Angels of Lemnos, The
Venice Little Theater - Stage II

Stage II of Venice Little Theater is known for its gutsy attempts to stage contemporary, even controversial plays, and for winning national community theater awards doing so. The Angels of Lemnos, for instance, requires a Greek chorus (however truncated in size and message), complete with masks (here worn on the backs of actors' hoods when they have to go swiftly to "normal" conversation).

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Bad Date Theater
Adams Avenue of the Arts

Misfit Productions presents "Bad Date Theater" at the Adams with five short plays: two Christopher Durangs, two Shel Silversteins, and a John Guare. All the plays offer a different look at our celebration of Valentines Day. Excepting the Guare, the productions are directed by Misfit's artistic director, Fred Tracey.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Bully Pulpit, The
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage / Gompertz (2005)

How well Theodore Roosevelt's ornate but warm, comfortable Sagamore Hill home reflects the man!

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Chicago
Music Hall at Fair Park

The touring company of Chicago that played the Music Hall at Fair Park in Dallas February 24-29, 2004 did not measure up to the 1999 touring production. It wasn't bad;  it just didn't have the sparkle or electricity of the previous mounting. With a book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse,  music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb, Chicago is a blockbuster musical with all the razz-ma-tazz of the flapper era -- at least it is when it delivers -- this show didn't.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Drowning Crow
Biltmore Theater

Regina Taylor's Drowning Crow is a mess based on Chekhov's The Seagull. Set on South Carolina's Gullah Islands, with a black cast, it's a good idea gone blooey. Two things are necessary in theater: communicate and entertain. Poor direction by Marion McClinton undercuts the simple communication of the content -- jumping around while talking breaks our empathy with the characters, especially in the case of the very handsome Anthony Mackie playing a troubled writer, whose histrionic antics distance us from the story.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Doll's House, A
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

This gripping production of Ibsen's classic, A Doll's House, is sure to keep Milwaukee Repertory Theater audiences enthralled during its month-long run. Stunningly staged by famed Hungarian director Laszlo Marton, this staging keeps most of the play's familiar elements intact. It rarely deviates from Ibsen's original lines, its Victorian timeframe or its famous characters. (One of the play's minor characters, a nanny, is scaled down in this adaptation.) In clever and subtle ways, Marton allows the play to resonate with contemporary flavor.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Fully Committed
Cygnet Theater

You need to be committed to see Fully Committed. Fully committed to 70 minutes of non-stop laughter. Fully committed to 70 minutes of the vagaries of a up-scale Manhattan restaurant and the turmoil facing the reservationist. Fully committed to 70 minutes of pure pleasure! Cygnet Theater Company has given a joyous gift to San Diego.

For those of us who did our time in the restaurant business, to quote director Sean Murray, this play is "so dead-on."

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Expiration Date
La MaMa ETC - First Floor

One by one, three eccentric actresses strut onto the stage at La MaMa's First Floor Theater to wait to audition. They flaunt creatively outlandish costumes by Denise Greber and director Abla Khoury, with a common theme of bright red patent-leather shoes or boots. And waiting is about all they get to do, unless you count the impromptu monologues done for an ominous-looking camera on tripod that otherwise mostly spills artsy time sequences of the women onto a screen at the rear.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
If The Shrew Fits Wear It: A Mime of a Time
Stagehouse Theater

If the Shrew Fits Wear It parodies Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew done in mime and set to an excellent selection of music. Alas, nary a word of Shakespeare, that master of playful English, is heard. However, every emotion, every action is properly staged, with never a question as to what's going on. Though every element seems well choreographed, it's obvious the players are adding their own flourishes from time-to-time.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Between Men and Cattle
Off-Broadway Theater

Wisconsin-based playwright Richard Kalinoski explores the racial divide between black and white in Between Men and Cattle. The premise of this oddly titled play is an intriguing one, involving an articulate black boy and an eager white reporter who is dazzled by the boy's sensitivity. However, for a number of reasons, the play fails to get off the ground. This does not reflect on the talents of director David Cecsarini nor the excellent cast.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2004
Brave Smiles: Another Lesbian Tragedy
Diversionary Theater

What happens when you mix one of the top directors in San Diego (Kirsten Brandt, Artistic Director of Sledgehammer Theatre), an extremely talented cast (Wendy Waddell, Allison Riley, Robin Christ, Jeannine Marquie, Melissa Fernandes), and a brilliantly comedic script by the Five Lesbian Brothers (Manhattan based Maureen Angelos, Babs Davy, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey & Lisa Kron)? You get a highly entertaining evening at Diversionary Theater with Brave Smiles . . . Another Lesbian Tragedy.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2004
By The Sea, By The Sea, By The Beautiful Sea
Adams Avenue of the Arts

A common theme and a single set make for an interesting evening at Adams Avenue of the Arts. By The See By The Sea By The Beautiful Sea, include Dawn by Joe Pintauro, Day by Lanford Wilson, and Dusk by Terrence McNally. The setting is a sandy beach with a backdrop of ocean and sky. Dawn features Kathy Song as Pat the wife of Quentin, played by Robert Jenkins and friend of Quentin's sister, Veronica (Hilary White).

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2004
Full Monty, The
Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

An enthusiastic but unseasoned cast can't seem to rescue a cheaply mounted tour of The Full Monty. The musical doesn't stray far from its cinematic source (the show was adapted from a 1997 British film). A group of unemployed steelworkers hit on the unlikely idea of staging a strip show to rake in big cash and reclaim their manhood. Trouble is, the Chippendale's have already beaten them to it. So the locals reluctantly agree to show the ladies "everything" that God gave them (i.e., the full monty)."

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2004
Little Shop of Horrors
Virginia Theater

If you don't want to have a lot of fun, if you don't want to laugh and smile for two hours and walk out humming, don't go to Little Shop of Horrors. The clever old lyrics by Howard Ashman and lively tunes by Alan Menken tickle more that ever, and the sterling performances by the beautiful Kerry Butler, the always vulnerable Hunter Foster, Rob Bartlett (as close as you can get to Zero) and the amazing, dazzling Douglas Sills, all make this the best Little Shop ever.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2004
Taboo
Plymouth Theater

Taboo is closing. But it's a really good, completely entertaining show with marvelous performances and some of the best songs in town. The latter are by Boy George -- the ones that made him a star and others. But I guess Rock Freaks are not the cup of tea for visitors from Iowa. Taboo's an unapologetically, unabashedly gay show, and it seems the tourists are not ready for it.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2004
Anna in the Tropics
Royale

Anna in the Tropics won a Pulitzer Prize based on its script, before it ever was staged, and it comes to Broadway with high expectations. The play provides good entertainment but has flaws that keep it from being fully satisfying. The faults include a cheap and contrived denouement and gaps in plot. For example, the eldest member of the cast, owner of a cigar factory, is shown to be a gambler and a drinker who has no money. But in Act Two, he is suddenly sober and sensible and pulls out a wad of bills saying that he got a loan.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Agnes of God
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

Having seen the original Broadway production, I must admit that Agnes of God lacked, on this viewing, the impact it once had. I'd like to think that's because the suspense wasn't there for me, whereas the play's mystery is gripping as a first experience. Many in the audience with me obviously had just that. I wish I'd been able to share it, but the answers to the mystery seemed just too obvious this time. I refer to how, in a contemplative order of nuns, young, unworldly Sister Agnes became pregnant -- and is she guilty of killing her baby?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Arsenic and Old Lace
Theater Three

'Tis the season for candy canes, popcorn balls and chestnuts. But the tastiest chestnut of the season is Theater Three's production of Joseph Kesselring's 1941 classic, Arsenic and Old Lace. Originally produced at the Fulton Theater in New York on August 18, 1941 by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse (Life With Father) and starring Josephine Hull as Abby Brewster and Boris Karloff as her evil nephew, Jonathon, Arsenic and Old Lace is a comic murder mystery and a delightful send-up of theater critics.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Chicago
Civic Theater

Chicago" the movie was based on Chicago, the Broadway musical created by Bob Fosse. Chicago the road show is a re-creation of the original musical, in which Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly separately dispose of problems in there lives, through murder. Billy Flynn, a glib lawyer, defends both. What goes on between murders and trials is the grist of Chicago, which has fun music though proves short on plot.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Foreigner, The
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

Twenty years ago, Milwaukee Repertory Theater introduced The Foreigner to the world. The play's background material notes that without the constant urging of the Rep's former artistic director, The Foreigner and its comedic cousin, The Nerd, never would have been written. Larry Shue, an actor, didn't exactly leap for the typewriter, it seems. But audiences should be glad that he did. The current revival of the Milwaukee Rep's most-requested play is a humdinger.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Guys, The
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

The Milwaukee Chamber Theater is to be congratulated for running a play like The Guys during the December holiday season. The two-character play is certainly NOT your typical feel-good holiday entertainment. Instead, it's a grim reminder of how some families will get through the holidays - those families who lost loved ones in the tragic events of 9/11.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Henry IV
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

Jack O'Brien, whose fluid, almost dreamlike direction of Stoppard's The Invention of Love nearly shook that drama out of its ivory-tower lethargy brings the same sense of style to Shakespeare - and here he even gets to have battle scenes, hold-ups, tavern carousing and a coronation. For all the legitimate excitement of the production, it should be noted that not much really happens in the first two hours(!), and that fine as the work by adapter Dakin Matthews is (he cobbled the two Henry plays into one), the piece does feel every bit of its 230 minutes.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
I Am My Own Wife
Lyceum Theater

I Am My Own Wife, by Doug Wright, is an amazing show. Based on 1992-93 interviews with a German transvestite who built, kept and guarded a collection of phonographs, clocks, and furniture through the Nazi and the Communist regimes, the piece is gripping, fascinating, vastly entertaining, and reaches down into the human spirit more that anything I have seen recently.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
I Am My Own Wife
Lyceum Theater

If I Am My Own Wife were merely a fascinating story, compellingly told, it would be worth attending and strongly applauding. But this tale of a man, living as a woman and curating a veritable museum of Weimar era-history, not only during the Nazi period but throughout the Communist years in East Berlin, has a second-act twist that keeps us guessing long after the show's over. Think of it as the equivalent of Golda's Balcony, only here we're not sure if Golda might really be Yasser Arafat.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Jackie Mason: Laughing Room Only
Brooks Atkinson Theater

One can't blame Jackie Mason for trying something different after six one-man shows since his 1986, career-resuscitating classic, The World According to Me. His schtick was getting a little too familiar, his new material sounding too much like the old material.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Jackie Mason: Laughing Room Only
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Jackie Mason's Laughing Room Only is two shows: one is Jackie doing his usual conversational schtick with the audience, in his subdued tone with physical absurdities sprinkled in; the second is bright, entertaining musical numbers by the sparkling Doug Katsaros, performed by a first-rate Broadway quintet of singer-dancers. Only one number integrates the two, and that is the high point of the show: "Tea Time," wherein Jackie plays a waiter overhearing and misunderstanding a conversation between two women in a tea room. That's the show.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
How To Turn Distress Into Success: A Parable of War and Its Making
Theater For The New City

December wouldn't be complete without Bread & Puppet Theater's annual show at Theater for the New City. Inevitably this year's themes are war and global capitalism. How To Turn Distress Into Success also highlights the role of spin in transforming the worst of man-made disasters, like the war on Iraq, into triumphs of human intellect.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Never Gonna Dance
Broadhurst Theater

Of course he's gonna dance. He's gonna dance from the minute he steps onstage to the moment the curtain falls. And that's as it should be with a nutty, old-fashioned show like Never Gonna Dance, which yearns to be a screwball confection the way they used to make `em, and, more often than not, succeeds. Lead Noah Racey doesn't have Astaire's height and sings just passably, but when he moves, so does the show. Peter Hatcher's book, adapted from the MGM film "Swing Time," has enough contrivances to raise even the long-shut eyebrows of Louis B.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Never Gonna Dance
Broadhurst Theater

Based on the film "Swing Time," with marvelous songs by some of the best old timers, Never Gonna Dance is a show about tap dancing, and some of the numbers are breathtaking as choreographed by Jerry Mitchell. The rest are merely superb. The leading man, Noah Racey, charming and tasteful, is almost an Astaire, and there are fine comic turns by Peter Bartlett and Peter Gerety. David Pittu delights as an absurd Latin Lover, and the real charisma is Karen Ziemba, who lights up the theater whenever she's on stage.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Nine
Eugene O'Neill Theater

Although its plot revolves around the character of Guido, a Fellini-like Italian film director, Nine is most impressive as a vehicle for the women in Guido's life. John Stamos has taken over from Antonio Banderas as the male lead, and he sings and acts well. His words are more clearly understood, and he exudes his own star quality, though he seems a bit young for the part. The director is supposed to be just 40, and Stamos is approaching that age, but one expects the character to be older.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Retreat From Moscow, The
Booth Theater

Behind the British accents and literary allusions (which are underlined, italicized and bolded, just in case you couldn't figure them out for yourself) lies a very middlebrow drama about a couple nearing their sunset years and reaching a crossroad in their relationship.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Taboo
Plymouth Theater

The progression of a naive but talented waif who, through good people skills and sheer lucky breaks, becomes a star, is a time-honored one for Broadway musicals, but rarely has that scenario been more oddly put forth than in Taboo, a show by, about and starring Boy George (nee George O'Dowd) -- only he doesn't play Boy George. Instead he plays Divine-like downtown muse Leigh Bowery, who, with his outre garb and makeup, made himself a kind of living art, and thus inspired George's own star-making makeover.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Wicked
Gershwin Theater

Say what you will about songwriter Stephen Schwartz, when he puts on a show, it's a show. You get a production, in the David Merrick sense of the word - but in a pop/modern way. With Wicked, not only does Schwartz get an impressive set and special effects to match his breezy music and deft, if sometimes overreaching lyrics, he gets a brilliant, layered book by Winnie Holzman and two (count `em, two!) star turns.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Wonderful Town
Al Hirschfeld Theater

The great accomplishment of the new production of Wonderful Town is that it transcends the show's limitations. The music is the least distinguished of Leonard Bernstein's Broadway career: not as poignant as On the Town, not as dramatic as West Side Story, not as dazzling as Candide. But it's not meant to be distinguished; it's funny. The young Lenny, with his cabaret buddies Betty Comden and Adolph Green, wrote the score in a hurry -- starting just five weeks before rehearsals began. They did it with an exuberance they never again equaled.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Wonderful Town
Al Hirschfeld Theater

Just when recent revivals made Comden & Green appear too quaint for modern Broadway, along came Encores!' long-delayed Wonderful Town to give us a wonderful time. Donna Murphy's the franchise, giving even the mildest zingers a kick like tabasco.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Wonderful Town
Al Hirschfeld Theater

Wonderful Murphy in Wonderful Town! I guarantee, Donna Murphy will win the Tony for Best Female Performance in a Musical. She lights up the stage with a comic flair seldom seen anywhere, her body is a rubber band, and her magnificent voice fills the theater with warmth and beauty. The play, with book by Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, from stories by Ruth McKenney, is just a bit of delightful fluff about sisters coming from Ohio to live in Greenwich Village.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Bravo, Caruso!
Off-Broadway Theater

Next Act Theater can indeed take a bow for its production of Bravo, Caruso!. It is one of the end-of-year highlights of the Milwaukee theater season. While the play may seem to be an odd choice for this time of year, the events of Bravo, Caruso! occur on Christmas Eve, 1920.

The setting is Enrico Caruso's dressing room at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Caruso is tackling his latest (and, the audience knows, his final) role.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Caroline, Or Change
Public Theater

Caroline, or Change is a departure for playwright Tony Kushner, and he pulls it off very well. Instead of writing about cosmic catastrophes like the AIDS epidemic and war in Afghanistan, he narrows his focus to one household in Louisiana in 1963. Even more importantly, he restrains his dialogue and focuses on writing lyrics that reveal their essence within 32 bars.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Music Box Theater

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, which explores family relationships, sexuality, and even life and death, is one of Tennessee Williams's best plays. Broadway now has, except for a few performances, an inept production of the play running. Poor Ashley Judd gives it her all but is basically betrayed by her director, Anthony Page, as she, in Act One, recites all her lines with verve and energy and no subtext. How could he allow that? Saying all the words is not enough on Broadway. Her performance passes boredom into pain -- she stirs no empathy and no passion; it's only noise.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Crashing
Chashama

A woman's work is never done -- especially when the sheer annoyances and expectations involved in being a female involve as much toil as any paid employment. The rituals and pains of dieting, dressing, exercising, dating, waxing, and even relaxing are enough to send perfectly functional and sane women to the edge of a nervous breakdown.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2003

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