How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Hilton Theater

Jack O'Brien's lively creation, Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas is a bundle of familiar family fun with a great singing-dancing cast of grownups and kids, including a couple of stars: John Cullum as the Old Dog who tells the story, and the gruff, lovable Patrick Page as The Grinch.

Directed by Matt August, the tuner has an "Alice in Wonderland" feeling with stylized moves and bouncy choreography by John DeLuca and whimsical cartoonish costumes by Robert Morgan played on John Lee Beatty's fanciful set.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Jose Feliciano
Iridium

In 1964, I was the MC of The Hootenanny at The Bitter End Cafe in Greenwich Village every Tuesday night. One night a young woman came in dragging a blind Puerto Rican kid with a guitar. She said to put him on the stage, that he was really good. I said, "Sure," and put him on at two in the morning. When he sang his first song, I told the woman, "Bring him in any time -- I'll put him on any time you say." It was Jose Feliciano. About ten years later, at a club in Huntington Beach, California, I was his opening act doing my mime/comedy act, and he used to heckle me.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Les Miserables
Broadhurst Theater

Les Miserables by Alain Boubil and Claude-Michel Schoenberg, is arguably the greatest musical ever created, and the powerful, moving, new production brings much needed theatrical life back to Broadway. Strongly but sensitively directed (John Caird and Trevor Nunn), brilliantly designed (John Napier) and lighted (David Hersey -- I've never seen better lighting in a theater in my life) by the originals, it has breathtaking moments of theatrical grandeur mixed with the gripping plot of the story of the pursued Jean Valjean.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Little Dog Laughed, The
Cort Theater

The Little Dog Laughed has moved to Broadway, and now that it is $96 a seat, I have to re-evaluate my earlier review when it was Off-Broadway. Then, I started with: Douglas Carter Bean is a smart writer with a sharp sense of humor; he's able to throw in jokes, quips and references that ring so true or familiar we can't help laughing. Some of this shows in The Little Dog Laughed. It's about a killer female Hollywood agent, a confused guy who is a movie star, his new boyfriend who is a prostitute, and the prostitute's sort-of girlfriend.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Vertical Hour, The
Music Box Theater

David Hare is a smart cookie, a true intellectual. His Broadway play, The Vertical Hour, starring Julianne Moore and Bill Nighy, is basically his anti-war comment on Iraq. There is a lot of political instruction on terror and victims by an idealistic Moore, and a very mannered, twitchy Nighy gives us Britain contrasted to the U.S. politically. The question is: does one intervene where things are terrible? She justifies the start of the Iraq war; Nighy is anti.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Fantasticks, The
Snapple Theater Center

The Fantasticks, now playing at the Snapple Theater Center, is a sweet, old fashioned, silly, romantic comedy with terrific songs that stick in your mind. What a pleasure to walk out humming "Try to Remember" or "Soon It's Gonna Rain." With a fine cast including the beautiful, clear-voiced Sara Jean Ford as the girl, Burke Moses as El Gallo and the extraordinary physical comedian Robert R.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Beyond Therapy
Poway Performing Arts Company

Christopher Durang creates very strange, often incisive, plays, but they can also be obscure, with dialogue stylized and motivations fuzzy. Beyond Therapy, currently on the boards at PowPAC Theater under the direction of Marjorie Mae Treger, is a baffler. It's the story of a couple who met through an ad, and now both are going through therapy. Durang further obscures their relationship by the fact that he is bisexual, with a jealous boy friend, and she has gone to bed with her therapist. The author doesn't seem to have much regard for therapists.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Chorus Line, A
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater

Dance: Ten, Looks: Ten, Drama: Well, not that high. Paraphrasing one of its lyrics, that's my assessment of the new production of A Chorus Line. Today's hoofers dance as well as the original cast from 1975, and most of them sing better.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Confessions of an Irish Rebel
Irish Arts Center

Confessions of an Irish Rebel, now at the Irish Arts Center on West 51st Street, gives us the real flavor of Ireland in a show full of wit and wisdom in story and song. You're in a pub with a charming, smart, marvelous storyteller who sings the old tunes and becomes the many characters he talks about, each with a unique persona and voice. As Behan, Shay Duffin is the guy you'd actually love to meet in an Irish pub.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Culture Clash - Zorro in Hell
La Jolla Playhouse - Mandell Weiss Forum

If you weren't offended by Culture Clash's Zorro in Hell, you were either not listening or not looking. The show is very funny and very profane. The F-word is used as a verb, noun, adjective, and adverb. The one-liners flow so fast as to make a stand-up comedian envious.

Culture Clash (Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas, and Herbert Siguenza) are supported by Joseph Kamal, Sharon Lockwood and Vincent Christopher Montoya. The latter Montoya also doubles quite effectively on the guitar.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Music Hall - Fair Park

The experience of attending theater doesn't begin when you enter the theater; it begins when you leave the house, and it comprises more than just what happens on stage. The current State Fair Musical, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, rates a 10 on the Disaster Scale from 1 to 10.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Fire on the Mountain
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

Taken from field interviews with Appalachian coal miners and their families, Fire on the Mountain offers stories of their lives and their relationships with each other. Punctuated by authentic music of the area, played on familiar instruments but just as often rendered a capella or to feet stomping rhythmically, themes emerge: Both lands and laborers have been exploited, yet the people love their land and each other. Vivid slides on both sides of a bright blue backdrop picture miners' sooty faces or legs deep in mud or bodies tensed as arms swing axes.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Gem of the Ocean
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

Life is an adventure, proclaims Aunt Ester, the elderly monarch of August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean. "Elderly" may be putting it mildly. Wise and sassy, this 285-year-old, white-haired woman carries the history of the African-American experience in America. Ester was brought to this country in chains as a scared, 12-year-old girl. She lived through slavery, emancipation and the troubled times still surrounding the supposedly "free" blacks.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Gnadiges Fraulein, The
Bath House Cultural Center

WingSpan Theater's production of The Gnadiges Fraulein by Tennessee Williams proved that exceptional talent can transform manure into fertilizer. This off-the-wall tragi-comedy wrapped in a Theater-of-the-Absurd blanket with a sado-masochistic binding (yes, it really is a comedy) is set in Cocaloony Key, the southernmost key in the country -- think Key West with attitude.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
If You Give a Pig a Party
Dallas Children's Theater

The Dallas Children's Theater production of If You Give a Pig a Party is a sure-fire hit for the three-to-eight year-old crowd. Based on Laura Numeroff's book and adapted for the stage by DCTs Nancy Schaeffer, it relates the story of an impish Pig (Beth Albright) dressed in a pink sweatsuit and pink sneakers and sporting a curly white tail and early Sally Struthers hair-do. Then a Girl (Rebecca Paige) decides to throw a party for the Pig for no special reason, but alas, nobody is home when Pig calls her friends to invite them. What to do?

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Day in the Death of Joe Egg, A
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

The challenges of caring for a severely disabled child form the nucleus of Joe Egg, which is being staged by the Milwaukee Chamber Theater. While a damaged child may not sound like the funniest of topics, make no mistake; this is a comedy, albeit with dark undertones.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Jay Johnson: The Two and Only
Helen Hayes Theater

Jay Johnson is a master of his art on a level with a Vladimir Horowitz or Arthur Rubenstein on the piano, Picasso or Rembrandt as painters, Nijinsky as a dancer, Caruso as a singer. The art here is Ventriloquism, and in his show, Jay Johnson: The Two and Only, Johnson's complete unification with his art and his wit and humor are there to enthrall an audience in a performance that is rare, delightful, and at times, quite moving.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Times They Are A-Changin', The
Brooks Atkinson Theater

How wise director-choreographer Twyla Tharp was to title her latest danceical, The Times They Are A-Changin', since that song warns writers and critics to "keep your eyes wide / the chance won't come again." Verily, this critic's eyes had to fight to stay open, and any chance this half-baked mess has of lasting past December is slimmer than sheet metal from cannery row.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Hairy Ape, The
Irish Repertory

Eugene O'Neill is America's greatest playwright, and there is a powerful representation of his work at The Irish Rep on 22nd Street, directed by Ciaran O'Reilly: The Hairy Ape. It's a marvelous production on Eugene Lee's inspired, complex, brilliantly active set, with vivid lighting by Brian Nason and fine costuming by Linda Fisher.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Times They Are A-Changin', The
Brooks Atkinson Theater

The Bob Dylan (songs) and Twyla Tharp (choreography and direction) musical The Times They Are A-Changin', set in a circus, gives us an ensemble of acrobatic dancers whose bodies are like Slinkies, and three terrific singers: Michael Arden, Thom Sesma, and Lisa Brescia who perform the Dylan repertoire. The timing of the songs may be altered from Dylan's originals, but the songs are there, and I like them.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Blithe Spirit
Legler Benbough Theater at USIU

Elvira Condomine has been a Blithe Spirit for 65 years. She oozed from the pen of Noel Coward in 1941 to haunt Charles Condomine's house in Kent, England. Her current revival at Scripps Ranch Theater makes for a delightful production.

The Condomine living room is suggestively elegant due to Chris Kennedy's creative open design. Walls are suggested by glazed doors open to the rest of the estate and out to the garden and stairs leading to the upper chambers, with a hall off to the rest of the main floor.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
Daddy's Dyin'...Who's Got The Will?
Sunshine Brooks Theater

Texas playwright Del Shores' Daddy's Dyin' Who's Got The Will? is set on the Turnover Ranch outside of Lowake, Texas (pop. 40) in 1986. Daddy is about to come home from the hospital to die is his own bed. Daddy, Buford Turnover, is played by Kirk Duncan. Buford is being wasted by dementia. He watches imaginary television, talks to imaginary people, and plays imaginary games. His moments of clarity are limited. The power is held by Mama Wheelis (Dovey Goral).

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
Dial M For Murder
Geva Theater Mainstage

I suppose that Dial M For Murder is an appealing show to open Geva's season, but it's an old warhorse and maybe sends the wrong signal for a theater company that has been specializing in reviving meaningful classics and developing new works. I do like Geva's version, which trims and clarifies the original stage-script, adapting it to include some of the excellent filmscript for Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 international hit movie. It's dramatically effective without being quite so stagy.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
Ella
Lyceum Theater

This has certainly been the year of plays that were really revues or concerts. We've seen Always...Patsy Cline, My Way - Frank Sinatra, Our Story - Our Songs; The Shelly Hart Breneman & Shauna Hart Ostrom Story, and now, Ella, starring the fantabulous Tina Fabrique. Ella is staged as a concert; it is a concert. The patter between songs is Ella Fitzgerald's life story.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
Fritz Blitz 2006 - Week 3: Plays by California Playwrights
Lyceum Space

There are two weeks left on the annual cycle of new plays being held at the Lyceum Space, Thursdays through Sundays. The third week of the Fritz Blitz runs through September 10th, 2006.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
Full Monty, The
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

Kyle Ennis Turoff begins The Full Monty with a blast as Georgie Bukatinsky, wife of longtime unemployed steel worker Dave, leads her gal pals in Buffalo, NY, to "appreciate" the swinging strip of Buddy "Keno" Walsh. And Jared E. Walker certainly doesn't skimp in his show either, with his smooth -- um -- professionalism. Just what the women need, with their men so down (in every way) since they've been out of work. Especially Dave (whose obsession with being fat and not being financially fit is perfectly expressed by Berry Ayers) and his best friend Jerry.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
Gone Missing
Actors Theater of Louisville

Theatergoers who venture to Actors Theater of Louisville to catch the incredibly gifted, serio-comic New York troupe called The Civilians during its limited run are not likely soon to forget this dazzling experience. In Gone Missing, written and directed by Steven Cosson from interviews conducted by the company, the wide-ranging theme of loss -- innocence, jewelry, pets, cell phones, shoes, toys, husbands, eyeglasses, self-worth, life itself -- is treated with humor, poignancy, anger, and resignation in witty indelible sketches and song.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
Guys And Dolls
Kit Carson Amphitheater

It is amazing to see a community theater take on a really big production such as Youtheater and Patio's current production of Guys and Dolls. This Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows 1950s smash hit requires a cast of about 30. Many have to be triple threats (act, sing, dance). It has a well-known score and multiple sets. Most of the characters are based on Damon Runyon characters, which begin life as caricatures.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
4.48 Psychosis
Tenth Avenue Theater

4.48 Psychosis. Rebecca Johannsen, the artistic director, directs this, the last work of Kane, completed shortly before the playwright committed suicide. Stone Soup is one of the few theaters that mandates taking risks with less commercial plays that challenge their audiences. Kane's plays easily fit that requirement. Like her Crave, 4.48 Psychosis is guaranteed to challenge directors and producing companies. Truly an experimental play, it assigns no lines to a given character.

4.48 Psychosis is an experience.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
all wear bowlers
La Jolla Playhouse - Mandell Weiss Forum

The stage is bare, save for a nine-by-twelve-foot white screen. The house lights dim. We hear an ancient film projector grinding away. We see the film leader: five, four, three, two, and then the film title, "all wear bowlers," staring Earnest Matters (Geoff Sobelle) and Wyatt R. Levine (Trey Lyford). The two are dressed in black, wearing bowlers. They are in a bleak landscape walking and walking and walking, finally getting closer to us. The scratchy film, with occasional subtitles, grinds on.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Barbara's Blue Kitchen
Lamb's Theater

They don't make many actresses as good as Lori Fischer. They don't make many country singers as good as Lori Fischer. They don't make many writers who can write with the depth and insight into character of Lori Fischer, or create her range of melodies that can make you smile or make you feel pangs of emotion. This great talent is on view at the Lamb's Theater, where she stars in her musical, Barbara's Blue Kitchen. It's an amazing performance of an exposition of people in a little town in Tennessee.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Billy the Mime
Players Theater

Did you see "The Aristocrats"? The sequence by Billy the Mime was one of the funniest. Billy the Mime is now playing in the NY Fringe, and it's a "Don't Miss!" He's one of the best mimes in the country with clean clear technique, a great sense of humor and perfect timing.

Although influenced by Marcel Marceau, Billy has his own sensibility and his own contemporary view of the world. He keeps his audience entertained from start to finish with nary a dull moment.

This is solo mime at its very best by a highly skilled, totally engaging performer.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Beard Of Avon, The
Cape Playhouse

There have long been multiple theories about who wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare. In this play (which has understandably received many productions since its 2001 premiere in California), Amy Freed has great fun toying with several possibilities. The result (under Russ Treyz's fast-moving direction) is clever, witty, sexy and unflaggingly entertaining, with nine adept performers taking on fifteen roles.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Boys Next Door, The
North Park Vaudeville

Tom Griffin's The Boys Next Door, directed by Summer Golden, is set in a communal residence in New England. Jack, an increasingly "burning out" young social worker supervises the four mentally challenged men sharing the residence. What is strikingly different about this production is that several members of the cast, in fact, fit the description and are members of STARS, a performing troupe of mentally challenged actors.

Luigi Flam (Norman), a member of STARS, plays a fun-loving resident, always ready to dance and date.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Copenhagen
Cygnet Theater

Copenhagen is guaranteed to make you think. Physics, mathematics and philosophy play major roles as we are whisked back and forth through time. It is after the deaths of the three protagonists, then it's the Twenties, World War II, post war, and more as the characters reminisce. Michael Frayn's play is a challenge to both actors and audience.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Festival of Independent Theaters - Evening 1
Bath House Cultural Center

The eighth annual Festival of Independent Theatres' (FIT) kicked off their opening weekend July 14, 2006 and presented many diverse offerings by five of the eight participating companies.

Theatergoers can always count on WingSpan Theater Company producer Susan Sargeant to come up with little-known, rarely staged, but always excellent scripts. She then hand picks her cast and director, which results in wonderfully staged work and top-notch talent. This year's FIT entry is no exception, Something Unspoken by Tennessee Williams, directed by Gail Cronauer.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Festival of Independent Theaters - Evening 2
Bath House Cultural Center

Second Thought Theater's production of Summer Evening in Des Moines by Charles Mee is a series of vignettes depicting wo/man's search for meaning. Underscored with great music, the play asks the universal question: How do people connect? Vignettes take the audience on a tour of forms of escape people use to make their lives meaningful. Edgar (Tom Parr IV) the puppeter, manipulates his puppets, Charlie (Erik Archilla) and Mortimer (Joel McDonald), his alter egos, with some very funny shtick.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Fourth Wall, The
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

The life of a comfortable suburban couple becomes unraveled in A. R. Gurney's The Fourth Wall, the season opener for Milwaukee Chamber Theater. This company, in its quest to find something to please everyone, has staged productions ranging from avant-garde Off-Broadway fare to time-honored plays. The Fourth Wall seems ideally suited to this theater's mission, as it contains everything in one show: surrealism, naturalism, sentimentality and side-splitting comedy.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Fritz Blitz 2006 - Week 1: Plays by California Playwrights
Lyceum Space

The 14th Annual Fritz Blitz is in town Thursday to Sunday, thru September 17th, 2006. This week there is a single play. Next week three, the third week four, and the final week plays by the successful Los Angeles playwright Mary Steelsmith. Steelsmith's full-length, Isaac, I Am just won the prestigious Helford Prize. We are looking forward to her short plays.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Fritz Blitz 2006 - Week 2: Plays by California Playwrights
Lyceum Space

Here we are in Week Two of the four-week Fritz Blitz. This week we have three plays, two from San Diego and one from a San Francisco playwright. These productions are running through September 3rd, 2006. One of the joys of short plays is that they have to be written tightly. No lingering about. The payoff and the precursors have to be quick.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2006

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