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
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
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
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
Afterbirth: Kathy & Mo's Greatest Hits
Second Stage Theater

Afterbirth: Kathy and Mo's Greatest Hits, now at the Second Stage Theater, gives us two extraordinary comedians, Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney, in a variety of sketches with top-level comedy writing and brilliant performance - the kind that can only be achieved by many years of working in comedy and performing together. They each play a wide array of characters, accents, attitudes, ages, ethnicities, all with complete conviction. Jokes come fast and furious-- and none of them miss.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
June 2004
Boise
Rattlestick Theater

David Folwell may be the first playwright to use Boise, Idaho, as anyone's realization of Utopia. In his dark, humorous and kinky comedy, Boise becomes the ostensible paradise for two of the play's characters. For one, a notably dysfunctional, disenchanted and disillusioned New Yorker, it becomes an objective. Stewart (Christopher Burns) is clearly frustrated by the predictability his seven-year marriage to Val (Geneva Carr) and his dull middle-management job. At first, Stewart's itch is placated by internet porn and closeted fantasies of an affair.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 2004
Broadway By The Year: The Broadway Musicals of 1963
Town Hall

In just two seasons, Scott Siegel, the creator, writer and host of "The Broadway Musicals of..." series, has made these shows the talk of the town...with nary a Tony nomination in sight. This absolutely wonderful show happens only on Monday nights five times a season at Town Hall. Siegel's clever idea to present musical salutes to those songs from vintage shows produced during a selected calendar year, whether a hit or flop, and that deserve to be heard again, has caught on big with the public.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 2004
Brando
Irish Arts Center

Imagine that someone has written a play entitled Brando, exploring the mystique of Marlon Brando, which features a character named Brando, who is actually supposed to be Marlon Brando, and that this character is rendered as a fat joke, nothing more.

You'd have an idea just how cluelessly awful this play is.

David Steinhardt
Date Reviewed:
May 2004
Ears on a Beatle
DR2 Theater

Twenty/twenty hindsight is always helpful when you're deciphering who might be a safety threat to America and why. In retrospect, the FBI's surveillance of rock legend John Lennon seems like a waste of time and taxpayer money, though a case could still be made that among his fans and worshipers lay radicals far more dangerous than the former Beatle (e.g., if only the FBI had followed the Beach Boys' activities more closely, tabs might've been kept on their wild-eyed-songwriter friend, Charlie Manson). And of course, the clear irony in Mark St.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Embedded
Public Theater

Embedded wears it politics on its sleeve, on its face, and on its masks. Yet it's not a polemic. It is a parody, but it's also a serious look at war. Probably the most accurate description is that Embedded is a series of set pieces, some brilliant, some broad, some harrowing, some obvious, which add up to a moving piece of theater but which fall somewhat short if one considers them together as "a play."

David Steinhardt
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Anchor Pectoris
La MaMa ETC

Gerald Thomas, who's worked internationally, has conceived, designed and directed Anchor Pectoris, was presented recently by La MaMa. Thomas' form is unique and exciting: two actors move downstage, one of them representing the playwright; the other a sort of conversational sounding board. There are several actors behind a scrim, and they represent -- with varying degrees of non-realism, but always referring to life -- the playwright's artistic and political concerns as he discusses them.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
bridge and tunnel
45 Bleecker

In the extraordinary one woman show, Bridge & Tunnel, written and performed by Sarah Jones and playing at 45 Bleeker Street, Jones gives us a succession of immigrant characters, mostly living in Queens, whose lives and personas are explored with amazing sensitivity and skill as she, with minimal costume changes, switches from male to female, from old to young, and to accents from all over the world. Although the piece boasts lots of humor, it is basically an exploration of the hearts of the characters, and, as directed by Tony Taccone, Ms.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Bug
Barrow Street Theater

Bug by Tracy Letts, now at the Barrow Street Theater, is a naturalistic slice of motel life among working-class Oklahomans performed by actors with a sense of being seldom seen on the stage today. We are looking through the wall where a real life seems to be going on. Shannon Cochran, Michael Shannon, Amy Landecker, Michel Cullen and Reed Birney are a rare acting ensemble, directed with an enthralling sense of timing by Dexter Bullard. This is what "The Method" was about -- real people with genuine emotions.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Embedded
Public Theater

In Embedded, written and directed by Tim Robbins, we learn that the media lies to the public and that the government controls the media. Gosh! I never knew that. We also learn that Tim Robbins is a better director than writer. The most interesting part of his show is the projections of dazzling old war films and splay of lights during the scene changes. The rest is simplistic Agit-prop polemic diatribe, mostly declaimed in a Brechtian manner, including masks for Bush's cabinet, but without Brecht's innovative theatrical tangents and delights.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
From Door To Door
Westside Theater - Downstairs

Few themes in playwriting are as reliable as that of parents passing their fears, traits, customs and traditions down to their children. In capable hands, the opportunities for nostalgia and recriminations can be inexhaustible. James Sherman, who showed a sweet knack for Jewish family comedy with his Beau Jest, mines a slightly darker vein in this tale of three women and the choices they made.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Expiration Date
La MaMa ETC - First Floor

One by one, three eccentric actresses strut onto the stage at La MaMa's First Floor Theater to wait to audition. They flaunt creatively outlandish costumes by Denise Greber and director Abla Khoury, with a common theme of bright red patent-leather shoes or boots. And waiting is about all they get to do, unless you count the impromptu monologues done for an ominous-looking camera on tripod that otherwise mostly spills artsy time sequences of the women onto a screen at the rear.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Between Men and Cattle
Off-Broadway Theater

Wisconsin-based playwright Richard Kalinoski explores the racial divide between black and white in Between Men and Cattle. The premise of this oddly titled play is an intriguing one, involving an articulate black boy and an eager white reporter who is dazzled by the boy's sensitivity. However, for a number of reasons, the play fails to get off the ground. This does not reflect on the talents of director David Cecsarini nor the excellent cast.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2004
Caroline, Or Change
Public Theater

Caroline, or Change is a departure for playwright Tony Kushner, and he pulls it off very well. Instead of writing about cosmic catastrophes like the AIDS epidemic and war in Afghanistan, he narrows his focus to one household in Louisiana in 1963. Even more importantly, he restrains his dialogue and focuses on writing lyrics that reveal their essence within 32 bars.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Crashing
Chashama

A woman's work is never done -- especially when the sheer annoyances and expectations involved in being a female involve as much toil as any paid employment. The rituals and pains of dieting, dressing, exercising, dating, waxing, and even relaxing are enough to send perfectly functional and sane women to the edge of a nervous breakdown.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Butley
Huntington Theater

A bit of Broadway buzz comes to Boston’s Huntington Theater as Nathan Lane assays the title role in Simon Gray’s seminal dark comedy, Butley. In retrospect, the play feels like the bridge between Harold Pinter’s grim view of male relationships in the 60s and the explosion of gay theater in the late 1970s.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Addicted: A Comedy of Substance
Zipper Theater

By all rights, fifteen years ago, Mark Lundholm should have been lying dead somewhere - and he would have deserved it. An addictive personality raised in a violent home, Lundholm moved from alcohol to drugs, eventually ditching his wife and kid for a life of crime to support his habits. But just when he was ready to pull the trigger on the gun to his head - literally - he decided to give rehab one more shot.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Cookin'
New Victory Theater

It's Stomp with a hint of Blast! and a dash of "Yan Can Cook." Sounds appetizing? For awhile, this Korean import, conceived by Seung Whan Song and now a world-wide touring phenomenon, promises to be both light on the funny bone and tempting to the salivary glands, as Cookin' shows a group of young "chefs" ordered to prepare a multi-course meal in exactly one hour.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Bold Girls
29th Street Repertory

Bold Girls by Rona Munro, now at the 29th St. Rep, is deceiving.  Basically it is a "kitchen sink" drama set in Belfast, Ireland, in 1990, with four women whose men are either dead or in jail (we never find out what they did, but insurrection is implied). While the talk and concerns of these working-class women are quite ordinary, an explosion and shots in the background give the atmosphere some tension. "The Troubles" are rumbling nearby and might spill onto the stage (they don't).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Boobs! The Musical: The World According to Ruth Wallis
Triad Theater (moved to Dillon's)

Well, Tom Lehrer she wasn't. Nor Allan Sherman nor Randy Newman, all of whom have written satirical (and some serious) songs that enjoyed successful off-Broadway tributes in years past. But the largely forgotten Ruth Wallis did carve out a niche for herself with moderately raunchy, double-entendre-packed ditties throughout the 50s and 60s, the most famous of which gives Steve Mackes and Michael Whaley's new revue its title. Boobs!

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Bat Boy: The Musical
Actors' Guild of Lexington

Bat Child Found in Cave was the jaw-dropping headline on June 22, 1992, in the gaudy "Weekly World News" tabloid, where fiction disguised as fact becomes eerily stranger than truth. But let us give thanks to that trashy rag for inspiring Keythe Farley, Brian Flemming, and Laurence O'Keefe to transform the Bat Boy concoction into a marvelously entertaining and touching musical.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Carnival Knowledge
Soho Playhouse

Step right up to the Soho Playhouse and see, "alive on stage" such wonders as a man walking barefoot on broken glass, chewing up a lightbulb, and hammering a nail in his nasal cavity.  It's all the same man -- Todd Robbins -- in Carnival Knowledge, helped by his lady assistant, Twistina, and joined by the dwarf Little Jimmy (one of the Oompah-Loompahs in the original "Willy Wonka").  It's a diverting mix of standard magic act, dangerous stunts (the most interesting part of the evening, since they're "real"), and flim-flam (one bit really IS done with mirrors).

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Far And Wide
Mint Theater

In his best-known work, La Ronde, Arthur Schnitzler explored how the dominant person in one sexual relationship can be, simultaneously, the lackey in another. Far and Wide takes a broader social view, showing how a wife's infidelity (or even the hint of it) can be so much more of a scandal than her husband's habitual bits on the side. Appropriately for the social set depicted, it's all played as high comedy, sobering up just long enough for seemingly inconsequential events to become tragic.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003

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