Jerusalem
Music Box Theater

Here are my notes taken while watching the Broadway play Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, directed by Ian Rickson: We start with a fairy princess singing, and then we are hit with a lot of noise and are introduced to the epitome of slob perfectly, repulsively played by Mark Rylance and his amusing bunch of degenerates with working-class English accents, plus a demented professor (Alan David).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
Two Jews Walk into a War...
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz Theater

Who would have thought a play about trying to assure that one's religion and its practitioners survive could be so exhilarating? Happily, Florida Studio Theater and other venues in the National New Play Network have. Thus, Two Jews Walk into a War is surviving past its debut. I think it also has a future. I've seen few works so specific and yet universal in appeal, so seriously timely and yet as humorously timeless as vaudeville characters doing turns of comic schtick.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
Locked and Loaded
Santa Monica Playhouse

Locked and Loaded, now in its extended West-Coast premiere, is a profane, bawdy and irreverent riff on mortality. Written by veteran actor Todd Susman, the play stars Paul Linke and Andrew Parks as two old geezers with terminal illnesses who decide to end their life with a bang -- pun intended, we quickly learn. They check into a hotel room, gorge themselves with food and booze, put out a call for a couple of hookers. The Linke character -- Irwin Schimmel, a foul-mouthed ex-comedy writer -- has secreted a pistol in his suitcase.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
Minister's Wife, A
Lincoln Center Theater - Mitzi Newhouse Theater

It's unlikely this musical version of George Bernard Shaw's Candida will achieve the audience and critical acclaim of My Fair Lady, which was based on Shaw's Pygmalion. Lacking those sparkling, audience-friendly songs that have become standards, A Minister's Wife has an often dissonant, very contemporary and sporadically melodic score by composer Joshua Schmidt (Adding Machine) that weaves complex chamber music throughout the story. Jan Levy Tranen's lyrics reflect the wit and romance of the Shavian play.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
Minister's Wife, A
Lincoln Center Theater - Mitzi Newhouse Theater

A Minister's Wife, book by Austin Pendleton, music by Joshua Schmidt, lyrics by Jan Levy Tranen, adapted from George Bernard Shaw's Candida, is a charming operetta - a moving play about love and its illusions.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
Sister Act
Broadway Theater

Sister Act, music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Glenn Slater, book by Cheri Steinkellner and Bill Steinkellner, based on the movie written by Joseph Howard, is a gentle, really funny, silly, sweet musical with a familiar plot: saw a killing, on the run from killers, hide in disguise ("Some Like it Hot"). The narrative works beautifully as a singer on the run (the dyunamoic Patina Miler) enters a convent disguised as a nun and meets two of the best singers on Broadway: Victoria Clark as Mother Superior and Marla Mindelle as a postulant.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
Born Yesterday
Cort Theater

Director Doug Hughes plays most of Garson Kanin's Born Yesterday like slapstick farce. The entire cast is excellent with Terry Beaver offering a lovely turn as a senator's wife, and Robert Sean Leonard quite charming as the third point of the triangle because he plays it totally real. The end is a foregone conclusion, but that doesn't interfere with our enjoyment of this lively show.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
People in the Picture, The
Studio 54

The People in the Picture, book and lyrics by Iris Rainer Dart, music by Mike Stoller and Artie Butler, well directed by Leonard Foglia, gives us an old woman, beautifully played by Donna Murphy, who takes us back to a long-gone world as she has memory delusions of her past: 1937 Poland, where a Yiddish Theatre troupe goes from shtetl to shtetl performing. We travel through old photographs of these people to their lives portrayed on the stage by a lively, able cast of high level professionals.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
Saint Hollywood
Ideal Glass

Saint Hollywood is a remarkable multi-media show: a creation of visual projections, multi-multi images and a physically active story-teller, guitarist, actor/singer with multi accents, Willard Morgan, who created the show with Jerrold Ziman. Morgan is backed by three gorgeous women, two who dance and sing, Shannon Antalan and Zoe Rosario, and one, Eunice Wong, as a DJ.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
Lucky Guy
Little Shubert Theater

Lucky Guy, a cheery, Country/Western super entertainment created by Willard Beckham (book, lyrics, music and snappy direction) is a hoot. The leading man, Kyle Dean Massey, is handsome, charming, charismatic and a terrific singer. The leading lady, Varla Jean Merman (Jeffery Roberson) has gigantic personality (and stature); first banana Leslie Jordan is funny, twinkle-eyed and has no stature (4' 11"), Second banana, the cutest chicky in town, Jenn Colella, has beauty, sparks and is a helluva gum chewer, and ingénue Savannah Wise is a sweet June Allyson.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
Juan and John
Kirk Douglas Theater

Roger Guenveur Smith, a master of the one-man show, returns with his ninth solo effort, Juan and John. In it, he alternately impersonates two baseball players, San Francisco Giants pitcher Juan Marichal and L.A. Dodger catcher John Roseboro, who in 1965 took part in an infamous brawl. Smith, aided by Marc Anthony Thompson's video projections, not only recreates the brawl but digs deeply into its social and racial ramifications.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
Adding Machine
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

The venerable Skylight Opera Theater closes its 51st season (2010-'11) with the Wisconsin premiere of Adding Machine: A Musical, composed by former local resident Joshua Schmidt. He also contributes to the musical's libretto, along with collaborator Jason Loewith.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying
Al Hirschfeld Theater

This production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying could be titled, "See Harry Potter Sing and Dance." He does both with relative ease in this production. Sadly, however, that's not enough to make this old-fashioned musical sparkle. Daniel Radcliffe may go through the paces, but he is not the charismatic song-and-dance man this musical requires. Instead, this musical requires a male lead who can charmingly convey his yearning to move up in the corporate world. Of course, such performers are few and far between.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
Small Engine Repair
Theatre Theater

John Pollono's Small Engine Repair, now in its world-premiere run at Rogue Machine, is a taut, gritty drama about three working-class guys who grew up together in Manchester, New Hampshire -- a city they derisively call Manch-Vegas for its lack of glitz and glamor.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo
Richard Rodgers Theater

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, by Rajiv Joseph, directed by Moises Kaufman, is two shows: Robin Williams and everything else. We come to see Robin, and they hit us with Iraq in 2003.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
War Horse
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

War Horse is a theatrical masterpiece. In the atmosphere and projections of images related to World War I, puppeteers bring constructed horses to vivid life as they create the illusion of living breathing animals with intricacy, subtlety and nuance in the movements, lifted and sustained by the music, sound and projections.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
In the Next Room
GableStage

The 1880s was a time when American innovators found new ways to harness electricity, and as Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room or the vibrator play shows, it wasn't all about the lighting -- although the lighting for In the Next Room is very good at GableStage, where the play benefits from stunning tech.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
May 2011
Elemeno Pea
Actors Theater of Louisville

Molly Smith Metzler's Elemeno Pea (its title comes from the alphabet song that makes rushing through "l, m, n, o, p" sound like a word), directed with great flair by Davis McCallum on Michael B. Raiford's gorgeous, Martha's Vineyard guest-house set with a beach view, would seem to be the best candidate for a Broadway production.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
Book of Mormon, The
Eugene O'Neill Theater

The Book of Mormon, by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone is a jolly, rollicking mocking, in song and dance, of the missionary obligation of young Mormon men in their white shirts and narrow ties as they go to the corners of the world to win converts. It's a fantastical trip with lots of tap dancing, on Scott Pask's imaginative set, costumed creatively by Ann Roth, that pushes the taste boundaries of stage possibility beyond belief in its use of scatological language and idea.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
Motherfucker with the Hat, The
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater

Stephen Adly Guirgis' The Motherfucker with the Hat, intensely directed like a runaway downhill sled by Anna D. Shapiro, gives us colorful, uneducated, working-class people hollering their street vernacular with throat-scraping intensity. Addicts, criminals, lots of sturm and drang. It's a fascinating anthropological study, as if behind glass, of another species, with genuine comic sparks.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
Death of a Salesman
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

Milwaukee Repertory Theater closes its current season with a powerful production of the dramatic classic, Death of a Salesman. Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning play is masterfully reborn under the direction of artistic director Mark Clements. In Clements' vision, Willy Loman isn't only a washed-up salesman, he also seems to be on the brink of dementia. His erratic outbursts and dazed wanderings make it painfully clear that Willy Loman has lost his place in the world. He also seems to have lost his ability to separate reality from past memories.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Al Hirschfeld Theater

How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, is an old-fashioned musical with new-fashioned flair in design (great multi-level set by Derek McLane), costumes (Catherine Zuber) and some of the most innovative choreography in town (by Rob Ashford who also directed).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
Anything Goes
Stephen Sondheim Theater

Anything Goes, book by P.G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, Howard Lindsay & Russell Crouse, new book by Timothy Crouse & John Weidman, with lovely song after lovely song by Cole Porter, gives us romantic folderol on an ocean liner among the (mostly) upper clahsses.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
Innocents, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

The Innocents starts out as a narrative by Daniel about himself and close friend Edie and his one-night stand with Liron, a young Israeli he met at the airport. Then it shifts, with few exceptions, to dramatic scenes. In San Francisco, where Daniel and Edie are trying to have a baby, such a couple seems not to be unusual. Sutter, a young student who needs Prof. Edie's help to keep his scholarship, seeks her as a lover. Liron wants to stay with Daniel. Will Sutter and Liron conspire, or what?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
High
Booth Theater

Matthew Lombardo's High is a messy and sordid contrivance about the psychotherapy of a 19-year-old gay junkie, the miscast and misdirected (by Rob Ruggiero) Evan Jonigkeit, who gives us a caricature rather than a character in an embarrassingly stereotypical performance with an almost Southern accent that comes and goes. Kathleen Turner stars as the straight-talking nun therapist, and although she starts out rather wooden, she picks up steam as the jokes and expletives emerge. She knows how to hit a punchline, and that sustains the play.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
War Horse
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

It was called "The Great War" and "The War to End all Wars," but World War I is now relatively ignored in the legacy of wars that followed. In War Horse at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater, World War I is the background for the most gripping theatrical event of this season. Co-directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris, it is about a boy and a horse. It is also about how millions of horses were traditionally sent into battle until the use barbed wire, machine guns and heavy artillery signified the end of the cavalry. Technology had taken over.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
Elemeno Pea
Actors Theater of Louisville

The Humana Festival certainly gives an elaborate staging to what is billed as Molly Smith Metzler's first major production. True, we are supposed to be in a very impressive guest house on an ocean-front estate on Martha's Vineyard, but, even so, when pretty young Simone shows Devon, her older sister, their weekend digs, we can understand their delighted squeals.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
Wonderland
Marquis Theater

Like the theatrical hit about Dorothy in Oz, Wonderland is a Broadway musical based on a classic children's story, so comparisons are inevitable. Wicked opened to mixed reviews and became a mega-hit, so could Wonderland have as bright a future?

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
Two Jews Walk into a War...
The Adrienne

Seth Rozin's two-man play, Two Jews Walk into a War…, is cleverly titled, signaling that it's a comedy while soft-pedaling serious aspects. But make no mistake, Rozin has written a thoughtful examination of faith and a yearning for tradition in a changing world.

Only two elderly Jews are left in a bombed-out synagogue in Afghanistan's capital of Kabul during the current war. Ishaq is religiously observant, Zeblyan more secular, and they have never liked each other, but now they're thrown together in shared isolation.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
Burn the Floor
Pantages Theater

Burn the Floor is aptly titled. Eighteen dancers, split between men and women, make fire with their feet as they interpret in virtuosic fashion such ballroom dances as the foxtrot, quickstep, swing, samba, salsa, rumba, tango, paso doble and Viennese waltz. Each of the dancers is a world-class performer, collectively having won more than a hundred dance titles in such countries as USA, Moldova, Australia, UK, Slovenia and Venezuela.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
Ghost-Writer
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

The setting is New York City in the early 1900s. The conceit is that we have come to the study of the late Franklin Woolsey, a famous novelist, at the instigation of his widow. We are investigating his secretary Myra Babbage. She claims that, after he died while dictating, she's continued to receive his words. Vivian Woolsey suspects Myra's relationship to her husband and his novels.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
Before God was Invented
Theater for the New City

Before God was Invented, written and directed by Lissa Moira, with music by Richard West and lyrics by Moira, is a far-out, ritualistic piece in action and sound. It's also often incomprehensible due to assumed accents and invented language -- words like, "omma tamma alla tomma" and phrases like, "We all time make with ears him to hear." I felt I was watching a spectacle in a foreign country.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2011
Baby It's You!
Broadhurst Theater

Baby It's You! is a cheery, happy rock-and-roll musical about the creation of the four-woman singing group, the Shirelles, by a New Jersey housewife, Florence Greenberg (powerfully acted and beautiful sung by Beth Leavel) in 1958. We follow their subsequent musical adventures and Florence's romantic one with her partner played by strong, handsome Allan Louis.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2011
Great American Trailer Park Musical, The
Venice Theater - Pinkerton

This mini-musical seemed to me as good a second time around. Audiences must think so, too, because the show has had several added performances and yet is sold out as I write.

Though The Great American Trailer Park Musical isn't free of raunchiness, director Kelly Woodland has been mindful of Venice's mostly conservative crowds. She keeps the show's satire pointed but not dependent on being risque with either dialogue or lyrics.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2011
Best of Jim Caruso's Cast Party, The
Town Hall

It was aces wild at Jim Caruso's one-night-only cast party at The Town Hall benefiting Broadway Cares – Equity Fights AIDS. Who did not appear? Who cares? It was a night of sequined minis and sparkling talents.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
February 2011
Dracula
Little Shubert Theater

If not for Dana Kenn's versatile and mobile sets, Chris DelVecchio's dramatic sound design, and special effects by Greg Meeh, the current off-Broadway version of Dracula would be fatally anemic. As it is, Bram Stoker's Gothic thriller, adapted by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, while offering some technical panache and occasional laughs, is a dusty, old-fashioned melodrama with few drops of lifeblood still oozing out.

Elizabeth Ahfors
Date Reviewed:
January 2011
Jackie Five-Oh!
Joe's Pub

For a number of occasions, Jackie Hoffman's home-away-from-home has been Joe's Pub. Only to be slightly outdone by Sondheim 80th celebrations, The Hoff's back there again January 10th and 17th, 2011 with Jackie Five-Oh! her blisteringly funny, often F-word-filled non-family hollercast celebrating her 50th birthday.

Ellis Nassour
Date Reviewed:
January 2011
Christine Ebersole
Cafe Carlyle

It was a fiery intro of bop jazz drum rhythms in the '30's classic, "Big Noise From Winnetka" that accompanied charismatic Christine Ebersole, who happens to be a big talent from Winnetka. She blazed into a vigorous follow-up of, "Ding, Dong The Witch is Dead," starting a tour de force performance for Ebersole's third year at the Café Carlyle.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
January 2011
Freud's Last Session
Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater

Freud's Last Session, by Mark St. Germain, directed by Tyler Marchant, takes a fine, meticulously staged look at an encounter between an 83 year old, irascible, dying Sigmund Freud and a younger C.S. Lewis. The contrapuntal arguments about the existence of God, sprinkled with real humor, give us a fascinating interchange as these brilliant minds clash.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2011
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