Crimes Of The Heart
Second Stage Theater

Not quite a must-see but certainly a reminder of what made Beth Henley so special way-back-when (i.e., before all the imitators). Her two great skills: effortlessly moving a scene from one tone to its complete opposite, and taking a situation of believable awfulness and mining it for (still-hilarious) comic effect.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 2001
Eli's Comin'
Vineyard Theater

Right off the bat, I have to say that Eli's Comin', the long-gestating Laura Nyro project currently performing at the Vineyard Theater, has the best voices anywhere on a stage right now. The four leading females (Judy Kuhn, Mandy Gonzalez, Anika Noni Rose and Ronnell Bey) make every note their own, throwing in a healthy dosage of blues, R&B and rock to Nyro's beautifully crafted tunes, all of which sound better with age. Unfortunately, enthusiastic praise will have to cease there, because otherwise, Diane Paulus' "music-theater piece" never achieves lift-off.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
May 2001
Ensemble Studio Theater Marathon 2001: Series C
Ensemble Studio Theater

Series C of the Ensemble Studio Theatre's 2001 One Act Marathon has one great play, one awful one and two that are pretty good. Invitation to a Funeral by Julie McKee, about two women at the funeral of their common ex-husband, is written with rare wit, directed with impeccable timing by Deborah Hedwall, and performed by two brilliant actresses, Kathleen Doyle and Susan Pellegrino, each with the underplayed comic performance of a master. It's the last of the four on the program, and I'm still smiling a day later.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2001
Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The
Minskoff Theater

Swiftly-paced and agreeable rendering of Twain's tale, recommended for family outings. Passable tunes and okay lyrics are secondary to can't-miss storyline, inspired settings (by designer Heidi Ettinger), and nicely-staged climactic man-hunt in the cave. If only the Minskoff weren't such a barn, with the orchestra sounding like a car radio and the actors appearing to sing a quarter-beat behind because of the acoustics.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 2001
Blast!
Broadway Theater

More sedate (mercifully) than you’d expect a brass n’ drum extravaganza to be, Blast! has numerous moments of charm and good humor to go with its precision drills, banner juggling, and object twirling.

Apart from the opening “Bolero” and a zany “Officer Krupke,” Blast! isn’t exactly memorable or even exciting, but the music can be pretty, and most of the time our eardrums are spared the usual Broadway assault.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Bat Boy: The Musical
Union Square Theater

The pastiche score isn't one for the ages (though you'll remember the "Hold me, Bat Boy" refrain), but this is cleverly crafted, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink kitsch that grabs an audience and never lets go. And if you think - as with so many musicals - the second act will run out of ideas and steam, you're in for an invigorating surprise.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Bat Boy: The Musical
Union Square Theater

A few weeks ago, I remarked to a friend that I was deeply envious of anyone who got to see the megabomb musicalization of Carrie years back. There's something exciting about a live show that appears destined to flop hard; in fact, in theater communities, they are even more memorable years later, long after the latest sham revue musical has won the Best Musical Tony. Bat Boy the Musical looked like one of those shows -- on paper anyway.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Bells Are Ringing
Plymouth Theater

While not among the evergreens, Bells Are Ringing has enough pleasures to be a legitimate example of the "good old days" of Broadway musicals.  Tina Landau's proficient but bland revival simply has the bad luck to be up against a lively crop of spring shows and suffers by comparison. Taken on its own terms, however, this Bells certainly entertains.  Faith Prince and Marc Kudisch are individually good, though they lack romantic sizzle. The subway scene remains a can't-miss joy.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Bloomer Girl
City Center

A year after the success of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (the pioneering musical that dealt profoundly with box lunch socials), musical theater collaborators Harold Arlen (composer), E.Y. Harburg (lyricist) and Sig Herzig and Fred Saidy (book writers) would opt for more social significance with their 1944 tuner, Bloomer Girl. Bloomer Girl did not achieve the immortality of "Oklahoma," but its quaint charms, enlivened by adapter David Ives, were recently revived for the popular Encores! Series at the City Center.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Boy Gets Girl
Manhattan Theater Club - Stage I

Boy Gets Girl, the latest from up-and-coming playwright Rebecca Gilman, represents a 2-for-2 in terms of promise unfulfilled for this new voice in the theater. Critics have been singing her praises ever since the debut of her racially-charged drama, Spinning into Butter, at Lincoln Center last year, citing her willingness to hit on hot-button issues and bring forth topics relevant to modern society but are rarely explored in theater. Few, however, seems to mind that she starts with potentially explosive premises that completely deflate before your very eyes.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Breaker: An Aerial Fairie Tale
Dixon Place

One of the most beautiful, moving theater happenings in NYC is Breaker: An Aerial Fairie Tale, performed by five women trapeze artists and a four-piece jazz group. A circus rises into the air from the sea, and we fly with them.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Closing Time
Arlene's Grocery

Short comic works by Irish playwright Flann O'Brien make for a thoroughly delightful piece of "Pub Theater," with live Irish music performed by one of the finest acting ensembles in town, directed vividly by Macdara Mac Uibh Aille. There is no better actor on stage anywhere than Sean Powell. 

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Bobbi Boland
ArcLight Theater

Poor Bobbi Boland. Left behind in the wake of the tumultuous sixties, she just doesn't get it. She's caught in a time warp, and she can't get out. She clings desperately to her past, symbolized by the rhinestone tiara resting on a shelf in her living room etagere. It represents the high point of her life -- when she was crowned Miss Florida 20 years ago. As the play opens, we find Bobbi giving lessons on social graces to a young girl who lives down the street.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2001
Connecticut Yankee, A
City Center

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
February 2001
High Dive
Manhattan Class Company

Leslie Ayvazian's autobio solo is thinly conceived but lively. The gimmick of having audience members cue her with dialogue (instead of using pre-recorded voices) keeps things percolating.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
February 2001
Beowulf
Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts

When Benjamin Bagby is on stage, he tells a story nearly everyone knows, in a language no one understands - and the audience is mesmerized. His performance of Beowulf, in Old English, is creative, disciplined, entertaining, inspiring... in short, theater of the first magnitude. Bagby exploits the entire range of vocal sound, form, and technique: he growls, yells, sings, whispers, chants, as required. Through a thorough education to the oral tradition and a meticulous analysis of the text, he animates each phrase with commitment to his specific aesthetic decision.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
January 2001
Almost Asleep
45th Street Theater

Few topics immediately draw attention in the theater; one is the subject of rape. Similar to the Holocaust in terms of severity, it is an issue that requires sensitivity by the makers but is also one that a viewer seems almost forced to be compelled to. That said, I wish Almost Asleep, the latest play by Julie Hebert (whose Ruby's Bucket Of Blood has become a Showtime feature) gave us something more to be compelled by than its subject.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
November 2000
Class Act, A
Manhattan Theater Club - Stage II

I never would have predicted it, but it seems the American musical isn't in such a bad state after all.  After the recent triumph of the surprise charmer The Full Monty on Broadway, here we have the belle of them all, A Class Act, which is to mind, the most original and affecting musical since Hedwig And The Angry Inch. There's true magic in it, and I suspect it's because its creators threw away all the stupid notes on how a musical is supposed to manipulate its audience.  More than any show (musical or play) I can recall in recent memory, it has its fin

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
November 2000
Cobb
Lucille Lortel Theater

You don't have to be a baseball fan to cheer for Cobb, Lee Blessing's (A Walk In The Woods) riveting play about the controversial slugger, who became as famous for hitting the ball as he was for hitting anyone who crossed him. Despite Cobb's remark, "I was too real for myth," Blessing has taken into account various legends that have surfaced about this great but petulant, player, who also became baseball's first millionaire, and devised not one but three ways to present him.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2000
Doll
P.S. 122

Writer Erik Jackson and director Joshua Rosenzweig were onto something with this one (the program indicates it was "freely adapted from Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House). For anyone who had to read Ibsen's play in high school or college or whatever, it is evident that this work begs for someone to camp it up. It has everything: the put-upon, suffering housewife waiting for feminism to be invented, and her ungrateful husband who mentally takes advantage of her, all wrapped up in a highly dramatic vacuum of high drama.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
November 2000
Game Show
45 Bleecker

Back in my wilder days, I remember going to a now-defunct Greenwich Village bar that featured a live game show once a week, every week. For the cost of a few cocktails, you could see half-drunk people answer trivia questions about old TV personalities, sing karaoke-style ditties and perform scavenger hunts, all in an attempt to win prizes such as stuffed cows, magnets, videos and the all-important grand prize: a $50 bar tab. It was loose and fun, and nobody ever seemed to care that the prizes could be bought at any 99 cent store half the time.

November 2000
Beginning of August, The
Atlantic Theater

The Atlantic Theater Company's new season opens (miraculously) without a play by David Mamet; quite the opposite actually, it happens to be the new work by Tom Donaghy (Minutes From The Blue Route, Northeast Local). There are still ties (director Neil Pepe helmed the Atlantic's successful revival of American Buffalo last spring), so while it's nice to see new work being produced with craftsmanship, one wishes this new play had some of the kick Buffalo still has.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Barbara Cook: Stephen Sondheim and his Favorite Songwriters
Feintein's at the Regency

Musical theater legend Barbara Cook is taking her cue from a recent New York Times Magazine article written by Frank Rich about Stephen Sondheim, in which the composer talked about songs he wished he had written. She has made his list the theme of her month-long engagement at Feinstein's at the Regency.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Four Guys Named Jose - And Una Mujer Named Maria
Blue Angel Theater

There was a time around the mid-20th century when one could truthfully say that the entertainer most visibly personifying the Latino temperament and artistry was Carmen Miranda, a.k.a. the Brazilian bombshell. Of course, the image of the short, fiery, motor-mouthed senorita with the tall, banana-topped headdress as the representative of so many diverse cultures was as limiting, and misleading, as it was grievously short-sighted.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Game Show
45 Bleecker

So you haven't had your fill of TV game shows and often wished you could either attend one or be a player. Well the opportunity is at hand, maybe not to win a million bucks, but some nifty prizes (airline tickets, digital camera, a DVD Player, or a TV) that is, if you are one of the four lucky members of the audience that gets called on stage to be a contestant. Otherwise, the chances are good, if you have an aisle seat in the 300 seat theater, that you will walk out with either a T-shirt or an autographed photo of the show's revved up host Troy Richard (Michael McGrath).

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Gloria
Theater For The New City

Glory be to "Gloria" (Carrie Brewer), a beautiful sword-wielding princess who, thanks to her now deceased father, is well schooled in the art of dueling and sundry martial arts. It's lucky for Gloria that she has maintained her form and technique in daily workouts with Carmella (Judi Lewis), her close friend since childhood and soon to become a nun. Also keeping close watch over Gloria is her trusted nurse (Barbara J. Spence), who promised the dying king that she would keep the secret of Gloria's birth and the true identity of her mother.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Boxing 2000
Present Company Theatorium

Leave it to the skewed sensibilities of downtown darling Richard Maxwell to fashion a play around amateur boxing—a sport that is equated with agility and speed and still bless it with his trademark deadpan dialogue. In his latest effort, Maxwell turns his attentions to two brothers, seemingly products of the street, Jo-Jo (Gary Wilmes) and Freddie (Robert Torres), who are prepping for a small-time fight.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
September 2000
Artaud Le Momo
Collective Unconscious

This was the world premiere for Alexander Panas's look at seminal theater theorist Antonin Artaud (1896-1948). Committed to an insane asylum in Rodez, France, Artaud spent dearly a decade there undergoing regular shock treatments that completely destroyed his health. Panas shows a man with violent mood swings and uncontrolled libido but one who is also a victim of overzealous therapy and nonstop predatory sexual taunting.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
August 2000
Bacchae, The
La Plaza Cultural

In The Bacchae, Euripides shows the disastrous consequences of challenging a superior power.  Young Pentheus (Kenneth Garson), governor of Thebes, is alarmed by the appearance of a new religion, which promotes orgiastic revelries in the woods and especially corrupts his city's women.  His entire family, including grandfather Cadmus (Glenn B.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
August 2000
Cuban Operator Please
Teatro 309, Charas/El Bohio

Adrian Rodriguez paints a very personal picture of the Cuban exile community, a very different one from what filled our TV screens earlier this year. Father (Jose Antonio) has lived in Union City, Cuba's "northernmost province" since leaving his country. Now married with two sons, he has worked long hours in an embroidery factory to support his family. The transition to life in the U.S. has left him taciturn and unable to show emotion except when playing baseball, his passion.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
August 2000
Don Juan In Hell
Irish Repertory

I don't know about you, but to my mind, George Bernard Shaw's plays always seem like a philosophical dissertation in search of a drama. Characters talk and talk and talk, but the outcome always seems the same, no matter where the play would end during its run. That said, the Irish Rep's revival of Shaw's Don Juan In Hell seems more than ideal. Staged as a reading and starring four old-time pros, this is a sit-down production that truly lets you experience the words in every sense.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
August 2000
Godspell
Theater at St. Peter's - Citicorp Center

I think it might be safe to say that never in my life before have I encountered two tasteless, punishing religious rock musicals in one theatergoing year.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
August 2000
Habitos Oscuros
Teatro Armando Perez, Charas/El Bohio

Appearances can be deceiving. What goes on inside the Convent of the Humiliated Redeemers may be shocking to anyone who doesn't know their Almodovar. Coke-snorting nuns that pen porn on the side are just the tip of the iceberg. When divine providence leads an egregious sinner in the guise of pop singer Yolanda (Lorena Arriagada) to the sisters, a massive show of hospitality ensues. The only problem is that Jolanda wants to go straight, an impossible goal among these perverted religionists.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
August 2000
Die Ungarische Medea
Teatro Armando Perez, Charas/El Bohio

What if your husband were about to leave you for a young blonde? What if your son turned against you? What if a few moments later he died in a car crash? Like her mythological antecedent, this "Hungarian Medea" picks an extreme solution. Playwright Arpad Goncz (former President of Hungary) sees Medea's predicament as a spiritual quest: when Mada concludes life has no more meaning, her decisive nature allows only suicide as a response. Goncz's reference to the Medea is ironic, because modern times don't permit triumphant revenge.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
August 2000
Habladores
Present Company Theatorium

My high school Spanish teacher always suspected that the English verb "to blabber " came from "hablaba," Spanish for "he was speaking." She must have been thinking about Habladores, by Golden Age Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616). Most noted as the author of "Don Quixote de la Mancha," Cervantes also wrote over a dozen intermedios, brief plays to fill the space between acts of a tragedy or other more serious stage work.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
August 2000
Brothers And Sisters - Part I: Meetings and Partings
John Jay College Theater

This is the first time New York audiences have seen Lev Dodin's well-traveled production of Brothers and Sisters, which dates from the precise beginning of perestroika in 1985. Russians would be in a better position to grasp the irony in this adaptation of Fyodor Abramov's trilogy of novels about village life in Russia's Far North at the close of WWII.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
July 2000
Brothers And Sisters - Part II: Roads And Crossroads
John Jay College Theater

Part of Lincoln Center Festival 2000, this stage adaptation of Fyodor Abramov's trilogy of life in Russia's Far North continues over a second evening to show the same village five years after the end of WWII.

In this more somber Part II, the villagers' mood is temporarily lifted by a film clip of smiling peasants harvesting wheat -- until it is announced that the state grain requirement will be doubled. This effectively condemns them to another year of near famine; forced "loans" to the Party district committee further bled them.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
July 2000
Dance Like a Man
Tribeca Performing Arts Theater 2

A long-overdue Festival of Indian Theater brought U.S. premieres for works by two of India's most popular playwrights to the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. The one reviewed here, Mahesh Dattani's Dance Like a Man, asks whether a performer should have special rights within an upper-middle-class, traditional family.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
July 2000
Filao
Damrosch Park Tent

Inspired by Italo Calvino's magical-realist novel "The Baron in the Trees," this "new circus" event is called Filao, a clever contraction of the French word for high wire. Now, after having toured Europe and America since 1997, Filao comes to Lincoln Center Festival 2000, its second-to-last venue.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
July 2000
Current Events
Manhattan Theater Club - Stage II

Politics is always a tricky subject for a playwright to tackle; either you're preaching to the converted or talking to a brick wall. People don't come to the theater to be lectured; they want to be entertained. I'm happy to report that David Marshall Grant's Current Events emerges victorious on both fronts.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
June 2000

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