Fourth Wall, The
Primary Stages

A.R. Gurney stretches his wings by satirizing the kind of brittle, WASPy drawing room comedies by which he earns his keep. The premise - that a white suburban woman (Sandy Duncan) keeps a wall of her living room blank to represent the world "out there" -- is a tad flimsy for ninety minutes, but Gurney fills the evening out by spoofing the conventions of playwriting, the expectations of audiences, and the socially-constructed fallacy of American hegemony. And, yes, the laughs are there.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Acts of Providence
Sande Shurin Theater

Acts of Providence, two one acts by Edward Allen Baker, a strong writer with a good ear, is an intriguing evening of theater. The first play, Jane's Exchange, sets up a fascinating mystery about the relationships among four people in the kitchen of a bakery. The four actors, Amorika Amoroso, Joe Capozzi, Julie Karlin and the scintillating Tonya Cornelisse fulfill their roles perfectly, and Russell Treyz directs this engaging, fully satisfying piece with verve.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Betty Rules: The Exception to the Musical
Zipper Theater

Girls with electric guitars - even after Chrissie Hynde, Heart, the Bangles, etc. - it's still a relatively rare and empowering sight. So when Elizabeth Ziff cranks up her Gibson and giraffe-like Alyson Palmer thumps her thumb to the bass, there's a gusto and freedom present that goes beyond just the basic energy you get from hearing rock and roll. BETTY Rules follows the 17- year history of the New York trio, sisters Elizabeth and Amy and their partner in harmony, Alyson.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Book of Days
Signature Theater Company at Peter Norton Space

Lanford Wilson's best play in ages makes you feel like he's picked up a rock in Our Town and looked for what crawleth underneath. Dublin, Missouri seems like an idyllic American town, with good Christian folk going about their business, which includes tolerating the local theatrical production of Saint Joan and rooting for the son of the town's most successful businessman, a cheese maker, to make something of himself.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Debbie Does Dallas
Jane Street Theater

Debbie Does Dallas is hilarious. The satirical little musical at the Jane Street Theater about five nitwit cheerleaders, led by Debbie, who want to go to Dallas to cheer for the Dallas Cowboys, is entertaining from start to finish. It has the funniest choreography in town, by Jennifer Cody, marvelous idiotic performances by the girls, who never cross the line into actual pornography, fine comic support by the three men who play many roles, and some of the most brilliant comic timing and direction in town by Erica Schmidt.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Antony and Cleopatra
Connelly Theater

Shakespeare with a Bollywood overlay makes this Antony and Cleopatra unique. Director Rebecca Patterson slips in Indian music, costumes, and above all, dance, but Shakespeare's text is thankfully untouched. As always, The Queen's Company puts a multi-ethnic, all-women cast to the task, and the result is both professional and believable. A lot of thought and practice must have gone into preparing principal male characters such as Mark Antony (DeeAnn Weir) or Pompey (Aysan Celik).

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
October 2002
Butter And Egg Man, The
Atlantic Theater

There are entertaining moments in The Butter and Egg Man, but you can see clearly why George S. Kaufman joined with other writers in his subsequent works. There are good gags in this play about a novice going into showbusiness, and clever lines, but it's a creaky antique that doesn't work anymore.

In act two director David Pittu has everybody shouting, but that doesn't engage us as we are asked to identify with a lucky idiot. John Ellison Conlee's acting gives the play a better balance towards the end, but "the play's the thing" -- and this ain't it.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2002
Call the Children Home
Primary Stages

Late in this rousing musical, Eugene Fleming, as "Professor," the loyal piano player in Madame Mary's New Orleans Bordello, concludes, "I'll finish my opera, got lots of material now" and, indeed, there is almost too much material in the late Thomas Babe's over-ambitious "libretto" for Call the Children Home. However, while the book reeks of operatic-style melodrama, it serves the music, and luckily so.

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
October 2002
Carousel
Carnegie Hall

Possibly the most-anticipated event of the Richard Rodgers centennial year was the gala concert performance of the composer's favorite show, Carousel. It was great to hear a big orchestra playing this rich score, to see the original Billy Bigelow, John Raitt, introduce the evening and share a bow with Hugh Jackman at the end, and to enjoy fine performances by an all-star cast. There was, however, some disappointment. Leonard Slatkin led the Orchestra of St. Luke's in a brisk reading, with few expressive ritards.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2002
Exonerated, The
45 Bleecker

No matter how good the writing, shows that have actors reading scripts from lecterns require an extra level of patience from audiences and start to wear out their welcome quickly after the first hour, mainly because of the lack of design elements and movement. Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's The Exonerated is no different, even though Tom Ontiveros's varied spotlighting is nicely done, and the play offers gripping, real-life, in-their-own-words stories of wrongly-convicted people who spent years on death row until DNA or other new evidence cleared their names.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2002
Burn This
Union Square Theater

Watchable but not especially rewarding revival of Lanford Wilson's tale of a grieving woman finding solace in hot nookie with a vaguely dangerous asshole.

I was lucky enough to see the original production, with John Malkovich torching the stage indelibly, albeit to the detriment of the love story's credibility—i.e., what did Joan Allen's Anna see in him? With Edward Norton's funnier, greasier turn, Pale's tantrums are more childlike and less overtly threatening, though there's still an oil-and-vinaigrette taste to their twosome.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
September 2002
Burn This
Union Square Theater

There's a little deja-vu in Signature Theater's revival of Lanford Wilson's 1987 play, Burn This, for those who have recently seen Broadway's Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune, another romance between two diametrically opposite characters. Anna (Catherine Keener) is soft, naive, introspective and sensitive. Her unlikely paramour, Pale (Edward Norton), is bombastic—a cursing, drinking, drug-taking emotional bulldozer.

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
September 2002
Burn This
Union Square Theater

This review of the current revival of Lanford Wilson's Burn This comes in two parts: What it is and what it could (and perhaps should) be. First, the opening half hour of expositional chatter among a former dancer, her gay roommate and her boyfriend as they relive the funeral of a third roommate who, with his boyfriend, perished in a boating accident, is static, boring, without style or energy, poorly cast and directed (by James Houghton).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
September 2002
Boys from Syracuse, The
American Airlines Theater

Though forever overshadowed by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Rogers and Hart were as delightful a duo as ever concocted musicals for the Broadway stage. Where the later team dealt in lushness, epic themes, and emotional upheavals, the earlier duo found greatness in zest, cheery wit, and melodies so easy, only a muse could have penned them. If the Roundabout’s revival of The Boys from Syracuse looks a little slapdash, it sounds nifty, thanks to a cast of Broadway pros who can play goofy characters and still sing—formidably—for their supper.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
September 2002
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune
Belasco Theater

Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune takes one of the oldest staples of playwriting - the first date - and grills up two hours of negotiations, neuroses, desires, and regrets. Familiar territory, but the humor is relatively fresh, from F & J's convincingly frank sexual jousting to Johnny's emotional neediness that swings between endearing and borderline scary.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
August 2002
All Over
Gramercy Theater

Edward Albee's 1971 play, All Over, about a family and friends waiting for the patriarch to die, is full of exposition, some of it interesting. As directed by Emily Mann, the piece consists mainly of old- fashioned, careful declarations by the highly professional performers, with everybody ACTING, and no real conversations. Emotional risings and occasional laughings are carefully stitched into the proceedings, and good, bright lines do pop up, but even if some of the stories told are engaging, a play that is almost all exposition tends to be static and boring.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
July 2002
Barbara Cook: Mostly Sondheim
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

Grant Barbara Cook a little leeway with her titles; "Mostly Sondheim" is really half Stephen Sondheim and half songs this great composer/lyricist wishes he'd written -- and grant her a few minutes to get comfy with the Vivian Beaumont stage (she claims to love the space but spends her opening number swiveling like a sprinkler head), and you'll be treated to an evening of fine, sometimes moving singing.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
July 2002
Endpapers
Variety Arts Theater

There are 11 different characters in Thomas McCormack's comedy-drama Endpapers, and, most astoundingly, they're played by 11 different actors. And no, it's not a musical. In an age when playwrights daren't pen anything with more than a half-dozen roles in it (because producers won't produce anything with more than a pocketful of Equity salaries attached to it) we're reminded of just how much breathing room a full-size cast gives a dramatist.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
July 2002
Endpapers
Variety Arts Theater

The moment you sit down in the Variety Arts Theater for Endpapers and encounter the marvelous set by Neil Patel, you feel you're going to see something special -- and it all is. Thomas McCormack is a smart writer who really knows his subject: the world of publishing. The play is full of insights, high humor and thoughts that reach the corners of your mind. The premise is that the patriarch of a publishing company is dying. Who will succeed him? We learn a lot about the underpinnings of this world while we are thoroughly entertained.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
July 2002
Aida
Forrest Theater

Disney's Aida is a visually stunning show, and this road production looks almost the same as the Broadway original. The sun-drenched oranges, reds and pinks and the sparkling stars in the dark night sky are beautiful and exotic. If only Elton John's score had as much luster. John clearly is trying to expand his range. "Easy as Life" is a worthy dramatic monologue, "The Gods Love Nubia" is a stirring anthem, and "Like Father Like Son" is a dramatic argument that advances the plot while rousing us. But most of the rest is conventional rock.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
June 2002
Capitol Steps: When Bush Comes to Shove
John Houseman Theater

n December, 1981, a group of White House staffers planned a Christmas Party with song parodies and skits about current political headlines. Several administrations later, now known as "Capitol Steps," the group has made several albums and tours the country making fun of the very people who employ them. New York is lucky to have them for a few weeks.

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
June 2002
Cooper Savage
West End Theater

There's so much to admire about Bash Halow's Cooper Savage, it takes a slight trepidation to report that the play never quite works. Halow is obviously going for a hailstorm of themes: Southern family dysfunction, budding sexuality, self-image issues, the appeal of a possibly dangerous drifter. But all these tantalizing ideas never coalesce into one solid production. Only in the fragments can an audience see the possibility of what could have been.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
June 2002
Endpapers
Variety Arts Theater

What could be more reassuring and satisfying to a playwright than to have his first full-length play turn out to be quite good? That playwright Thomas McCormack happens to be 70 years old may, at first, sound astonishing but not when you discover that his play is drawn from a world he knows intimately. Isn't that what everyone tells us to write about?

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 2002
Capitol Steps: When Bush Comes to Shove
450 West 42nd Street

Why is this comedy revue, "When Bush Comes to Shove," different from all other comedy revue? One, it's a troupe of grownups whose insights and satires show mature writing with depth and intelligence as well as humor. Two, they are all Broadway-level singers. From Bush's malapropisms to Arafat and Sharon to baseball to the environment to cloning, they are right on target as they take familiar melodies and skewer something. It's full of mind-ticklers like the exceptionally brilliant word backward (or bird wackward) trip that Mike Tilford takes us on.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2002
Few Stout Individuals, A
Signature Theater Company at Peter Norton Space

A good way to describe John Guare's newest play, A Few Stout Individuals, would be, well, stout. Literally busting at the seams with characters, historical events and information, this extravagant re-imagining of the process by which one Samuel Clemens (William Sadler) attempted to draft the memoirs of President Ulysses S. Grant (Donald Moffat) is overstuffed. But nobody can make that quite as endurable as Guare, as for every scene in the play feels trite or mundane, twice as many are healthy reminders of what an accomplished storyteller the man can be.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
May 2002
Few Stout Individuals, A
Signature Theater Company at Peter Norton Space

I generally love John Guare's writing for both stage and film, but you can't win `em all. A Few Stout Individuals, his new take on a dying, debt-ridden Ulysses S. Grant and the question of who will write his memoirs, starts with a stiff opening with nothing happening and then dives into repetitious banter and haranguing, much by an acerbic Mark Twain, which is painful to watch.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2002
Godfadda Workout, The
American Place Theater

The Godfadda Workout brings a new star performer to New York. Okay, he's 43 and has been a performer for many years, but he's new to us. Seth Isler is an actor, comedian and impressionist, flexible in body and character, with great charm and athleticism.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2002
Blue Surge
Public Theater

I'm not one of the several theater critics quick to hail Rebecca Gilman as the playwright du jour and savior for the social-consciousness play. Her previous efforts, which include Spinning Into Butter and the male-stalker effort, Boy Gets Girl, intrigue with their initial tautness and tease of entering darker territory, but Gilman always makes the plays safer and more accommodating than they should be. It's almost as if a committee dictated their end results, because what begins as jolting drama ends up as flat tract.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2002
Blue Surge
Public Theater

Blue Surge is a rare bird: a first-rate, working-class drama. It's a hot, very funny, contemporary comedy, perfectly cast: Rachel Miner, Joe Murphy, Colleen Werthmann, Steve Key, Amy Landecker are directed with energy and great timing by Robert Falls. The show's well designed by Walt Spangler, costumed by Birgit Rattenborg Wise and lit by Michael Philippi. The people are proletarians: cops, hookers, the uneducated working class (except for a middle-class girlfriend of one of the cops as a contrast in aspirations).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2002
Dazzle, The
Gramercy Theater

A few years before R. Crumb's siblings and the Lidz uncles, the Collyer Brothers, real-life "Hermits of Harlem," slowly declined from high society into ostracized seclusion. They were ultimately found, long-dead, by police who discovered the two bodies walled in by eccentric inventions and bundles of newspapers. Richard Greenberg, who is becoming a formidable dramatist, didn't let himself be bound by the truth when turning the Collyer story into The Dazzle, which gives one brother some traits of the other and disregards chunks of real biography.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2002
Elephant Man, The
Royale Theater

The elements are all there for a touching, provocative evening of theater as the sad life of grotesquely deformed John Merrick, "The Elephant Man," is recounted in Bernard Pomerance's famous play. What unfolds at the Royale Theater, however, is a clunky, remote affair, with five Brechtian touches for every two that actually work.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2002
Four
Manhattan Theater Club - Stage II

The generally high-level Manhattan Theater Club has a show called Four, by the very inept (for much of the show, we're listening to one half of a telephone conversation) Christopher Shinn, whose forebear was undoubtedly the bumbling Mayor Shinn in Music Man. Much of the dialogue rings false in this story of two interactions: a teenage gay white boy and a fifty-or-so-year-old black man who likes boys, and the man's lovely, bright daughter and her illiterate, basketball-playing young lover.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2002
Dazzle, The
Gramercy Theater

I still remember the headlines in 1947 about the reclusive Collyer Brothers whose apartment was so full of papers and junk, it took sixteen days to find the body of one of them buried under the debris. Richard Greenberg has imagined their neurotic, and eventually psychotic, life from 1905, when the reclusion begins, to their death in `46 in his engrossing play, The Dazzle. Peter Frechette and Reg Rogers as the brothers have each created character idiosyncrasies that make the ordinary fascinating.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2002
Broadway By The Year: The Broadway Musicals of 1933
Town Hall

The brainchild of its genial and informed host and popular critic/author Scott Siegel, Broadway by the Year moves into its second season with a modest but vastly entertaining show that commemorates many forgotten and now fabled songs: "The Broadway Shows of 1933." Without sets and costumes and offering little of what you would call choreography, five charming performers (Mary Testa, George Dvorsky, Mary Bond Davis, Anne Runolfsson and Mark Coffin) bring their winning talents to a melange of musical-theater melodies.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Forbidden City Blues
West End Theater

What do a crazy Russian general, an American consul who likes to dress as a clown, and a blind, Black blues singer have in common? Alexander Woo puts them together in Beijing in a new comedy, Forbidden City Blues. From his wheelchair, Blind Amos Cunningham (Jose Ramon Rosario) supplies ironic commentary on people and politics to introduce each scene (music by Ken Weiler, lyrics by Woo). An unsuspecting American couple -- Mandarin-speaking Alice (Kate Chaston) and naive Chinese-American Raymond (Rick Ebihara) -- land right in the vortex of an arch scheme.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Four
Manhattan Theater Club - Stage II

In his gentle drama Four, Christopher Shinn displays a Kenneth Lonergan-style talent for letting quirky, flawed but very believable characters quietly go through their paces, colliding with each other and leaving both grace notes and scars. Four keeps us guessing what will occur in the pairings of Joe, a married black man and June, a closeted, 15-year-old gay teen, as well as Joe's daughter and a charming, streetwise basketball player and minor thief.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Fred Garbo Inflatable Theater Company
New Victory Theater

The Fred Garbo Inflatable Theater Co. gives us two of the finest performance artists around (or is it "New Vaudeville?"). Garbo is a juggler, mime, clown and gymnast who has created a unique extravaganza using huge inflated cubes as his costumes and props. His partner, the stunningly beautiful Brazilian dancer Daielma Santos, does the acrobatics with him and lights up the stage with her dancing. The show, which runs at the New Victory Theater on 42nd Street, is an exposition of creative fun (for all ages) from start to finish.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Further Than The Furthest Thing
Manhattan Theater Club - Stage I

Further Than the Furthest Thing at Manhattan Theater Club is basically about moronic people in a wretched situation. It starts with incomprehensible rapid-fire chatter from Jennifer Dundas and goes to the stupidity of dropping eggs so they break -- twice. A magician/capitalist enters, and things pick up a bit, and it's "should the factory come to this primitive island?" "Local Hero" did that one a lot better. The cast of five utilize five different accents as their community rolls towards death and destruction. Not a lot of fun.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Lips Together, Teeth Apart
Actor's Asylum

I guess you could call it eavesdropping. Well, it was hard not to hear the Trumans, Sam and Sally, talking with their beach-house guests. They were Sam's sister, Chloe, and her husband, John Haddock. Sally's brother, David, recently died of AIDS, and the Truman's are taking care of the estate. I mean the houses are shoulder-to-shoulder on the beach on Fire Island. And you know absolutely everybody is out for the fourth of July.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Bea Arthur On Broadway: Just Between Friends
Booth Theater

She enters the stage without fanfare, suddenly she's just there! Tall and elegant in a sequin topped pants ensemble, lushly lashed, bouffant silver haired, Bea Arthur is all glam sophisticate... until you notice she's barefoot. Basically that sums up the persona that seemingly effortlessly takes over the Booth Theater stage.

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
March 2002

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