Burn This
Studio Theater

Renaissance Theaterworks has staged the hit of Milwaukee's spring theater season with a powerful production of Lanford Wilson's Burn This. Four terrific actors portray the full range of dramatic intensity in this incendiary play. Loss and love are strong emotions, after all. When they are intertwined, as Wilson artfully demonstrates, they can be as powerful as any force in nature.

The play's action is fueled by a wrenching tragedy -- the accidental death of a young dancer named Robbie. Robbie is never seen (since the play opens just after his funeral).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Defiance
Manhattan Theater Club - Stage I

John Patrick Shanley is one of America's greatest playwrights. He is so sparkling bright with words, uses language with such inspiration as he digs deep into the souls of his characters, that he is hard to match in dramatic depth and ironic humor. Seemingly, his play Defiance, now at The Manhattan Theater Club, is a profound look at discrimination in the US Marines in 1971. Main characters are a white Marine Colonel, his wife, a black Captain and a white minister from Alabama.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Flip Side, The
Florida Studio Theater - Goldstein Cabaret

The Flip Side title has two meanings. Songs making up this revue are either "flip" in nature, or they come from the second or "other" side of recordings (usually vinyl or tape) of hit numbers. Developers explain the collection as "seriously funny." Songs are "sardonic, ironic and, at times, histrionic," often combining "witty tunes..with sophisticated lyrics," but often concerning "moronic characters." True.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Faith Healer
Booth Theater

The Irish playwright Brian Friel's Faith Healer is now on Broadway with an all-star cast: Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones and Ian McDiarmid (from "Star Wars"). It's four half-hour monologues about the career of a con man (Fiennes) whose powers occasionally work, first from his own viewpoint, a moderately interesting but not very theatrical, account of his story including a bitter insight into who comes to a Faith Healer. Fiennes is an excellent performer, but I'd rather he just simply say the words rather than act them.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Festen
Music Box Theater

Festen is a dangerous title for a play. Does it fester? Is it a Feast? Is it a fiesta? It turns out to be closer to a Fiasco.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Go Back for Murder
Lamplighters Community Theater

Classic Christie. That describes Lamplighters' current offering, Go Back For Murder. The set-up, in this seldom-produced play based on her 1942 novel, "Five Little Pigs," Agatha Christie's heroine, Carla Crale (Katharine Tremblay), is intent on clearing her mother, Caroline Crale, of the murder of her husband, Amyas Crale, 16 years ago, when Carla was six years old.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
History Boys, The
Broadhurst Theater

What a pleasure to be in the presence of the product of a sparklingly brilliant mind. Alan Bennett's The History Boys is full of wit and wisdom in his construct of an English boy's school presented as an intellectual swordfight with musical interludes and film clips. It is so smart, it is thrilling.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Grey Gardens
Playwrights Horizons

Based on the brilliant documentary film about two decayed Bouvier cousins of Jackie Kennedy, Grey Gardens (book by Doug Wright) gives us a vocal glimpse into a South-Shore Long Island past in 1941 and the life of a wealthy mother (Christine Ebersole) and her daughter (Sara Gettlefinger) who is courted by Joe Kennedy. The voices are excellent, and the lyrics by Michael Korie and music by Scott Frankel give us the real flavor of the forties while being clever and pleasurable.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Stuff Happens
Public Theater

America doesn't lack for pundit reactions to the Iraq War, be they "What a mess the government's lies got us into," or, conversely, "Better a messy war than an evil dictator holding sway in a post-9/11 Middle East." Nor do we lack citizens who call President Bush either an idiot beholden to special interests, oil companies and the religious right, or a plain-speaking, God-fearing Texan who cares more about maintaining a secure America than soft-soaping our allies.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Threepenny Opera, The
Studio 54

In the current Roundabout Theater Company production of The Threepenny Opera, directed by Scott Elliott, the main character, the one who is the most fun, who keeps us enchanted, is not Macheath, played grimly, without spark, humor or charm by Alan Cumming. It's Mr. Peachum, played with dash, flash, splash and panache by a dancing, singing, wriggling, wraggling Jim Dale. And Ana Gasteyer's strong performance is close behind.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Well
Longacre Theater

A lot of things break in Lisa Kron's play, Well: the fourth wall, the scenery, theatrical conventions, hearts. Pirandello rides again; then the show breaks with him into forms that even he never saw as it breaks the patterns set up with the audience by Kron, who has structured a good show as she breaks structure.

Kron, a strong performer playing herself, gives us her relationship with her mother expressed through the question: "Why do some sick people get well and others don't?"

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Gibson Girl
Diversionary Theater

Seeing a world premiere of a new play is exciting. A play goes through many iterations before it is brought to the public. It begins in the mind of the playwright, who eventually commits it to paper. Then begin the readings, which become readings to selected audiences, followed by a series of rewrites. At some point, the playwright and a director feel the play is ready to be staged in front of a general audience. The director and writer, the parents, pace, fidget, and watch the audience for anticipated reactions to their progeny. Alas, most often, more rewrites.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Act a Lady
Actors Theater of Louisville

Two years ago Actors Theatre of Louisville opened its prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays with young Jordan Harrison's Kid-Simple, a radio play in the flesh, a feverish adolescent concoction (my words) that bored me silly. ATL has now chosen Harrison's Act a Lady to open its 2006 Humana Festival, and it comes across as a very good choice under Anne Kauffman's admirable direction. This wild and witty take on gender bending overlays a campy French play-within-a-play.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Annie
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

For family-friendly musicals, it's hard to beat Annie. Let us count the ways: cute kids, a dog, a billionaire's digs, fancy costumes, easily recognizable good guys and bad guys, a girl searching for her lost parents, etc. No wonder the show, based on the Depression-era comic strip "Little Orphan Annie," has endured. Now more than 25 years old, Annie continues to charm with its upbeat message, best expressed in the classic tune, "Tomorrow." Sure, the formula fairly creaks with familiarity.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Assassins
Yamawaki Art & Cultural Center

In a world seemingly forever given to violence, it is not surprising that the theater has repeatedly undertaken to explore this fact of life...and death. One result was the musical Assassins, first mounted on stage in a small off-Broadway venue late in 1990. The work focuses on U.S. Presidents. Of those who have to date held the office, fifteen have been the object of assassination attempts, four of which have proven successful. This musical deals with nine of the malefactors, extending from Abraham Lincoln in 1865 to Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Bold Girls
Fort Lauderdale Children's Theater - Studio

Set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, U.K., in 1991, Bold Girls can be seen as a treatment of the Troubles in England's last colonial outpost. More profitably, it can be taken as a look at the yearnings of four women in constricting surroundings. That's the tack taken in Fort Lauderdale by the Women's Theater Project in the play's southeastern premiere.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Boy Gets Girl
Poway Performing Arts Company

They really made an attractive couple on their blind date. However, by the second date, it was obvious to her there were definitely no sparks. Yet he was persistent, and at some point he went over the line in Rebecca Gilman's demanding drama, Boy Gets Girl. Tony's determination started with phone calls, then flowers, and, finally, a way over-the-line threat, as Boy Gets Girl moves from bad date to stalking. For example, Theresa Bedell (Kelly Lapczynski) took the usual precautions, but slick-talking Tony (Christopher T.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Dancing at Lughnasa
OnStage Playhouse

Last night I was fortunate to observe the Mundy sisters and their older missionary brother Jack, recently returned from 25 years in Uganda. Their small house and garden in Northern Ireland is a typical example of homes I've visited in that country. This magic of transforming OnStage's stage into a wee bit of the ole sod is the result of the deft hand and eye of designer Brenda Leake. It is so authentic; I knew it would take a tremendous cast to shine as brightly.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Glass Menagerie, The
Court Theater

Updating an old classic, Court Theater's The Glass Menagerie is a refreshing but ultimately unsatisfying production. There's a lot to like and dislike, and it's likely to be a crowd splitter. But shows that have this effect tend to because they introduce something bold or unusual to us, and whether we like them or not, they often are the types of plays that remain in our memories much longer than shows that more or less play it safe.

Kevin Henely
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Hotel Cassiopeia
Actors Theater of Louisville

The late Joseph Cornell, a strangely shy textile worker (though from a comfortably middle-class family until his father died) who collected bric-a-brac, cut-outs of birds, movie images, doll heads, small wrapped packages, and star maps along with other ephemera and preserved them in artfully arranged wooden boxes he made in his basement, is on display himself now at Actors Theater of Louisville.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
I Am My Own Wife
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz Theater

This story within a story in I Am My Own Wife is of the playwright discovering Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, whose story he dramatizes both directly and through an intermediary. As a boy named Lothar, Charlotte donned his lesbian aunt's clothes and felt, with her encouragement, the woman he really was and would be. Eventually as Charlotte, he spent a life in drag. And what a life!

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
I Am My Own Wife
Dallas Theater Center

I Am My Own Wife is a one-man tour-de-force covering the life of East German transvestite, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (nee Luther Berfelde.) It is superbly enacted by up-and-coming Canadian actor, Damien Atkins, who plays 35 different roles. Atkins is an incredible mimic and turns in a highly nuanced performance.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Pajama Game, The
American Airlines Theater

How often in a modern musical do we get song after unforgettable song, production numbers that tickle all of our sensibilities, and from which we walk out humming memorable tunes that make us smile? I'd say just about never.

The Pajama Game, from out of Musical Theater's past, concerns a management-labor dispute over a raise of seven and a half cents. The show has it all in terms of material, and with its splendid cast of terrific singer-dancers, it is one of the most enjoyable times you can spend on Broadway.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Ring of Fire
Ethel Barrymore Theater

Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Musical Show is a well-produced, well-sung depiction of country life through song. It's a good Country Music concert performed by first-rate Broadway singers who all have the range, emotion and proper twang for their roles. It's not a biography, and without a story through-line, its duration, like any concert, is arbitrary.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Bridge & Tunnel
Helen Hayes Theater

Bridge & Tunnel is a stunning achievement. I saw it off Broadway, and wrote a glowing review. Now on Broadway, enhanced by David Korins' set and Howell Binkley's lighting, it's even better.  It is an extraordinary one woman show written and performed by Sarah Jones. She gives us a succession of immigrant characters, mostly living in Queens, whose lives and personae are explored with amazing sensitivity and skill as she, with minimal costume changes, switches from male to female, old to young, and to accents from all over the world.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Bad Date Theater III
North Park Vaudeville

Now in its third iteration, Bad Date Theater 3, offers up Bob Korbett's twisted sense of humor in selecting six short pieces for a Valentine's Day celebration. Korbett Kompany Productions brings these strange bits of humor to North Park Vaudeville and Candy Shop stage for a three-weekend run.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Bird Sanctuary, The
Alabama Shakespeare Festival - Carolyn Blount Theater

You wouldn't know it from the way Eleanor Henryson has strewn flowers, paints, papers, table, chairs around the dingy room. Nor from the colored-photo-like portraits of a man against one side of the worn, flowery-papered back wall or the mother with her young children on the other. Eleanor has to tell you that this room overlooks a wonderful Dublin Bird Sanctuary. She's made herself a recluse, painting to memorialize it. So, too, she wants to preserve the house, once so handsome that Queen Victoria stopped to look in.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Brothers All
Sixth at Penn Theater

6th @ Penn Theater is known for bringing audiences new and challenging plays, well scripted, directed, and performed. The current Sunday-through-Wednesday offering, Brothers All, penned by Howard Rubenstein and directed by Barry Bosworth, does not come close to the degree of excellence one expects from this small theater.

Rubenstein's script, with a run time of over two and a half hours, is as dense, in many ways, as Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," on which it was based.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Dining Room, The
Broadway Theater

Saturday I traveled to Vista for two shows: a matinee at the Avo and an evening performance at the Broadway, to which I am new. The theaters' stage entrances are within a few feet of each other on the alley between Main and Broadway. The Broadway Theater, owned and operated by Randall Hickman and Douglas Davis, is charming. The entry is off a small, quiet courtyard. The lobby, as is the auditorium, is filled with Broadway memorabilia. The square auditorium offers flexibility in staging. A. R.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Barefoot in the Park
Cort Theater

For some good old theatrical fun, check out the current production of Neil Simon's early play,  Barefoot in the Park, now on Broadway. Directed with clever action, business, and timing by Scott Elliott, chock full of good jokes by Simon, the story of a newlywed couple's first New York apartment, the bride's mother and an adventurous neighbor, will hold you, tickle you, totally engage you.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Almost, Maine
Daryl Roth Theater

John Cariani, the quirky actor who played Motel in the recent Fiddler on the Roof, has written a quirky bunch of short plays taking place in snowy Almost, Maine. Much of it is gentle theater—a very sweet look at shy people in rural America as they mate and mismate. Jumping from the surreal to the sweetly sentimental, the first-class cast of four wonderfully versatile actors, Finnerty Steeves, Todd Cerveris, Justin Hagan and Miriam Shor, all in multiple roles, give us a pleasant, amusing evening of romance in rustic America.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
Apartment 3A
Arc Light Theater

Jeff Daniels's engrossing romantic comedy Apartment 3A has some of the best acting in town. Amy Landecker, as a betrayed woman who moves into a new shabby apartment, is a mesmerizing stage presence who plays pain, joy, sexuality, feistyness, and even complacence with a believability that is rare anywhere. As she encounters two suitors, a co-worker at a TV station (Arian Moayed) and a stranger who appears at her door Joseph Collins), both quite convincingly acted, her life turns and twists into a guessed solution that works fine.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
Ajax
Sixth at Penn Theater

When you are fortunate enough to be a member of the audience (49 people) at the 6th @ Penn Theater, you usually become a part of the production. This is true, in part, because many entrances are made from, and some of the action takes place in, the audience area. This happens in Ajax, under the direction of Forrest Aylsworth.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
Anything to Declare
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

No wonder Veber and Hennequin's stage farces were so popular they were turned into early films, now considered classics of their time and place. In Greg Leaming's new adaptation, Anything to Declare takes place in Paris in 1912 rather than six years earlier. There's little reason for the change: This is a farce that thrives mostly on sex, and there was plenty to go around in Paris and on its boulevard stages from the fin de siecle onward. And go around it sure does in the hilarious performances by Asolo actors.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
Bad Dates
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Theater

There's much to like in the contemporary comedy Bad Dates, an Off-Broadway hit that's currently sweeping the country's regional theaters. It's got a clever plot, revolving around the life of a divorced restaurant manager who, now that her daughter has reached adolescence, decides it's time for her to try dating again.

The title, Bad Dates, perfectly captures the essence of the play. Essentially, this chick comedy blasts the crazy men in one woman's life. For every gal who has been on a bad date -- and who hasn't? -- there's something identifiable here.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
Beautiful Thing
Diversionary Theater

In a southeast London housing project, 15-year-old Jamie and his bartender mother, Sandra, live next to expelled high-schooler Leah. Across the courtyard lives his friend, Ste, a high-school athlete.

Jonathan Harvey's Beautiful Thing is a tender love story between these two teenage boys set against a backdrop of conflict. Ste, played by Joseph Panwitz, lives with his abusive father and older brother. While a good soccer player, he cannot please his alcoholic father.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
Biedermann and the Firebugs
Cygnet Theater

Biedermann's physical world is a cartoon house replete with an asymmetrical dining table, a canted second floor, and unparallel everything. Near his house is a hilled, crystalline city rising several feet from the stage. Biedermann also lives in a world of denial, but he is about to be visited by two strangers. The city has been plagued with arsonists. Their MO is to plead homelessness, stay with their victim, and then burn the house to the ground, often causing collateral damage.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Imperial Theater

A failure to recall details of the movie enhanced my enjoyment of this musical about con men enjoying the Riviera courtesy of rich women. Lawrence (smooth John Lithgow), aided by local official Andre (cosmopolitan, handsome Gregory Jbara), fleece the bored rich, like romance-starved Muriel (smart-talking Joanna Gleason). On a train where small-time hustler Freddy (dizzying, quick-quipping Norbert Leo Butz) meets Lawrence, they make a huge bet that whoever clips the next rich pigeon also gets the territory.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
Evita
Welk Resort Theater

Eva Duarte was born into a dirt-poor family. By age 26, at the side of Juan Peron, she had become the most powerful woman in Argentina. By 33 she was dead from cancer. The Weber-Rice musical, Evita, opens with her death on July 26, 1952. We then follow her manipulative rise to fame and power.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
Exonerated, The
Lynx Performance Theater

It seems inevitable that sometime during our childhood we are unjustly accused of an infraction of the rules. The result was probably a bit traumatic, but we survived. Take a mega leap in complexity: think of being accused of a capital crime punishable by death. You are innocent but can't convince anybody, and you end up on death row. The Exonerated is the true story of five men and one woman of just such a case.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2006

Pages