Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, The
Poway Performing Arts Company

PowPAC's production of The Effects Of Gamma Rays On Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds should not be missed. In it, epileptic Ruth (Blair Hollingsworth) is bipolar, catty, both nasty and nice, and extremely convincing when she has a fit. She's a brat, a supportive sister and is emotionally close to her mother. She is duplicitous and manipulative, with emotions that change in nanoseconds. Old mute Nanny (Beth Mercurio, aging herself a good 40 years) is being taken care of (read: taken advantage of) by Beatrice.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Four
Fault Line Theater

One never knows just what to expect when spending an evening watching the Fault Line Players. We do know that we'll see new one-act plays, many written by co-proprietor Ted Falagan. Some may be penned by his partner Debbie Fabiano, as well as outside writers. We do know that we will see new and rising talent. This selection of plays and talent is no exception.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Hay Fever
Trinity River Arts Center

Theatre Britain, producer of British theatre in Dallas, just completed their production of Noel Coward's raucous comedy, Hay Fever, as the first show of their 2005-06 season. A theatrical satire, Hay Fever was first produced in London in 1925 and ran for over a year. Coward wrote the play in only three days and based it on the experiences he encountered at the home of actress Laurette Taylor and her husband Marley Manners.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Hazard County
Actors Theater of Louisville

Allison Moore's Hazard County, opening this year's 29th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, sounded so promising with its conflation of unusual source material - a real-life Kentucky murder and the redneck TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard," so popular (and still in reruns) from 1979 to 1985. For this reviewer, however, the promise was unfulfilled.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Julius Caesar
Belasco Theater

So Denzel Washington is playing Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and he's just fine. His charisma fills the theater, his acting is mostly good, and hey - that's Denzel up there lookin' good. It's okay if he speechifies in a couple of soliloquies, he's really good in conversation, and his star presence transcends his faults.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Blogging About Cat Stevens
Shetler Studio Theater

Monologues appeal to the voyeur in us. Details of someone else's life - we can't ever get enough of them - especially when they're presented in such a persuasive way as in this collection. A few themes run through the 12 lives on view. Blogging is one. Private thoughts made public; it's as if blogs were invented for exhibitionists. Just like these actors. Another theme is pain, but usually that's told to us only after the character gets us through the more mundane part.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Bad Date Theater
Adams Avenue of the Arts

Bad Date Theater!, a co-production of Misfit Productions and Korbett Kompany Productions showcases five examples of oddball relationships. Alan Ball's The M Word, directed by Bob Korbett, features Connie Terwilliger and Bob Korbett as two people contemplating that move into the realm of the M word. Both characters are anal about contemplating every aspect of a marriage, which includes household duties, child rearing, extra-marital affairs, marriage adjustments, and much more. Terwilliger and Korbett form a perfect team. She is prim and proper.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Burn This
Cygnet Theater

A roommate and his lover, Dominic, are killed in a freak boating accident in the bay off of Manhattan. His two roommates are in mourning. Anna (Jessica John), a choreographer, was his dance partner at times. Larry, a gay advertising designer, was a close friend. The latest Lanford Wilson play to hit San Diego, Burn This, graces the stage at Cygnet Theater. Set in a two-level loft in a Manhattan warehouse, the apartment is graced with unpainted drywall and a modest attempt at a kitchen.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Counsellor at Law
Theater at St. Clement's

John Rubinstein gives a powerful performance as the lawyer, the central figure in Elmer Rice's 1931 play, Counsellor at Law. He brings a dynamic vitality to a part that fills the theater. His acting has the depth, dimension, strength and charisma of a star, and that is just what this old, fascinating look into the life and office of an up-from-the-gutter achiever in the 1930s needs.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Clarence Darrow's Last Trial
New Theater

Shirley Lauro's Clarence Darrow's Last Trial is getting its world-premiere production in South Florida, and there's reasonable doubt that audiences at New Theater in Coral Gables will go away satisfied. The play is based on a 1930s murder trial notorious for its allegations and clash of cultures -- gang rape, murder, a well-connected family from America's Deep South, white U.S. sailors in a pre-statehood Hawaii. Into this steps Darrow, the legendary defender of otherwise lost causes, whose best days by this time are behind him.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Fallen Fruit
Martin Experimental Theater at Kentucky Center for the Arts

Fallen Fruit is the umbrella title Hadley V. Baxendale has bestowed on his theatrical adaptation of two landmark Victorian poems, an outwardly incongruous match-up of Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market and Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade."

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Front Page, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

What a drag as reporters wait around the 1920s Chicago City Hall news room for an anarchist and (accidental) cop killer to be hanged. The corrupt sheriff and mayor both want his quick demise (as a Red, which he's not) to assure their ascendance in an impending election. Hildy Johnson won't be there as the ace reporter, though. After a final drink and farewell to the guys, off he'll train to NYC and a lucrative advertising job. Fiance Peggy and her mother are waiting to go with him. He's already late - and he's going to be much later.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Goat, The, or Who is Sylvia?
FST - Gompertz Theater

Celebrated architect Martin is in a position similar to Proteus, Shakespeare's gentleman of Verona, who's betraying the woman who loves him and whom he's promised to, by falling for his best friend's love, Silvia. The difference is that Martin and his wife Stevie supposedly have an ideal marriage and "who is Sylvia?" - a goat! When his randy best friend Ross interviews him for the TV show, "People Who Matter," Martin, a grand prize-winner for his World City, confesses to his commitment in the country. (Note: love vs. honor and city vs.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Twelve Angry Men
American Airlines Theater

Twelve Angry Men is such a good play - especially when it's done by a professional cast like the one now on Broadway -- that it's needless to be picky picky picky. Reginald Rose's play, set in a jury room in a time when women and minorities were not on juries, wherein the twelve men vote eleven to one to convict, and gradually shift to the opposite, remains captivating. So director Scott Ellis doesn't have to create conflict through volume -- the content does it. And each man at a jury table doesn't have to stand for his comments.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Good Vibrations
Eugene O'Neill Theater

A quick view of Act One of Good Vibrations, the Beach Boys musical on Broadway: shallow, inane book by Richard Dresser; great set by Heidi Ettinger; some good singing voices; boring, unengaging. Director/choreographer John Carrafa's work had no dynamic in it. We escaped at intermission.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Belfast Blues
45 Bleecker

Geraldine Hughes was brought up in poverty in Northern Ireland during the time of "The Troubles" and is now performing her one-woman show based on her experiences at The Culture Project in The Village.

Besides herself, the lively Ms. Hughes plays a dozen or so characters of all ages, each with its own physicality, manner of speech and attitude.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Book of Days
OnStage Playhouse

San Diego is currently blessed with two plays by the Pulitzer-winning Lanford Wilson: Book of Days is at OnStage in Chula Vista, and Burn This is at Cygnet in East San Diego. The former chronicles events in the small Missouri town of Dublin, population just over 4,000. (Wilson, incidentally, was born in Lebanon, Missouri in 1934.)

Dublin has one industry — Walt Bates' cheese factory - thus making Walt (Tim Carr), at 60, the patriarch and his wife, Sharon (Kaly McKenna), the matriarch of the town.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Boston Marriage
Cook Theater at Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts

Elaborate Victorian language and modern slang. Semi-circular backdrop of 20th century abstract frolicking nudes (on -- could it be -- burlap?) cut out between one nude's legs as an entrance to a boudoir with old fashioned chaise. Contemporary glitzy black pants suit for Anna and sequin-topped pink evening gown on Claire, waited on by maid Catherine, with a lace-curtain apron over black swaddling cloths. Everything's mixed up with a parcel of artsy, once-innovative techniques that now simply make a mess.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Democracy
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Michael Frayn's theater accomplishments are truly amazing. With his two previous signature works, Noises Off and Copenhagen, the playwright ranged from backstage farce to nuclear fission and uncertainty theory. Now with Democracy, he has veered off into high-stakes Cold War politics, spiced with the machinations of party infighting and the deviousness of embedded spies. Yet there isn't a full act of honest-to-God stage dialogue in the three works put together!

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Dinner With Friends
Poway Performing Arts Company

Divorces affect many more people than the couple untying the knot. Dinner With Friends, playwright Donald Margulies' testament to breakups, is an extremely strong look at dissolution. Director Jay Mower, who also designed the set, brings to the stage, Cheryl and Sam Warner as Karen and Gabe -- the "perfect" couple, and Rob Tyler and Susan Lawson as the "imperfect" couple.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Einstein Comes Through
North Coast Repertory Theater

David Ellenstein is the very capable artistic director of North Coast Rep, and Marc Silver is an accomplished actor. The two are responsible, alas, for Einstein Comes Through.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Doubt
Manhattan Theater Club

Cherry Jones is Sister Aloysius and Brian O'Byrne is Father Flynn in a classic struggle at a Catholic school between the Sister's dogmatic conviction and the Father's progressive compassion. Or is that compassion a smokescreen for child molestation? With priestly hanky-panky so much in the headlines these days, we're apt to jump on board the bandwagon with the Sister's suspicions even before there are solid facts powering it forward.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Forbidden Broadway
Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

As one who has seen Forbidden Broadway numerous times in New York over the years, this "classic" touring version is a bit like seeing an old friend. The "classic" version cherry-picks the best bits from various versions of the show. Since Forbidden Broadway has been around 22 years, there's no lack of great material. A recently updated version of the show is now playing in New York. But this is the first time Milwaukee audiences have ever seen this fast-paced revue, which so effectively (and parasitically) skewers the Great White Way.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Hairspray
Broward Center for the Performing Arts' Au-Rene Theater

The year is 1962, the last calendar year before the assassination of JFK. The place is Baltimore, a city long of both the north and south. In this time and place, the bouffant hairdos of teenage girls aren't the only things that need help standing up to the winds of change. Welcome to Hairspray. The national tour of the 2003 Tony-Award winner based on the 1988 movie by John Waters plays to sellout crowds in Fort Lauderdale at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts' 2,700-seat main theater.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Gem of the Ocean
Walter Kerr Theater

August Wilson's mighty ambition, stretching across a decade-by-decade, ten-play cycle of compassionate, poetically engaged playwriting, doesn't really stop at showing us the black experience in the 20th Century. No, Wilson is concerned with the full cargo of the African Diaspora, the history of suffering, the heritage of achievement, and the demons hatched in steerage and slavery that bedevil the race from within.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
La Cage aux Folles
Marquis Theater

Critics gave this glitzy revival a lukewarm reception when it opened in early December, saying that Gary Beach's Albin/ZaZa was bland and that the Harvey Fierstein/Jerry Herman 1983 musical had devolved into a crossdressing tribute to family values. Hardly two weeks later, Beach was breathing fire into his Act 1 closer, "I Am What I Am," transforming the entire evening into a fervid affirmation of individualism. Quite frankly, I was trembling at intermission after what I'd just seen.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Little Women
Virginia Theater

You'd have to be really jaded not to enjoy the new musical, Little Women (book by Allan Knee, music by Jason Howland, lyrics by Mindi Dickstein). The tall but elfin Sutton Foster as the leader of the sisters is lively, endearing, and a spunky 19th-Century example of a woman with a will, a way, and universal good looks and charm. She has great comic timing, intonation and physicality. All of the cast are really good singers (as is apropos on Broadway), and then there is Maureen McGovern as the mother.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Pacific Overtures
Studio 54

East meets West in Sondheim's quaint, oddly proportioned musical ceremony with book by John Weidman. The culture clash is multifold. Sondheim's characteristic Sunday in the Park manner is wedded to delicate, percussion-filled orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Seven Hundred Sundays
Broadhurst Theater

To say that Billy Crystal has become this season's Hugh Jackman is something of an understatement. Crystal is likely to follow in the screen Wolverine's paw steps and devour a Tony Award in his Broadway debut -- while succeeding Jackman at the podium hosting the ceremonies in June. But Mr. Mahvelous' one-man show, chronicling his Long Island childhood with a heartfelt personal tribute to his dad, is currently bringing in more cash per performance than Boy from Oz did a year ago.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
After the Ball
Irish Repertory Theater

After the Ball, Noel Coward's musical based on Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, now at the Irish Repertory Theater, is a perfect holiday entertainment. It starts as a Frimlesque operetta, develops into a musical, and the drama and comedy flows into a lovely show with beautiful period costumes, fine stage design and elegant, lively direction by Tony Walton. While Coward's songs are witty and appropriate, the most fun are still Wilde's quips and his thrusts at the British.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Belle Epoque
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

Martha Clarke's Belle Epoque is an impression of an Impressionist, Toulouse-Lautrec, and the costumes, dances, atmosphere of late 19th-Century French Cafe culture. Clarke creates living paintings with four-foot-tall Mark Povinelli as Lautrec. Stories about Lautrec range from the sentimental to the bizarre.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Best Sex of the XX Century Sale, The
Theater For The New City

Experimental Theater doyen Lissa Moira's latest version of her creation, The Best Sex of the XX Century Sale, now at the Theater for the New City, is an amusing, absurdist history of sex in the 20th Century, with a lively cast of singers and dancers doing songs, decade by decade, of the progressing century -- movies, pop music and culture. Included are a "Boop-boopy-do" by Betty Boop and writer/director Moira herself as Mae West.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Bug
Barrow Street Theater

Agnes White's options are slim and grim from the moment we encounter her in Tracy Letts's apocalyptic thriller, Bug

Just released from prison, there's her hulking ex-husband Jerry Goss, who terrorizes her with silent phone calls before he arrives and punches her out. That's the banal side of Agnes's life, and the brutality she suffers from Goss is a mere preamble to some of the most convincing fighting -- and bloodletting -- you'll ever see onstage. Peter Evans is a more exotic and mysterious proposition.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Broadway Bound
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Broadway Bound is more than Neil Simon's autobiographically inspired account of Eugene Jerome and his older brother Stanley's entry into show biz from pedestrian jobs and lower-middle-class home in Brighton Beach. It's Eugene's story of the final stages of an entire family breakup.

Already somewhat estranged is Aunt Blanche (Melissa Teitel, riveting in just one impressive appearance), who fails to persuade her father, Ben, to rejoin his wife and move to Florida.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Dame Edna: Back With A Vengeance
Music Box Theater

In Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance!, creator/performer Barry Humphries, the world- class lively transvestite and master comedian pours out brilliant quips. He's a great actor in a great role, and it's all laugh after laugh with amazing timing. His audience interaction, which is a good part of the show, is as good as it gets, and far superior to most comedians I have seen - and and I've only seen 2026 of them. It's insightful, good natured, and hilarious.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance
Music Box Theater

I had managed to steer almost totally clear of Dame Edna before my first live dose, reading lightly about Australian actor Barry Humphries' creation and skimming exactly one interview with milady. So I enjoyed myself immensely during my first exposure. The tacky glasses, the silky lavender hair, and the dopey gladiolas were all new to me. These would all probably become less amusing if I had to swallow them nightly. But I love Dame Edna's magnanimous, patronizing cruelty, showered with equal glee upon President Bush and the clueless electorate who keep him in office.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Democracy
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Okay, maybe I saw a different show. Ben Brantley of the New York Times feels that Michael Frayn's Democracy is one of the greatest dramas of our time. I found it a colossal bore. In this view of German leader Willy Brandt and his rise to power, of the intricacies of the spy system between East and West Germany, and of interlocking loyalties, the political machinations are interesting, but the endless exposition gets dull. Director Michael Blakemore keeps the actors moving physically; there much motion on the creatively-designed, two-level set by Peter J.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Gem of the Ocean
Walter Kerr Theater

August Wilson's remarkable play, Gem of the Ocean, part of his cycle of plays about the black experience in Pittsburgh, gives us a working-class family in 1904, not all that long after slavery was ended. Starting with flavorful ordinary conversation, like Horton Foote, the play grows and expands into real theater with unforgettable characters. There is lots of exposition, but it's grand, and the stories are vivid, with a sprinkling of folk humor.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Good Body, The
Booth Theater

Eve Ensler is funny as a writer, performer, and philosopher, with universal deeply felt insights that go beyond comedy. She's sometimes hilarious but with depths that plumb the heart and consciousness. The Good Body explores being overweight -- with a Southern fat woman - and she gives us an 80-year-old Cosmo woman, a pierced lesbian, a Puerto Rican girl, a wife with an unsatisfactory sex life getting her vagina tightened, a high-fashion model, Botox, and a coda with an Indian summing up her "You're Okay!" philosophy.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004
Laugh Whore
Cort Theater

Mario Cantone's Laugh Whore gives us the hyperkinetic whirlwind spouting observational humor at full blast - he sings, he dances, he jests. His absurd impressions of Shelley Winters, Cher, Tina Turner, Kate Smith (who remembers her?), LL Cool J, Carol Channing, Katharine Hepburn, Elvis, Ann Margaret, Liza, and others keep the audience laughing. And that's only Act One. Act Two is his takeoff on his family, and he is vivid as he portrays relatives and their foibles and mannerisms. Plus Judy Garland!

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2004

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