Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

There's not much to cheer about regarding the new musical, Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life. Once you get past Rivera's relatively brief incarnations as her best characters from years past (such as Anita, the role she created in West Side Story, the original Velma in the musical Chicago, or the title role in Kiss of the Spider Woman) there's not much left to say. If those tidbits are enough to hold your attention for almost two hours, then by all means see Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
Evening of Intimate Magic, An (with Eric deCamps)
Rockefeller Center - Lincoln Room

I saw the performance of a charming Close-Up Magician, Eric DeCamps. He takes top-level magic pieces, and performs them perfectly: coins appear and disappear; his card work seems actual magic; he does cups and balls, the disappearing egg, uses a spirit box with ropes, and one I haven't seen before that is surely actual magic: bread chips and a cup.

DeCamps, an ingratiating persona, is a master of sleight-of-hand, and his show, one of the best you'll see of this kind of magic, is entertaining from start to finish.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
As If Body Loop, The
Actors Theater of Louisville

Strange title. Strange play. Strange experience being trapped in a full-length sitcom that strains credulity and make dismal stabs at profundity.

Ken Weitzman's The As If Body Loop, the fifth play in this year's 31st annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, is a curdling amalgam of football guy-talk and a Hebrew legend about 36 people called the Lamed Vuv who are chosen at birth by God to carry all the pain of the world.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
Tammy Grimes
Metropolitan Room

Tammy Grimes at the Metropolitan Room: it's a pleasure to visit with and spend time with one of our all-time great performers. Okay, she can't really sustain a note any more, but that doesn't matter; it's the real Tammy Grimes up there, and her long-acknowledged comic timing is still active. She still radiates, still entertains every corner of the room.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
BE
Union Square Theater

BE [sic] now at the Union Square Theater, performed by Mayumana, is an amazing show. It's drumming and action, and is as tightly choreographed as a Busby Berkeley musical, with precise Mime exercises, precision drumming, planned wildness, and great contemporary/futuristic costumes by Neta Haker. It has a bit of Cirque, Stomp, Blue Man flavor, but it is its own thing and includes hamboning, black light, acrobatics, Flamenco and belly-dancing, all with great creativity, universality in movement and sound, order and chaos with order.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
Be
Union Square Theater

If you haven't seen Stomp, Blue Man Group, Blast!, Cirque du Soleil, Gumboots and/or Drumstruck, have I got a show for you! It's an Israeli import called Be, and it features a passel of young, awesomely agile and athletic performers mixing dance, physical slapstick, musical performance art and audience participation. It's got rhythmic trading of buckets, glow-in-the-dark flippy things, funky dancing, playful calisthenics, and pretty much anything to make an aspiring terpsichorean green with envy.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
Altar Boyz
Civic Theater

Broadway San Diego has brought Altar Boyz to San Diego for a short run. From the audience reactions opening night, it could play to sold-out houses. The show debuted over two years ago at the New York Music Theatre Festival, opened Off Broadway March 1, 2005, and has several road productions running. Talk about striking while the iron is hot! Altar Boyz, a struggling Christian boy band, is trying to ride the current religion wave.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Desire in the Suburbs
Workshop Theater

Eugene O'Neill's powerful drama of love, jealousy, betrayal, passion, Desire Under the Elms, is looked at with a contemporary comedic sideways skew by Frederic Glover in his Desire in the Suburbs now at The Workshop Theater on West 36th Street.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Gutenberg! The Musical
Actors' Playhouse

Gutenberg! The Musical! by Scott Brown and Anthony King gives us two wonderful comedians, Jeremy Shamos and David Turner, in a hilarious, absurdist interpretation of the adventures of the inventor of the printing press in 1450. Turner is a comedy star who can sing and dance and has the clean movements of a mime. Shamos is a perfect foil for him.

The songs and patter are clever, and it's directed and choreographed with flair and great comic timing by Alex Timbers. Innovative costumes by Emily Rebholz expand the concept of the two men playing multiple characters.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Howard Katz
Laura Pels Theater

In the gripping poker games of Dealer's Choice and the frayed relationships of Closer, Patrick Marber keenly mapped the emotional toll of compulsive behavior and casual cruelty. At his frequent best, he wedded the fluid, seriocomic dialogue of Donald Margulies to the crisp tension of David Mamet.

So why doesn't it work in Howard Katz? Certainly, Marber's created a larger-than-life protagonist and given him a clear trajectory to follow: hollow career success becomes across-the-board failure, all in an intermissionless 90 minutes.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Adrift in Macao
59E59 Theater

Mystery! Adventure on dark streets! Beautiful bad women in slinky costumes! Suave good-looking men! Adrift in Macao, the new film noir musical with book and lyrics by Christopher Durang and music by Peter Melnick now at 59E59, gives us Durang at the top of his satirical creativity, with sparkling, imaginative innovation from director Sheryl Kaller and choreographer Christopher Gattelli. The music is as profoundly enjoyable as the lyrics, and it's a kick from start to finish.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Evil Dead: The Musical
New World Stages

Granted, George Reinblatt's merciless send-up of this Hollywood horror isn't wedded to a musical score of equal distinction. And yes, the late-night cult cachet that Evil Dead aspires to is frankly ripped off from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But outfitted with its undeniably original Splatter Zone, ED is s-o-o-o-o much fun, a happening with its own twisted identity.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Fever, The
Acorn Theater

Starting with wry observations on theatregoing, Wallace Shawn is a fine monologist, an observer/commentator whose tales draw us in, while his insights and humor hold us. In The Fever, there is a lot about the lot of the poor and visits to poor countries, some with revolutions, including Karl Marx's analysis of value and the relationship between product and people, and a ramble on terrorism. There are also comments on a nude beach and on Christmas present-wrapping.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Madras House, The
Mint Theater

Though the Mint Theater's revival of The Madras House is well played, beautifully costumed, often lively, occasionally provocative and, in rare spots, gripping, at the end of its three hours, really the only question that intrigued me was whether protagonist Philip Madras served as a prototype of sorts for Bobby in the musical Company. Although a constant presence in the four major scenes that constitute Harley Granville-Barker's comedy, Philip's a passive presence, serving as adjudicator and sounding board as he mulls life decisions that are crucial to him but

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Bacchae, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Almost everything (walls, floor, dress, decoration, curtain separating locales) is black or white. But Agave's dress after she kills her own son is red, and that's how you know her.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2007
American Pilot, The
City Center

David Greig's The American Pilot, now at Manhattan Theater Club, pits a bunch of really stupid people -- villagers in an Eastern country where English is not spoken -- against an equally stupid American pilot whom they have discovered with a broken leg and brought to a hut in their village. Would people who don't speak each other's language keep screaming insistently at each other as if the noise alone would communicate the idea? It's not rational, not a survival tactic for villagers or soldier.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2006
Annie Get Your Gun
Prince Music Theater

Andrea McArdle and Jeff Coon dominate the show, which essentially is the love story of Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. Historical trappings, the Indians and show biz behind-the-scenes are welcome embellishments -- side shows, if you will -- but what drives <I>Annie Get Your Gun</I> is the plot about a woman winning a man only by allowing him to think that he's the dominant one. <BR>Coon stresses his assertive and domineering character, and he sometimes neglects the romantic legato that's in his music.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
December 2006
Amadeus
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Although this fictionalized drama of 18th-Century Viennese court composer Salieri bringing down young genius Mozart seems a jealousy-inspired revenge tragedy, director Michael Edwards emphasizes its theme of a struggle with God. Music, as Salieri confesses, is "God's art," and He bestowed the most sublime gift of producing it on His darling Amadeus (whose name signifies "Beloved of God"). This, despite Salieri's prayers and difficulties in leading a virtuous life. This, despite the young Mozart's profane grossness and sexy silliness.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
American Buffalo
Geva Theater - Nextstage

Interestingly, this production of American Buffalo is Geva Theatre Center's first staging of a Mamet play, although Geva has been performing American plays, particularly new ones, for several decades, and Buffalo is now a familiar modern classic. An almost perfect, tightly contained, three-character drama, the play is constantly amusing in Mamet's poetic simulation of working-class male speech and behavior while moving the three through deep-felt, basic aspirations into awful betrayal and defeat.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Bhutan
Cherry Lane Theater

Daisy Foote's Bhutan is a jigsaw puzzle with pieces from past and present jumbled together until, gradually, the picture of a Massachusetts working-class family and its dynamics, its conflicts with each other and with the world, becomes clear. It's a domestic drama with realism underlined by the stylized presentation.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Adi Braun
Iridium

I had a surreal experienced at the Sunday Jazz Brunch at Iridium on 51st and Broadway. Here's a fine singer, Adi Braun, with a wide and flexible range of voice and songs, doing a sophisticated performance for an audience of tourists and their kids having lunch. So this brave, talented singer had to stand up there doing her thing, paying no attention to the conversational murmur (with an occasional high-pitched "Daddy, can I have some more?" drifting thru the room). She's a trouper -- did it with a smile and the vocal subtleties of a top-notch jazz singer.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Clean House, The
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House is a bit of a mish mash; it has elements of farce, and it's also about dying of cancer. Early on, it seems an inane attempt to be amusing, with the maid (Vanessa Aspillaga) as psychotherapist. Jill Clayburgh gives a terrific performance as a quirky, insecure, repressed housewife obsessed with cleaning, and Blair Brown is fine as the odd MD; Act 2 has some nice stylized movement and dance, and it seems a totally different play.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Christmas Carol, A
Applauz Theater

Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol has had many permutations and interesting interpretations. At Applauz, under James Dublino's direction of La Jolla playwright David Wiener's adaptation, the classic is liberally laced with holiday songs. Wiener's script gives us the essence of Dickens' classic.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Jose Feliciano
Iridium

In 1964, I was the MC of The Hootenanny at The Bitter End Cafe in Greenwich Village every Tuesday night. One night a young woman came in dragging a blind Puerto Rican kid with a guitar. She said to put him on the stage, that he was really good. I said, "Sure," and put him on at two in the morning. When he sang his first song, I told the woman, "Bring him in any time -- I'll put him on any time you say." It was Jose Feliciano. About ten years later, at a club in Huntington Beach, California, I was his opening act doing my mime/comedy act, and he used to heckle me.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Fantasticks, The
Snapple Theater Center

The Fantasticks, now playing at the Snapple Theater Center, is a sweet, old fashioned, silly, romantic comedy with terrific songs that stick in your mind. What a pleasure to walk out humming "Try to Remember" or "Soon It's Gonna Rain." With a fine cast including the beautiful, clear-voiced Sara Jean Ford as the girl, Burke Moses as El Gallo and the extraordinary physical comedian Robert R.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Confessions of an Irish Rebel
Irish Arts Center

Confessions of an Irish Rebel, now at the Irish Arts Center on West 51st Street, gives us the real flavor of Ireland in a show full of wit and wisdom in story and song. You're in a pub with a charming, smart, marvelous storyteller who sings the old tunes and becomes the many characters he talks about, each with a unique persona and voice. As Behan, Shay Duffin is the guy you'd actually love to meet in an Irish pub.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Hairy Ape, The
Irish Repertory

Eugene O'Neill is America's greatest playwright, and there is a powerful representation of his work at The Irish Rep on 22nd Street, directed by Ciaran O'Reilly: The Hairy Ape. It's a marvelous production on Eugene Lee's inspired, complex, brilliantly active set, with vivid lighting by Brian Nason and fine costuming by Linda Fisher.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
all wear bowlers
La Jolla Playhouse - Mandell Weiss Forum

The stage is bare, save for a nine-by-twelve-foot white screen. The house lights dim. We hear an ancient film projector grinding away. We see the film leader: five, four, three, two, and then the film title, "all wear bowlers," staring Earnest Matters (Geoff Sobelle) and Wyatt R. Levine (Trey Lyford). The two are dressed in black, wearing bowlers. They are in a bleak landscape walking and walking and walking, finally getting closer to us. The scratchy film, with occasional subtitles, grinds on.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Barbara's Blue Kitchen
Lamb's Theater

They don't make many actresses as good as Lori Fischer. They don't make many country singers as good as Lori Fischer. They don't make many writers who can write with the depth and insight into character of Lori Fischer, or create her range of melodies that can make you smile or make you feel pangs of emotion. This great talent is on view at the Lamb's Theater, where she stars in her musical, Barbara's Blue Kitchen. It's an amazing performance of an exposition of people in a little town in Tennessee.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Billy the Mime
Players Theater

Did you see "The Aristocrats"? The sequence by Billy the Mime was one of the funniest. Billy the Mime is now playing in the NY Fringe, and it's a "Don't Miss!" He's one of the best mimes in the country with clean clear technique, a great sense of humor and perfect timing.

Although influenced by Marcel Marceau, Billy has his own sensibility and his own contemporary view of the world. He keeps his audience entertained from start to finish with nary a dull moment.

This is solo mime at its very best by a highly skilled, totally engaging performer.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Fartiste, The
Harry De Jur Playhouse

In Paris in the 1890s there was a popular music-hall performer called "Le Petomaine" who played tunes by passing gas. He was a huge star for about a decade.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
French Defense, The
Abrons Arts Center at Henry Street Settlement

The French Defense by Dimitri Raitzin is a fascinating look at a chess contest by then World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik (Robert J. D'Amato) and challenger Mikhail Tal (Daniel Hendricks Simon) in 1960. I'm not a chess player, but I was completely drawn into the drama of the contest between a champ and an annoying, insulting gadfly, and by the depth of the characterization by the actors, particularly D'Amato.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Actors Alliance Festival 2006 - Program 2
Lyceum Space

Another successful Actors Alliance Festival program begins with The Secret Royal Order of the Feminine Gender by James Caputo and produced and directed by Julie Clemmons, with Aja Oberlies-Rodrigues and Emma Shea.
The two stars, I am told, are ten years old. They are shopping for that something special at the local Salvation Army store. They talk "the talk", i.e. dating and boy swagger. They sing and dance. There is even a booming voice-over of mother. Aja and Emma are excellent; don't miss them.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2006
Actors Alliance Festival 2006 - Program 3
Lyceum Space

Program Three of the Actors Alliance Festival was yet another success. On the Corner of Art and Solita Street, by Sandra Ruiz, with Bryant Hernandez directing. The cast includes Sylvia Enrique, Megan Fonseca, Larissa Garcia, John Harris, Sophia Kostas and Sandra Ruiz. It's Christmas at the Cortez family home. Mom is a beautiful woman with two lovely kids and, as usual, her husband is away on a "business trip." Her mother and father are there along with her sister, who apparently doesn't have the wealth experienced by her younger sister.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2006
Actors Alliance Festival 2006 - Program 4
Lyceum Space

Program Four was one of the best of this year's crop of the Artists Festival.

The Elixir of Genius written, produced and directed by George Soete, with Lori Pennington and Jonathan Sachs on stage. Soete captured the essence of the frustrations facing a fiction writer. Jake (Jonathan Sachs), a playwright, is slamming headlong into a major block. He immediately gets into a fight with his female protagonist, Laura (Lori Pennington). The rewrites don't work. She berates him, cajoles him, even becomes seductive. His block is monumental.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2006
Actors Alliance Festival 2006 - Program 6
Lyceum Space

A Fare Ride written, produced, and directed by Matt Thompson with Colleen Kollar and Ted Reis sharing the stage. Kollar plays a stereotypical taxi jockey in any big city. She does everything her own way; that's her style, which includes singing, humming, as well as chewing and popping her bubble gum. She picks up a gun-toting bank robber wannabe (Ted Reis). What develops is a strange relationship. The taxi driver takes everything in stride as she tools down an L.A. freeway at 80 miles per hour. (I don't recall ever being on an L. A.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2006
All in the Timing
New World Stage

Ion Theater and InnerMission Productions has brought us David Ives' delightful, six-act, All in the Timing. First performed in 1996, the play has garnered acclaim as well as awards for its wit, intellect, satire and just plain fun. This production is no exception. Let's take a quick look at the six vignettes by this artful word master.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2006
Bush Is Bad
Triad Theater

Bush is Bad is a first-class political satire that goes far beyond the obvious. The three highly talented performers -- Janet Dickinson, Neal Mayer, and Michael McCoy -- are comedians with strong musical voices and actors who can fully realize the many characters each plays.  Janet as Condoleeza Rice is brilliant, including a riff on the piano.

Richmond Shephard
Date Reviewed:
July 2006
Bad Dates
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz Stage III

Haley, like the title character in "Mildred Pierce" -- a film of which she constantly reminds us -- is a single mother who runs a successful NYC restaurant. Having divorced a druggie in her native Texas, she was never about to get near drug dealings or laundered money. Her place of business, though, is suspected in both. Police are always asking her questions. Until recently, she hasn't had time for dating. Now that she has, she's found it hardly worth the time it takes to choose the right outfit and particularly the perfect shoes to wear to a date.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2006
Actors Alliance Festival 2006 - Program 1
Lyceum Space

And let the plays begin. It's summer in San Diego, and the 16th annual Actor's Festival is underway. (San Diego is fortunate to be the site of several short play festivals, which begin in the summer and run through the fall.) This festival opened with two very, very funny comedians: Travis Sentell and Phil Johnson. The entered stage center, seated themselves and began a dialogue as two reviewers of the Festival. They gave all of us reviewers a bad name, panning show titles, actors and the festival in general.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2006

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