades-long affair between German philosophers Martin Heidegger, who would become notorious for his pro-Nazi views as Hitler climbed to power, and Hannah Arendt, who would become famous for her Eichmann-trial inspired book "A Report on the Banality of Evil."

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
January 2009
Third Story, The
Lucille Lortel Theater

 The Third Story is a trip to the strange pseudo-noir fantasy world of Charles Busch, the master of fairytale camp, and he, the writer, plays two roles: a Grande Diva and an old witch. His comic timing is impeccable - he's a master. And there's Kathleen Turner, a stylized full-blown Diva in a dominating role. Vocally she's Tallulah Bankhead; physically she's Harvey in "Hairspray." She's great.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
What Would Frankie S. Do?
Manhattan Repertory Theater

 Dan Burkarth, in his noir play, What Would Frankie S. Do?, gives an energetic performance as a classic club owner in debt who is confronted by deadly danger.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Shipwrecked! An Entertainment
59359 Theaters

 "Are you ready to be astonished?" asks Louis de Rougemont, the English 19th century teller of tall tales, as portrayed by the talented, versatile and limber Michael Countryman. A clever and diverting family "entertainment" subtitled, "The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont" (as told by himself), this sublimely staged and performed narrative has more to offer than many a spectacle-filled theatrical.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
I Do! I Do!
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

 Here's your answer to the oft-mentioned question, "Gee, does anyone produce I Do, I Do anymore?' In Milwaukee, they definitely do. They've taken this dinner theater staple and made it into a big production at the Skylight's beautiful Cabot Theater. The Cabot isn't a dinner theater – instead, it's a gem of a European "jewel-box" style theater with two undulating balconies. This elegant atmosphere does tend to "dress up" whatever is happening onstage. However, the basics of I Do, I Do remain the same: a groom, a bride and their marital bed.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Uncle Vanya
CSC Theater

 Perhaps it is these uncertain and troubling times that are encouraging some extremely
unsettling/unorthodox productions of tried-and-true classics of dramatic literature. Recently (on Broadway), the dispassionate, aloof production of Chekhov's The Seagull almost evaporated before my eyes in a glaze of indifference. The current, wildly skewed production of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler is almost saved by Mary Louise Parker's off-the-wall performance in the title role.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
American Plan, The
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

 In Richard Greenberg's The American Plan, a wealthy survivor of the Holocaust spends summers with her daughter across from a popular lake resort in the Catskills. It's the early '60s. The older woman, Eva Adler (Mercedes Ruehl), exerts a profound influence on daughter Lili (Lily Rabe), so when Lili meets a handsome interloper on their dock, Eva's antennae begin vibrating. The young man, Nick Lockridge (Kieran Campion), claims to be a writer for "Time" magazine, but who can really tell?

Diana Barth
Date Reviewed:
January 2009
Third Story, The
Lucille Lortel Theater

 The remarkable Charles Busch has concocted yet another fable with his latest offering, The Third Story, in which he also doubles in two of the major roles. This prolific playwright, noted for past triumphs such as Broadway's The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, one of the longest-running plays in Off-Broadway history (five-year run), here presents a complex, and hilarious, story of a mother and son screenwriting team and their creative struggles.

Diana Barth
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Love Negotiated
Swedenborg Hall

It's so simple. Veronica (Jennie Olson) and Richard (Marc Biagi), a couple for the last few years, invite three of their favorite marrieds or almost-marrieds over for cocktails. It's a tradition. Maria (Melanie Sutherlin) and Mark (Tyler Joshua Herdklotz), a nice engaged couple with just a few deep-seated problems, are invited. There's Luke (Thomas Hall), living with the charming Kate (Teresa Beckwith). And, finally, John (Stephen Rowe) and Ann (Savvy Scopeletti) join the group, with their own serious problems.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Shipwrecked! An Entertainment
59E59 Theaters

 How odd for the highly skilled, realistic playwright, Donald Margulies, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dinner with Friends, also Sight Unseen and Collected Stories, all critically and popularly acclaimed, to turn to writing something with the above-named title.

Diana Barth
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Looking for the Pony
McGinn/Cazale Theater

 One would hardly think that a play dealing with cancer would be an occasion for laughter.Yet playwright Andrea Lepcio has managed to pull off the feat of making such a subject entertaining as well as thoughtful and moving.

Two sisters, unusually close, are both struck a major blow when it is learned that Lauren (Deirdre O'Connell) has discovered a small lump in her breast. It should have been noticed earlier by the doctors, but the medics goofed. (Where have we heard this before?).

Diana Barth
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Two Sisters and a Piano
Nova Southeastern University Mailman Hollywood Center Auditorium

 The Promethean Theater's staging of Nilo Cruz's Two Sisters and a Piano arrives with a pedigree that dates to the world premiere in Coral Gables of Cruz's Anna in the Tropics, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. It's directed by Margaret M. Ledford, who was production stage manager for the 2002 debut of Anna, and playing the eponymous sisters are actresses who played sisters in "Anna": Deborah L. Sherman, now Promethean's producing artistic director, and Ursula Cataan, then billed as Ursula Freundlich.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
You're Welcome America
Cort Theater

Those who can divorce themselves for 85 minutes from whatever feelings of rage and loathing they may have in regards to George W. Bush might find a chuckle or two in Will Ferrell's scarily accurate impersonation of the past United States President. The talented Ferrell, whose comical bits and skits on "Saturday Night Live" expanded to major comedy film roles ("Elf," "Blades of Glory," "The Producers") is once again collaborating with SNL writer Adam McKay (he directed Ferrell in "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby").

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Lucky Stiff
Derby Dinner Playhouse

 Derby Dinner Playhouse's zany, aptly titled Lucky Stiff, a musical mystery and farcical tour de force, is a gladly received antidote for the winter blahs. With great gusto and split-second timing under producer/director Bekki Jo Schneider's deft direction, the Playhouse ensemble plunges headlong into unraveling the deliriously goofy plot.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Bulrusher
New Village Arts Theater

I was hobbin with my apple-head thinking of burlap and bahl hornin' not to Charlie Ball just to hoot over her golden eagles.*

This is a sample of the Boontling dialect of the English language from Eisa Davis' intriguing play, Bulrusher, set in Boonville, California, home of Anderson Valley Brewing Company's legendary Boonville Beers, in Mendocino County.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Driving Miss Daisy
Point Loma Assembly

Playwright Alfred Uhry did not make it easy for a theater and its director to stage the charming Driving Miss Daisy. The play script is much more a film script. There appear to be over 20 scenes in the two acts; I lost count. Locations, locations, locations: Miss Daisy's sitting room, Boolie's office, the various cars, the nursing home, etc. The costumer has to create believable dress from 1948 to 1973. Finally, there is twenty-five years of adult aging.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Love/Stories
Flea Theater

 Notes on Love/Stories (or, But You Will Get Used To It)by Itamar Moses at The Flea Theater, performed by The Bats:

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Our Town
Barrow Street Theater

 The audience is integrated into the action in Chicago-based director David Cromer's staging of Thornton Wilder's classic play, Our Town. At one point, some are asked to be participants. The space at the Barrow Street Theater has been redesigned for the audience to sit on three sides of the playing area. A passage is created for the actors to move between the first row of seats on the stage level and the three rows of stadium seating. This not only creates a sense of intimacy but removes the feeling of them and us.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
February 2009

 Becky Shaw, by Gina Gionfriddo opens with a most irritating, fast-talking performance by David Wilson Barnes. It's a grating exhibition of repulsiveness as tedious reminiscences are shared with his faux sister with nothing happening, and the word "fuck" used as an adjective every other paragraph.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd, The
Mint Theater

 The Mint Theater gives us a beautifully executed production of a gem by D.H. Lawrence, The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd.

The play is quite elemental: an abusive husband, a lonely wife, a lonely neighborhood man who is gentle. It's the classic D.H. Lawrence triangle. The tensions of love and conflict are beautifully staged by director Stuart Howard, and a fight scene is masterfully choreographed by Michael G. Chin.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
This Beautiful City
Vineyard Theater

  This Beautiful City, a play with music, deals with the growth of the evangelical movement in Colorado Springs.

Diana Barth
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Winter's Tale, The
Brooklyn Academy of Music

 Both dramatic and mysterious, The Winter's Tale begins in Sicilia with King Leontes (Simon Russell Beale), for no apparent logical reason, taking it into his head that his pregnant wife Hermione (Rebecca Hall) has been unfaithful to him with his good friend Polixenes (Josh Hamilton), king of Bohemia, and that Hermione's unborn child is the result of that alleged liaison. In spite of protests by various members of the court, who attest to Hermione's loyalty, Leontes will not be dissuaded, resulting in the death of his son Mamillius, by grief, and Hermione's seeming death.

Diana Barth
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Meshuggah-Nuns!
Patio Playhouse

 It all begins in the lobby of Patio Playhouse. The USS Golden Delicious bulletin board adorns the wall featuring the day's schedule of activities. Tonight the passengers are to be underwhelmed by Fiddler on the Roof. Sadly, with the exception of Jewish actor Howard Liszt (Scott Kolod) who plays Tevye, the cast is seasick. Alas, no show!

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
History Boys, The
Cygnet Theater

 After nearly three hours, I felt I had spent a whole semester in Hector's and Irwin's classrooms in The History Boys. Alan Bennett's schoolroom drama (with touches of humor) is part social commentary, part academic heresy, part character study, and part finding that one dislikes many of the characters.

On the other hand, Cygnet Theater's work, under the direction of Sean Murray, is eccentrically staged and brilliantly acted. Thus, I left the play with strongly mixed emotions.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Killer Joe
Compass Theater

 Any comment I make about the Smith family will make me out to be a snob. They live in a trailer just outside Dallas. Sharla Smith (Judy Bauerlein-Mitchell) hasn't cleaned it in years, nor has she gotten any help from Ansel (Mike Sears), her husband. Her stepkids, 22-year-old Chris (Joe Baker), a real piece of work, and his 20-year-old sister Dottie (Amanda Cooley Davis), cute as a button, are not much help. Yes, the Smith family has problems. They are short on cash and intelligence and long on dreams they cannot fulfill.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2009
August: Osage County
Music Box Theater

 I took another look at Tracy Letts' powerful, award-winning play, August: Osage County to experience this year's cast with Estelle Parsons now playing the mother. It is still a shattering three-and-a-half-hour piece of rural drama. The intricate family melodies in contrapuntal dysfunctional clashings at this family get-together in Oklahoma, make for a wonderfully directed (by Anna D. Shapiro) slice of twisted life with a super ensemble cast.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2009
Shipwrecked! An Entertainment
North Coast Repertory Theater

 Donald Margulies' Shipwrecked! An Entertainment - The Amazing Adventures of Louis De Rougemont (As Told by Himself) tells it all. There is a wonderful delight in discovering that you have been completely and utterly taken in by a con. Louis De Rougemont is a brilliant con artist. Intercontinental communication at the end of the 19th century took a bit of time. He was able to convince a lot of people of his grand exploits.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Savannah Disputation, The
Playwrights Horizons

 Here's the setup for Evan Smith's The Savannah Disputation at Playwrights Horizons: two sisters, one acerbic (Dana Ivey), one simple, sweet and quirky (Marylouise Burke), both Catholic, are visited by a young, spunky Born-Again Christian (Kellie Overbey) who wants to convert them. The sisters invite her and their priest (Reed Birney) to dinner.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2009
Humor Abuse
City Center - Stage II

 Lorenzo Pisoni was stunning as the major horse in the recent production of Equus. Now Manhattan Theater Club is presenting him in his one-man show, Humor Abuse, his life as a clown, starting at age 3, with his father in the Pickle Family Circus. So for over thirty years, this superb performer has been honing and perfecting his circus skills, which he tells us about and shows us in this captivating, marvelous show. He is handsome and charming, and his warm, unpretentious performance is dazzling in its complexity and his mastery of the genre.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2009
Ameriville
Actors Theater of Louisville

 Four extraordinary actors performing as the Universes ensemble delivered a powerful inspirational opening for Actors Theater of Louisville's 33rd annual Humana Festival of New American Plays with their incisive, gripping ruminations called Ameriville.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2009

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