Spamalot
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts - Vogel Hall

The Tony Award-winning musical, Monty Python's Spamalot, made its Milwaukee debut as a recent stop on the show's national tour. Lovingly "ripped off" from the 1975 film, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," the musical takes audiences on a journey of the absurd.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Don't Dress for Dinner
Sunshine Brooks Theater

Sometimes a farce is the only amusement that will cure an otherwise bad day. That being the case, Robin Hawdon's translation of Marc Camoletti's charming French bedroom comedy, Bon Anniversaire, does the job. Don't Dress for Dinner, the English version, is meant to keep an audience in tears from laughing so long and so hard.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Always...Patsy Cline
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

In FST's first of many local productions, Always...Patsy Cline dramatized the singer's life through her musical performances and her records, as seen through the eyes of devoted fan Louise Seger. Though insistent and sometimes sassy in promoting Cline, southerner Louise was basically nurturing type of woman. After Cline stayed with her one night following a show in her hometown, they became fast friends.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Another Midsummer Night McGivern
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Theater

The world may have its Tom Hanks, but only Milwaukee can lay claim to John McGivern. Although he looks nothing like the famous Hanks, McGivern evokes the same "everyman" character audiences can easily identify with.

Although John McGivern is best-known locally for his work in the comedy Shear Madness and, more recently, The Mystery of Irma Vep, he seems more at home with these 90-minutes monologues that tell familiar tales of his youth. McGivern grew up in a small house on Milwaukee's East Side, with five brothers and sisters, two parents and one bathroom.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Passing Strange
Belasco Theater

Passing Strange, with book and lyrics by Stew and music by Heidi Rodewald and Stew, starring Stew and directed by Annie Dorsen, is basically an engaging music concert with the four-piece band on stage. The show starts with a few chairs and elevator pits as its set. p> Stew is a charismatic performer/narrator with a mellow but strong singing voice, and it's a pleasure to hear him.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Big Bang, The
North Coast Repertory Theater

Entering the North Coast Repertory Theater, one is presented with a single yellow sheet of paper. On it is a list of songs such as "Free Food and Frontal Nudity, to be sung by Adam, Eve, God, and the Snake;"One Helluva Job" by Mary and Mrs. Gandhi; "The Dating Scene" by Pocahontas and Minnehaha, "Loving Him Is Where I Went Wrong" sung separately by both Eva Braun and Laura Bush, and "A Stain on My Character" vocalized by Monica Lewinsky.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
In the Heights
Richard Rodgers Theater

This jubilant celebration of life in the barrio has been hailed as groundbreaking in the same way Rent was so honored a decade ago. Winning a handful of 2008 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, the show is a tribute to the work of newcomer Lin-Manuel Miranda. Not only did Miranda come up with the concept and write the music and lyrics, he also stars as the show's central character, Usnavi (pronounced oos-NAAHV-ee).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Thirty Nine Steps, The
Cort Theater

Rarely (perhaps never before) has a "straight" film been so miraculously transformed into an absolutely hilarious comedy. But that's what theatergoers will find upon arriving at The 39 Steps, based on the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Body of Water, A
American Heritage Center for the Arts

Lee Blessing, who built his reputation on finely wrought plays fraught with ethical dilemmas, turns existential in A Body of Water, in which a mature couple awake in a comfortable home with a view of water and no clue as to what it is or who they are. Is that a bay or a lake? Are they married? Happily so? And what about the clothes in the closet? And the young woman who eventually arrives: A daughter? A lawyer? Something else? And why would they need a lawyer?

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Blithe Spirit
First Unitarian Universalist Church

Blithe Spirit, playing only this weekend at the First Unitarian Universalist Church, is my second witnessing of Noel Coward's classic in a week. The interpretations were totally different. This version stays close to the original, obviously placed in England. The cast is older by ten years.

Gregory Cox and Garry Posey's set is a simple suggestion of the sitting room of Charles and Ruth Condomine's (Kenneth Gray and Cheryl Livingston) home featuring an elegant divan and companion chair as well as occasional tables and chairs.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2008
Barefoot in the Park
PowPAC

February, 1963...Manhattan...East 48th Street...Five-story walkup...Newlyweds.... Barefoot in the Park, Neil Simon's longest-running Broadway show: 1530 performances.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
By the Bog of Cats
Venice Little Theater - Pinkerton Stage II

With its Medea theme obvious from the start, there's little doubt what will happen in By the Bog of Cats. A gypsy-like bog denizen, Hester Swane (Sara Trembly, powerfully pagan) has been Carthage Kilbride's lover for years. She's killed to make him a success. She's had and raised his child , Josie (restrained, at ease Alexa Ditaranto), 7. Now Carthage (Mike DeSantis, well spoken but not old enough for the part) is about to marry young Caroline (beautiful, sensitive Chelsey Panisch), daughter of rich Xavier Cassidy (imposing Tom Bahring).

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Underpants, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

When an adaptation is true in substance and effect to the original play while the adaptor both cuts and adds matter so as to make the play work for a contemporary audience, it's cause for celebration. Celebrate Steve Martin's way with Sternheim's roccoco-style German farce! Not only are all the essentials intact, so is the spirit of the time (about 1911).

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Armadale
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

Who says there aren't any good parts for women anymore? Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher has created a brilliantly villainous femme fatale in Armadale, an elegant mystery based on a novel by Wilke Collins. The thriller had its world premiere at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.

Collins' Victorian novel comes stunningly to life in this engaging play. With more twists and turns than a boa constrictor, Armadale keeps audiences guessing until the very end.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Little Flower of East Orange, The
Public Theater

Stephen Adly Guirgis' The Little Flower of East Orange, now at The Public Theater, has clear overlaps with his earlier, Our Lady of 121st Street. Both are vivid slices of working-class speech and behavior. Here, an old woman, beautifully portrayed by the radiant Ellen Burstyn, prepares to leave Earth. She's wonderful in a complex role as she drifts in and out of consciousness and dreams and memories.

Guirgis captures the poetic rhythms in the colorful speech of her dysfunctional, hysterical son and daughter, the nurses, the doctor and others.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Becky Shaw
Actors Theater of Louisville

With Becky Shaw, playwright Gina Gionfriddo scathingly brings to life a most memorable character to add to the female monster gallery. Becky Shaw, the second of six full-length plays to open this year's 32nd annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, devastatingly depicts a cunning devious loser who wrecks her own life and the lives of others while quietly relishing her victimization.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Bad Dates
Geva Theater - Mainstage

This slight play has enjoyed a number of successful performances across the country because it is good fun, and, despite the rather elaborate stagings that I know of (Playwrights Horizons 2003, San Jose Repertory 2004, and Geva's large, handsome production), economically employs only one actor. Theresa Rebeck's consistently engaging plot is both thin and conventional until she decides upon a concluding shaggy-dog-story twist that gives the actress room for a variety of showcasing moments and sends the audience out shaking their heads with disbelieving amusement.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
break/s, the
Actors Theater of Louisville

African-American Marc Bamuthi Joseph, who wrote and performs the break/s, the fourth full-length play at this year's 32nd annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, sets out to tell us what hip-hop is. He does this through a dramatically delivered but disjointed account of his own life as he bounces around the wooden platform that is his stage, sensationally contorting his body and propelling himself hypnotically to the monotonous beat. The man is a mesmerizing dancer.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Bleacher Bums
OnStage Playhouse

A Cubs fan is a strange beast. I have a Chicago-raised, Los Angeles-living friend who travels to Chi-town to see a game or two. This special breed of homo sapiens has cheered the team on to defeat year after year. One year after the first pitch of the first game, a fan waved a banner that read, "Wait 'til Next Year." Oh, they have won the World Series twice: 1907 and 1908. As the season opens, a true Cubs fan is always saying, "This will be the year."

Baseball has more statistics than anything else in life, and the Bleacher Bums, true Cubbies fans, know them all.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Crones of Cawdor, The
Theatrx

Through much toil and trouble, The Crones of Cawdor manages to muck up Macbeth and his lovely lady's afterlife. Only writer/director/producer Stephen Storc would think of turning a pot-stirring scene into musical comedy. The witches, I mean crones (Laura Makey, Charmaine Hook, and Candace Taylor McClung), under the guidance and direction of Hecate (Deborah Zimmer) seem to cause Macbeth (Robert Wolter) and Lady Macbeth (Karen Spafford) more trouble in death than this lovely couple caused others in life.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
All Hail Hurricane Gordo
Actors Theater of Louisville

Carly Mensch's featherweight All Hail Hurricane Gordo, the fifth of six full-length plays in this year's 32nd annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, nevertheless has serious things to say about family ties, abandonment, and responsibility. First, however, you must believe that a mother and father could drive away forever after leaving their two young sons in a parking lot and that the boys would then fend for themselves in the family home without any authorities intervening. All very hard to swallow.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Black Coffee
Coronado Playhouse

Agatha Christie's Black Coffee turns 78 this year. It was her first play, later turned into the novel, "Le Coffret de Jaque" (aka "Lackered Box" (English spelling for "Lacquered Box"). It introduced to the stage her most popular character, Hercule Poirot.

In Black Coffee, Poirot is charged with finding Britain's leading physicist, Sir Claud Amory's (Bud Emerson) valuable formula. Suspects abound, each highly motivated to perpetrate this heinous crime. They keep streaming in and out of the elegantly appointed library in his home outside of London.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Bluebonnet Court
Diversionary Theater

If you traveled in the States prior to the 60s, you probably stayed at small roadside motel quite similar to the Bluebonnet Court. If it had a neon sign, it wasn't working properly. You could pull your car up next to your cabin. You may have even met a Lila Jean Webb or Roy Glen Webb. Welcome to playwright Zsa Zsa Gershick's Austin, Texas, circa spring of 1944.

Helen Burke (Wendy Waddell), New Yorker, Jewish, young and attractive, has met car trouble. She's stuck in one of the units of the Bluebonnet Court. Lila Jean (Jo Anne Glover) runs the motel.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Death and Taxes
Sunshine Brooks Theater

A town council meeting can't be much more fun than when the whole council is suspected in the murder of an out-of-towner. Pat Cook's Death and Taxes, the current offering at Oceanside's Sunshine Brooks Theater, involves the audience in the search for the murderer.

Prolific Cook, with over 125 published plays, has written 24 whodunit murder mysteries. The playwright has merged satire, farce and several other genres of humor in his Death and Taxes.

Robert Hitchox
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
Little Mermaid, The
Lunt-Fontanne Theater

You can't win 'em all. Not even Disney. I'd blame much of the failure of The Little Mermaid (music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Glenn Slater, book by Dour Wright), which seems geared to eight year olds, on the director, Francesca Zambello and choreographer Stephen Mear.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland
Ontological-Hysteric Theater - St. Mark's Church

on Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland (A Richard Foreman Theater Machine), which Foreman wrote, designed, directed (stage and film) and created the sound for:

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
Homecoming, The
Cort Theater

Director Daniel Sullivan does Harold Pinter proud in the current production of The Homecoming. His meticulous direction of this profound but delicate play is impeccable, and his marvelous cast beautifully acts the complex twists of our most obscure yet revealing playwright.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
As Bees in Honey Drown
Legler Benbough Theater at Alliant International University

Karla Francesca, as con artist Alexa Vere de Vere, and Rob Conway, as first-time novelist Evan Wyler, are perfect together in playwright/screenwriter Douglas Carter Beane's As Bees In Honey Drown. The play satirizes the wannabees and the people who prey upon them. Beane gives Alexa a stylized speech pattern that has an artificial feeling - perfect for a con artist.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
Catholic School Girls
Boulevard Ensemble Studio Theater

Boulevard Theater's production of Catholic School Girls is a must-see for anyone who "survived" a Catholic education. And for the rest of us, this hilarious show is the perfect antidote for a dreary, endless winter. The show treads familiar territory, but playwright Casey Kurtti has a way of making familiar things seem fresh and vibrant.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
Duchess of Malfi, The
FSU Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Exposition comes fast and furious as this Duchess opens, so if ever a production needed to get it out clean and clear, this is the occasion. Instead, the director claims "to bring a fresh and very exciting eye to the play." Indeed, the contemporary of The Duchess of Malfi setting is so startling to look at, it distracts us from the dialogue revealing who's who and what's what. The whole gang of mainly jeans-clad actors fills a long, lemon-walled rectangle with its lime carpet, one rear and one side door.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
November
Ethel Barrymore Theater

That David Mamet wrote November is a surprise. That Nathan Lane is hilarious in it is not.

It's sitcom joke after joke after joke about a bad president ending his term, and it's great to have a master comedian with super timing in the role of the ridiculous ninny. Who would have thought Mamet could write like a team of network talk-show monologue creators? He does it very well.

Mixed in is a glimpse of some of the basic flaws of our country, a lot of it from the lesbian speechwriter (a marvelous Laurie Metcalf).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
Sunday in the Park with George
Studio 54

In Stephen Sondheim's dazzling Sunday in the Park with George (book by James Lapine), the combination of the extraordinarily brilliant design by David Farley (set and costumes), lighting by Ken Billington and projection design by Timothy Bird & Knifedge Creative Network, and the most unusual use of words and their rhythms since Gilbert and Sullivan (but faster and more profound) gives us a thrilling evening of theater.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
Take Me Along
Irish Repertory Theater

Take Me Along, music and lyrics by Bob Merrill, book by Joseph Stein and Robert Russell, based on Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O'Neil, now at The Irish Rep on West 22nd Street, is a cute, old-fashioned Americana musical. With the colossal naïvete in the romantic story, and a morality that can be looked at as an anthropological study, it is a pleasant visit to a time and values long past.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
Gypsy
St. James Theater

The question was not whether Patti LuPone would be any good as Mamma Rose; the question was just how incendiary would she be? Would she sledgehammer her way through the role with Mermanesque bravado? Would she act the hell out of it (with the occasional eccentric musical phrasing and slurred lyric just to be uniquely Patti)? Would she use her relative youth to soften and sensualize the role, a la Bernadette Peters, the previous Broadway Rose?

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2008
Thirty Nine Steps, The
American Airlines Theater

Alfred Hitchock''s The 39 Steps, now on Broadway, is a great way to start the new year. Adapted (or rather deconstructed and reconstructed) by Patrick Barlow from the film, brilliantly directed with impeccable timing and grand innovation by Maria Aitken, this is a stylized melodrama played seriously by a team of master farceurs.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2008
New Jerusalem
Classic Stage Company

"New Jerusalem - The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656" by David Ives. What a title! What a play! How often do we see a play that expounds ideas, philosophical and practical, that wake up the corners of our minds in fascinating dramatic fashion?

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2008
Cemetery Club, The
PowPAC

It has been just over ten years since I last saw The Cemetery Club at Scripps Ranch Community Theater, just a piece down the road from PowPAC. Now it's Poway's turn to house this charming play. Kate Hewitt is at the helm, directing a fine cast. Her designer, Raylene J. Wall, has provided a well-lived-in set and a unique and very personal setting for the cemetery. I got just a touch of déjà vu remembering that Wall directed that other version ten years ago.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2008
Anton in Show Business
6th@Penn Theater

Prolific Jane Martin, who has written several plays about theater, created this wonderful satire, Anton in Show Business, currently at 6th@Penn Theater.

The first question is: just who is Jane Martin? She has never been seen. Could she be a pseudonym for the retired Actors Theater of Louisville artistic director Jon Jory, where her plays are premiered? Nobody seems to know. What we do know is that she has written a host of popular plays over a 25–year period, among them, Anton in Show Business which premiered in 2000.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2008
Daddy Machine, The
Diversionary Theater

Based on the book by Johnny Valentine, The Daddy Machine has a book by local playwright Patricia Loughrey, with music and lyrics by local composer Rayme Sciaroni. This is a family-friendly musical commissioned by Diversionary Theater. I can assure you that both adults and kids enjoyed the show.

The story is about two moms with their two kids and singing dog. Also, we can't forget the 62 dads; some are part of the cast and many are created from volunteer kids out of the audience.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2008
Grey Gardens
Walter Kerr Theater

If you're a Christine Ebersole fanatic, or if you harbor an unquenchable curiosity for all things even peripherally Kennedy, you may be able to work up some genuine enthusiasm for this dreary, static adaptation of the Maysles Brothers' documentary, "Grey Gardens." Not qualifying on either count, I found myself questioning the critical kudos.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2008

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