Altar Boyz
Dodger Stages

Altar Boyz is a hot show, fun from start to finish. It's a five-man singing/dancing/jumpin' troupe with a twist: mock Christian religious content, but the irreverence is actually reverent, and the boyz are the cutest, the jokes are funny (and that's good in a comedy), and they are all fine singers.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2005
Antigone
Sixth at Penn Theater

I turned to the lady next to me, Greek scholar and co-host of KPBS' "A Way With Words," Martha Barnette, asking for her take on UCSD Professor Dr. Marianna McDonald's very contemporary translation of Sophocles' Antigone. The script is as current as tomorrow, spiced with current slang. Ms. Barnette's comment: extremely good. 

Antigone is a social commentary about government dictatorial policies and has had current application every time it's been performed throughout 2,443 years since it was written.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2005
Dessa Rose
Lincoln Center - Mitzi Newhouse Theater

Dessa Rose, by Lynn Ahrens (book and lyrics) and Stephen Flaherty (music), is a well-meaning musical about love and slavery. It starts in 1847 when a sixteen-year-old, pregnant slave takes part in a minor slave uprising. The story feels trite and quite melodramatic, as bad Massa kills a slave and sells young Dessa. The singing is terrific - LaChanze as Dessa, Norm Lewis, Kecia Lewis, and all the rest of the ensemble - but there is little joy in the show, which often feels like a Greek drama, with most of the action talked or sung about.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2005
Island of Slaves, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

On a sandy beach (surrounded on all sides by the audience, giving Conservatory student actors a rare chance to play in the round) after a storm, aristocratic Iphicrates (Brit Whittle) in tux and long silk scarf has washed up with his Harlequin (John Long), a manservant happy that he's saved a flask of liquor. He's also not worried, as is his master, to see the sandbar sign "Island of Slaves." And he's right!

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2005
God Hates the Irish
Rattlestick Theater

God Hates The Irish: The Ballad of Armless Johnny, by Sean Cunningham, with music by Michael Frears, is a very black, absurdist musical comedy about the tribulations of an armless Irish man, played by the very engaging Bill Thompson, a good singer, comedian and actor with very elastic legs. The cast are all strong personas, including the bright, shiny Broadway-level Ann Bobby, Remy Auberjonois, the lovely Anna Camp, Lisa Altomare and James A. Stephens. It's all non-PC jokes, full of sexual outrageousness.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2005
Hurlyburly
37 Arts Theater

I don't know if the original production of Hurlyburly was a comedy. The film - over an hour shorter than the play - has bitterly funny scenes but plays as tragedy. As such, it's very effective. All the more curious, then, that this production is an extremely funny black comedy. The irony is that the three main leads - Ethan Hawke as Eddie, Josh Hamilton as Mickey and Bobby Cannavale as Phil - all seem to be doing impressions of their counterparts from the movie (Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey and Chaz Palminteri).

David Steinhardt
Date Reviewed:
April 2005
Bat Boy
Don Powell Theater

The occasional sound of bats flying overhead is heard during the pre-show for the San Diego premiere of Bat Boy: The Musical. Billed as a musical comedy/horror show, it is truly a send-up of the 1950s horror films and much more. Dr. Rick Simas directs this Off Broadway hit of 2001 for San Diego State University's theater.

Bat Boy, sired by a bat and a human, lived in a cave until his teens. He is discovered by the three trailer-trash teens (Kevin Maldarelli, Kelsey Vener, and Omri Schein) of Mrs. Taylor (Jamie Kalama).

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
All Wear Bowlers
HERE Arts Center

What can a critic say about a show which includes in its program an essay by the performer/creators, informing us that "we seemed to strike the perfect balance between talk and play, philosophy and slapstick? And with a director who boasts a "PhD from Stanford in drama theory and criticism on top of that? all wear bowlers, lowercase letters and all, presents itself as a pre-deconstructed masterpiece that has been “in development 3 years.” Only problem is, it's not very good.

David Steinhardt
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Bindlestiff Family Cirkus: From the Gutter to the Glitter
Theater For The New City

The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, now at the Theater for the New City, offer the real deal: unabashed, old fashioned vaudeville and sideshow, without embellishments, performed by an accomplished duo with great circus skills: Keith Nelson and Stephanie Monseu. Also on hand in From the Gutter to the Glitter are the fun musical duo, pianist Peter Bufano (who also juggles) and zippy violinist Kathe Hostetter.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Bach at Leipzig
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

Weaving historical fact with fiction is nothing new, but up-and-coming playwright Itamar Moses offers a few intriguing twists in Bach at Leipzig. The play is receiving its first major production on the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's stage.

With a rock-solid cast and accomplished director at the helm, Bach at Leipzig gradually wins over the audience. This is no small accomplishment, as the play's historical events are essentially non-dramatic. This much is known: when a prominent musician in Germany dies in 1722, a successor must quickly be named.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Coriolanus
John Jay College

Responding to the comment that Shakespeare never blotted a line, Dr. Johnson quipped, "Would that he had blotted a thousand." Johnson might well have had in mind several rocky out-croppings in the stream of Coriolanus, a decidedly rhetorical play, to change my metaphor. Much of the text is reportage: something has happened elsewhere. Still more text consists in tales to be re-told, though these, blessedly, are planned for some off stage events (in Act One, scenes 1, 4, 7, 10; nearly as much in Act Two, and thereafter).

Nina daVinci Nichols
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Blogging About Cat Stevens
Shetler Studio Theater

Monologues appeal to the voyeur in us. Details of someone else's life - we can't ever get enough of them - especially when they're presented in such a persuasive way as in this collection. A few themes run through the 12 lives on view. Blogging is one. Private thoughts made public; it's as if blogs were invented for exhibitionists. Just like these actors. Another theme is pain, but usually that's told to us only after the character gets us through the more mundane part.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Bad Date Theater
Adams Avenue of the Arts

Bad Date Theater!, a co-production of Misfit Productions and Korbett Kompany Productions showcases five examples of oddball relationships. Alan Ball's The M Word, directed by Bob Korbett, features Connie Terwilliger and Bob Korbett as two people contemplating that move into the realm of the M word. Both characters are anal about contemplating every aspect of a marriage, which includes household duties, child rearing, extra-marital affairs, marriage adjustments, and much more. Terwilliger and Korbett form a perfect team. She is prim and proper.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Counsellor at Law
Theater at St. Clement's

John Rubinstein gives a powerful performance as the lawyer, the central figure in Elmer Rice's 1931 play, Counsellor at Law. He brings a dynamic vitality to a part that fills the theater. His acting has the depth, dimension, strength and charisma of a star, and that is just what this old, fascinating look into the life and office of an up-from-the-gutter achiever in the 1930s needs.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Belfast Blues
45 Bleecker

Geraldine Hughes was brought up in poverty in Northern Ireland during the time of "The Troubles" and is now performing her one-woman show based on her experiences at The Culture Project in The Village.

Besides herself, the lively Ms. Hughes plays a dozen or so characters of all ages, each with its own physicality, manner of speech and attitude.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Doubt
Manhattan Theater Club

Cherry Jones is Sister Aloysius and Brian O'Byrne is Father Flynn in a classic struggle at a Catholic school between the Sister's dogmatic conviction and the Father's progressive compassion. Or is that compassion a smokescreen for child molestation? With priestly hanky-panky so much in the headlines these days, we're apt to jump on board the bandwagon with the Sister's suspicions even before there are solid facts powering it forward.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Hairspray
Broward Center for the Performing Arts' Au-Rene Theater

The year is 1962, the last calendar year before the assassination of JFK. The place is Baltimore, a city long of both the north and south. In this time and place, the bouffant hairdos of teenage girls aren't the only things that need help standing up to the winds of change. Welcome to Hairspray. The national tour of the 2003 Tony-Award winner based on the 1988 movie by John Waters plays to sellout crowds in Fort Lauderdale at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts' 2,700-seat main theater.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
After the Ball
Irish Repertory Theater

After the Ball, Noel Coward's musical based on Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, now at the Irish Repertory Theater, is a perfect holiday entertainment. It starts as a Frimlesque operetta, develops into a musical, and the drama and comedy flows into a lovely show with beautiful period costumes, fine stage design and elegant, lively direction by Tony Walton. While Coward's songs are witty and appropriate, the most fun are still Wilde's quips and his thrusts at the British.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Belle Epoque
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

Martha Clarke's Belle Epoque is an impression of an Impressionist, Toulouse-Lautrec, and the costumes, dances, atmosphere of late 19th-Century French Cafe culture. Clarke creates living paintings with four-foot-tall Mark Povinelli as Lautrec. Stories about Lautrec range from the sentimental to the bizarre.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Best Sex of the XX Century Sale, The
Theater For The New City

Experimental Theater doyen Lissa Moira's latest version of her creation, The Best Sex of the XX Century Sale, now at the Theater for the New City, is an amusing, absurdist history of sex in the 20th Century, with a lively cast of singers and dancers doing songs, decade by decade, of the progressing century -- movies, pop music and culture. Included are a "Boop-boopy-do" by Betty Boop and writer/director Moira herself as Mae West.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Bug
Barrow Street Theater

Agnes White's options are slim and grim from the moment we encounter her in Tracy Letts's apocalyptic thriller, Bug

Just released from prison, there's her hulking ex-husband Jerry Goss, who terrorizes her with silent phone calls before he arrives and punches her out. That's the banal side of Agnes's life, and the brutality she suffers from Goss is a mere preamble to some of the most convincing fighting -- and bloodletting -- you'll ever see onstage. Peter Evans is a more exotic and mysterious proposition.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Art
American Heritage Center for the Arts

Yasmina Reza uses relatively few theatrical brushstrokes in Art to illustrate the changeable qualities of art and friendship. In this full-length one-act, the two emerge as almost mirror images of each other. An appreciation of a painting may be strengthened by scrutiny of lines and shadings; friendships, in contrast, can be jeopardized by dwelling too much on specifics. There's a magic in each that deserves respect.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Christmas Carol, A
Pabst Theater

Few regional theaters have capitalized on the public's eagerness to see A Christmas Carol more than the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. This year the company stages its 29th consecutive year of A Christmas Carol in Milwaukee's gloriously renovated Pabst Theater. Over the years, more than a million people have seen the Rep's version of Dickens' timeless fable. Yet it still manages to satisfy as few other holiday shows can. Although small things are constantly changed from year to year, the overall effect remains the same.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2004
Five By Tenn
Manhattan Theater Club - Stage II

Five By Tenn, now at Manhattan Theater Club, gives us five Tennessee Williams short plays from 1937 to 1970 interspersed with words from his letters and other writings as intros. It is interesting to see Williams' treatment of mostly gay themes grow and develop through time as the world changed. Sketches of later fully rounded characters appear, such as Penny Fuller's frantic hopes for her somewhat different son in Summer at the Lake.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2004
It's Only a Play
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater

True enough that "It's Only a Play," but one only wishes it was a good play and not the joke-drenched, up-dated name-dropping, plot-deferred vehicle for Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick that is the hottest ticket in town. A flop when it was first produced in 1986, Terrence McNally's insular comedy is about an actor (Lane) who left the stage to star in a TV series and his contentious relationship with his former friend, a playwright (Matthew Broderick) having his first play produced on Broadway.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2014
Amadeus
American Heritage Center for the Arts

Mosaic Theater opens its fourth season in South Florida with a pitch-perfect production of Amadeus, Peter Shaffer's take on the torment wrought on composer Antonio Salieri by the arrival of crude upstart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Salieri alone recognizes the inspired talent of Mozart and the shallowness of his own work for the court of Austrian Emperor Joseph II. Having, as a teenager, promised God a life of virtue in return fame as a composer, Salieri feels mocked in his successful mediocrity: "God needed Mozart to let Himself into the world.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Anna in the Tropics
Coconut Grove Playhouse - Mainstage

Playwright Nilo Cruz directs his Pultizer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics to stunning effect in Miami at Coconut Grove Playhouse with an assist from set designer Adrian W. Jones. This is Cruz's paean to the power of story-telling, filtered through a bit of the Cuban immigrant experience of late 1920s America. Mainstage audience members are primed as they take their seats before a stage bearing only a single sidelit palm tree silhouetted against dark blue, the tree leaning into the light.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Eat the Taste
Barrow Street Theater

Eat the Taste the Monday night political satire at the Barrow Street Theater, by the men who wrote Urinetown, suggests that John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, really wants to be in Musical Theater. It's a farce, including a great fight scene, choreographed by David Brimmer, and is full of show business in-jokes and FBI ridiculousness. It's fun to put Ashcroft, Cheney and their fellows down. The performances are as over-the-top as the premise, and at 65 minutes, director John Clancy keeps us amused.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Flare Path
Florence Gould Hall

Want to have a marvelous theatrical experience? The Actors Company Theater (TACT) is without a doubt the best play-reading troupe in this town (or any other town that I've seen). Their staged readings of classics, script in hand (the scripts soon become invisible), with a hint at costuming, have the full dramatic intensity of a fully-realized production performed by Broadway actors. TACT's most recent piece, Terence Rattigan's 1942 wartime British Airforce drama Flare Path, flawlessly directed by Simon Jones, is brought to full life by their splendid cast.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Beyond the DMZ
Theater For The New City

In Beyond the DMZ, director Eu-Hee Kim and choreographer Natasa Trifan have created a powerful dance drama about Korean history, the separation of North and South, the Korean War, the Demilitarized Zone, and its impact fifty years later on families who were separated. Well-conceived and artistically well executed, DMZ shows off the supple,well-trained bodies of agile dancers in the company, using Modern Dance form to clearly communicate the pain, the joy, the lives of these people.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
September 2004
As You Like It
La Jolla Playhouse - Mandell Weiss Forum

The joy of Shakespeare's comedies, such as As You Like It at La Jolla Stage Company, is just how much fun they can be. Here we have wedding and bedding of numerous lovely ladies, be they a Duke's daughter or a Shepardess. The stories can easily be related to, even with the passing of hundreds of years. James Dublino's direction allows the 16 cast members t to enjoy and broadly interpret their roles. They range from recent community college grads to seasoned pros.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Cymbeline
Tom Patterson Theater

Though it's about an early real British king and Roman invaders, Shakespeare's Cymbeline isn't really a history, and -- since every plot complication is explained and worked out in the end -- it's no tragedy. The director, David Latham, writes that it is a romance, but he also says it's such a wonderful play, he can't understand why it is so rarely performed. Latham's new version is interestingly staged and superbly performed, but it's no wonderful play.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Cane's Bayou
Schaeberle Studio

Matthew Holtzclaw, a young writer from Florida, has written a gripping Southern play, mostly about people who are psychologically heavily damaged or deteriorated in some way -- survivors of the garbage heap of working class life, including "special" ones: retarded, palsied, autistic, alcoholic. It's a very special piece of theater, and Holtzclaw has a keen ear for the idiosyncrasies of Southern working-class speech. A repressed young man who cares for his handicapped twin brother meets a lost young woman who is sinking into alcohol.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Day Emily Married, The
59E59 Theater

Horton Foote is unique. Nobody today writes like him in the soft Southern tone that quietly places you in the house with friends to become part of their lives. In The Day Emily Married, now at 59E59 Theater, exposition is gently slipped into the seemingly mundane conversation of this Texas family in 1925, and there is not a dull moment in the ordinariness of these peoples' dialogues in this moment of possibility, frustration, pain, and insight into the human heart.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
King John
Tom Patterson Theater

Shakespeare's King John is no great play, but, perhaps because it realistically explores power politics and is a partly accurate history, it can be fascinating. And much of this production is what theater is all about.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Haole
Next Stage

Haole, written and performed by Cindy Keiter, the daughter of Hall of Fame sportscaster Les Keiter, and directed by Padraic Lillis, gives us stories from her and her father's lives, about living and surfing in Hawaii, and about sportscasting. She is a good-looking, engaging athlete and actress, and her personal charm and good nature infuse the piece as her stories, including a demonstration of surfing, unfold. I enjoyed my visit to her life -- full of humor and some quite touching moments -- very much, but I don't think I'll start surfing just yet.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Actors Alliance Festival 2004 - Program 7
Lyceum Space

Program #7 of the Actors Alliance Festival 2004 brings to an end the orgy of one-act plays. It was fun, well representing local playwrights, local directors, and local talent. Tonight's program opened not with a play, but Fredi Towbin's amusing stand-up "Molly, With a `Y.'" While charming, with plenty of laughs, I felt like I was at the Comedy Club and not a festival of one-act plays. Towbin entered from the audience with her walker and regaled us with the observations of a New Yorker transplanted to California.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2004
Actors Alliance Festival 2004 - Program 5
Lyceum Space

For Program Five of this year's Actors Alliance Festival, the themes are love and marriage. In The "M" Word: Part I, it's wedding time for two couples, one gay and the other lesbian. Throughout this intense drama, with comic turns, we see the reaction of various family and friends. Each actor adeptly takes on additional characters besides being in the wedding party.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2004
Actors Alliance Festival 2004 - Program 3
Lyceum Space

The second annual Actors Alliance of San Diego Festival is a 12-day fest of over 30 short plays staged at the Lyceum Space in Horton Plaza. There are seven separate programs, each with two play dates. I only wish I could see all of the productions. Here's a sampling of Program 3 with five plays:

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2004
Alligators
Riverfront Theater

Here again among the works of local writers is a novel posing as a play. If performed, it should be as chamber theater. A distinctive, poetic style proves both attraction and fooler.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2004

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