Christmas Carol, A
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Pabst Theater

As a holiday gift to its hometown, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater has invested more than $1 million in revamping its traditional holiday classic, A Christmas Carol. Much of the cash went into hiring a set designer and costumer with Broadway credits, and in the process of translating their vision to the stage. The money was well spent. The New Yorkers (in conjunction with dozens of local and regional theater artisans) have created an enchanting and authentic look for this production.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Competition, The
Cook Theater at Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts

When all you hear at intermission is people wondering what the original play is like, you can be pretty sure the translation isn't going over. Then, too, when a play and its author have been hyped as much as these have been, people may be forgiven for wondering why it's so disappointing. My theory: the characters are not involving because they relate poorly to each other and are often unbelievable or stereotypes. Moreover, they begin more like tragic figures, even as their foolishness makes us laugh at them, since the comedy plays down its serious socio-economic elements.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Crucible, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Arthur Miller's play about Salem women accused of casting spells on young girls and its consequent hysteria and injustice still has the power that marked its debut during the McCarthy era. Today's major parallels concern 9/11 and the Justice Department and Patriot Act in a society vigilant against terrorism. The story begins after Reverend Parris (ever sterner David Breitbarth) has found his niece dancing naked, led by pretty young Abigail (Merideth Maddox, duly controlling) and abetted by Tituba, a servant from Barbados (Gale Fulton Ross, scary even when acting scared).

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Flaming Idiots
Lamplighters Community Theater

In Flaming Idiots, playwright Tom Rooney spreads his farcical humor across the stage with a spatula, adding dollops of slapstick, shtick, satire and pure theater humor. Director David Kievit's cast doesn't miss a chance to milk a line 'til the last laugh echoes through the house.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Butley
Huntington Theater

A bit of Broadway buzz comes to Boston’s Huntington Theater as Nathan Lane assays the title role in Simon Gray’s seminal dark comedy, Butley. In retrospect, the play feels like the bridge between Harold Pinter’s grim view of male relationships in the 60s and the explosion of gay theater in the late 1970s.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Addicted: A Comedy of Substance
Zipper Theater

By all rights, fifteen years ago, Mark Lundholm should have been lying dead somewhere - and he would have deserved it. An addictive personality raised in a violent home, Lundholm moved from alcohol to drugs, eventually ditching his wife and kid for a life of crime to support his habits. But just when he was ready to pull the trigger on the gun to his head - literally - he decided to give rehab one more shot.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Cookin'
New Victory Theater

It's Stomp with a hint of Blast! and a dash of "Yan Can Cook." Sounds appetizing? For awhile, this Korean import, conceived by Seung Whan Song and now a world-wide touring phenomenon, promises to be both light on the funny bone and tempting to the salivary glands, as Cookin' shows a group of young "chefs" ordered to prepare a multi-course meal in exactly one hour.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Artificial Jungle, The
Bath House Cultural Center

On October 2, 2003, Our Endeavors Theater Collective opened a near-perfect production of Charles Ludlam's mid-1980s comedic suspense thriller, The Artificial Jungle. It is set in a family owned-and-operated pet shop on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the kind where the owners live behind the shop, a hodge-podge of paraphernalia featuring a prominent screen which doubles as an aquarium when it is backlit.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Bold Girls
29th Street Repertory

Bold Girls by Rona Munro, now at the 29th St. Rep, is deceiving.  Basically it is a "kitchen sink" drama set in Belfast, Ireland, in 1990, with four women whose men are either dead or in jail (we never find out what they did, but insurrection is implied). While the talk and concerns of these working-class women are quite ordinary, an explosion and shots in the background give the atmosphere some tension. "The Troubles" are rumbling nearby and might spill onto the stage (they don't).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Boobs! The Musical: The World According to Ruth Wallis
Triad Theater (moved to Dillon's)

Well, Tom Lehrer she wasn't. Nor Allan Sherman nor Randy Newman, all of whom have written satirical (and some serious) songs that enjoyed successful off-Broadway tributes in years past. But the largely forgotten Ruth Wallis did carve out a niche for herself with moderately raunchy, double-entendre-packed ditties throughout the 50s and 60s, the most famous of which gives Steve Mackes and Michael Whaley's new revue its title. Boobs!

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Bat Boy: The Musical
Actors' Guild of Lexington

Bat Child Found in Cave was the jaw-dropping headline on June 22, 1992, in the gaudy "Weekly World News" tabloid, where fiction disguised as fact becomes eerily stranger than truth. But let us give thanks to that trashy rag for inspiring Keythe Farley, Brian Flemming, and Laurence O'Keefe to transform the Bat Boy concoction into a marvelously entertaining and touching musical.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Blithe Spirit
Theater Charlotte

It's been awhile since we've seen Lon Bumgarner directing an utterly carefree comedy -- so long, you may have forgotten how good he is at it. When he was dominating the Loaf's directing awards from 1987-90, Bumgarner certainly garnered accolades for his Hamlet, Macbeth, and Three Sisters with Charlotte Shakespeare Company. Yet his work was sometimes even more revelatory in frothier fare such as Scapino!, House of Blue Leaves, You Can't Take It With You and What the Butler Saw.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Breath of Spring
Poway Performing Arts Company

Ah, the joys of a cast totally into their assigned dialects! Lee Donnelly, as maid Lilly Thompson, has a cockney accent that almost needs translation. Shari Lyon, as Miss Nanette Parry, has a proper educated way of speaking, Jeff Laurence's (Brigadier Albert Rayne) speech is peppered with a military flavor. Dialect coach Helen McGuinness brings this authenticity to Breath of Spring, which adds so much to the piece's humor. Each actor not only speaks properly, but with just the right dialect for the character. No easy task!

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Bridge to Terabithia
Children's Theater of Charlotte

Children's Theater is pioneering beyond their comfort zone with Bridge to Terabithia. We've seen CT musicals before, and we've certainly had brave confrontations with dark, disturbing themes. But we've never had an intermission during a CT production—or a Newberry Award medalist fielding audience questions on opening night. Regardless of author Katherine Paterson's appearance, signaling an auspicious hook-up with the Library's Novello Festival, there's no precedent in Charlotte for the rich package that Terabithia can deliver to children and families.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Carnival Knowledge
Soho Playhouse

Step right up to the Soho Playhouse and see, "alive on stage" such wonders as a man walking barefoot on broken glass, chewing up a lightbulb, and hammering a nail in his nasal cavity.  It's all the same man -- Todd Robbins -- in Carnival Knowledge, helped by his lady assistant, Twistina, and joined by the dwarf Little Jimmy (one of the Oompah-Loompahs in the original "Willy Wonka").  It's a diverting mix of standard magic act, dangerous stunts (the most interesting part of the evening, since they're "real"), and flim-flam (one bit really IS done with mirrors).

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Comedy of Errors, The
La Jolla Playhouse - Mandell Weiss Forum

Everybody is right! No, everybody is wrong!

Confusion reigns in William Shakespeare's first comedy, A Comedy of Errors. The New York-based Aquila Theater Company's version, created by Peter Meineck and Robert Richmond, gives new meaning to this hilarious amusement. Producer Meineck also created the effective and moody lighting, with director Richmond designing the production.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Drawer Boy, The
Cabot Theater - Broadway Theater Center

When a playwright can't explain the source of his work's popularity -- that's a mystery. And The Drawer Boy, written by Michael Healey in 1999, is certainly popular. In fact, it's one of the most-produced plays in American regional theaters. It is also being translated into several languages, including Japanese. Milwaukee audiences were fortunate to welcome Canadian playwright Michael Healey during the show's opening-night performance.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Eight By Tenn
Hartford Stage Company

To kick off the Hartford Stage's 40th anniversary season, artistic director Michael Wilson, who five years ago embarked on the project of presenting the entire Tennessee Williams canon, has chosen to stage eight relatively unfamiliar one-act plays divided into two quartets ("Rose" and "Blue"), presented in repertory. The plays cover a span from the late 1930s until a few weeks before the dramatist's death in 1983.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Frankenstein
Dallas Children's Theater

Dallas Children's Theater opened Thomas Olson's spine-tingling adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein on October 24, 2003. And everything about this production is first-rate except the script. With its numerous flashbacks and chronological time shifts -- constantly going back and forth between present and past -- the action is difficult for all but the tutored children to comprehend. (Speaking as someone who followed it, I simply don't think the play is all that good.) But the technical aspects are superb.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Hedwig And The Angry Inch
Kitchen Dog Theater

When seeing a play at two different venues, it is difficult not to make comparisons, so bear with me if I compare the production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch at Austin's Zachary Scott Theater and Kitchen Dog Theater's mounting in Dallas and find that the latter does not measure up.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Hoot Owl Hootenanny
Rosewood Center for Family Arts: Robyn Flatt Studio Theater

Halloween theater fare has never been better than the Kathy Burks Theater of Puppetry Arts' presentation of Hoot Owl Hootenanny, created in 1992 by troupe members Ted Kincaid, Sally Fiorello, Patricia Long, Kathy Burks, and B. Wolf.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
I Got Merman
Majestic Theater

Thanksgiving came early to the Dallas Summer Musicals on October 28, 2003 in the form of a turkey called "I Got Merman". The loosely-woven framework masquerading as a book is one of the worse attempts at a book musical I have ever encountered. A more apt title for this show would be "Four Very Talented Singers in Search of a Musical." The premise is three female singers (Becca Ayers, Cindy Marchionda, and Carol Swarbrick) channeling Ethel Merman during a rehearsal for a show about her career. Mr. Fisk (Jeffrey Biering) is their accompanist.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Far And Wide
Mint Theater

In his best-known work, La Ronde, Arthur Schnitzler explored how the dominant person in one sexual relationship can be, simultaneously, the lackey in another. Far and Wide takes a broader social view, showing how a wife's infidelity (or even the hint of it) can be so much more of a scandal than her husband's habitual bits on the side. Appropriately for the social set depicted, it's all played as high comedy, sobering up just long enough for seemingly inconsequential events to become tragic.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Little Shop of Horrors
Virginia Theater

Feed me, Seymour. Three little words that will bring a grin to anyone with a soft spot for Roger Corman's cheapie film classic about a nebbishy plant store employee and the behemoth he grows using nourishment of a special type -- specifically, Type O. Even those of us who missed the well-loved off-Broadway run of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's musicalization of Little Shop of Horrors have felt the work's indelible stamp, thanks mainly to Frank Oz's exceptional 1986 film. And hence lies the problem with the show's 2003 appearance on Broadway.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Wicked
Gershwin Theater

Since he burst precociously on the Broadway scene in 1972, Stephen Schwartz has been writing about sorcery or magic, and about family relationships. (See "May the Schwartz Be With Us" in the Periodica section.) Now, with Wicked, it all comes together in a consummate work that is spectacular, funny, has something serious to say and contains excellent music. Although it Wicked characters from Frank Baum's "Oz" books and has in-joke references to The Wizard of Oz, it is not a retelling of that story.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Ain't Misbehavin'
Paper Mill Playhouse

Either by association or direct composition, the legendary composer/pianist/entertainer Fats Waller (1904-1943) was famed for "Spreadin' Rhythm Around." 25 years ago, a sizzling, if small-scaled, revue called "Ain't Misbehavin'" proved a winning homage to the great Waller.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Beauty
La Jolla Playhouse - Mandell Weiss Forum

Beauty, by playwright/director Tina Landau, is the latest of many incarnations of the Sleeping Beauty tale. Landau creates a contemporary version blending the past (1,000 years ago) and the present through both creative dialogue and music. Constance, played by Lisa Harrow, is the crone/hag who narrates the story bridging the two time periods. She dominates the stage even as the ensemble members (David Ari, Corey Brill, Simone Vicari Moore, Adam Smith, and Amy Stewart) perform their various roles.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Drinking In America
Central Avenue Playhouse

You always expect something outsized and outrageous when Carver Johns is onstage -- with a slight edge of pure craziness. So it was almost inevitable that Johns and his innerVoices Theater Company would gravitate toward the solo pieces of Eric Bogosian. They're opening their first full season at the Central Avenue Playhouse with Bogosian's breakthrough Drinking in America, and they're proving that the monologues are as wildly pertinent today as they were back in 1985 when the performance artist began writing them.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Evita
Theater Charlotte

If you've followed Billy Ensley for the past three years, you'll notice that Charlotte's preeminent triple threat has expanded his horizons as a singer and an actor. To effect his startling transformations -- most memorably as Fagin in Oliver! and as the lead rocker in Hedwig and the Angry Inch -- Ensley has radically changed his look.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Finer Noble Gases
Avenue Playhouse

Since heading off to Kentucky for an apprenticeship with the famed Actors Theater of Louisville, Robert Simmons has peeped back on the Charlotte scene a couple of times. Now after a powerful lead last month in Victory Pictures' Kiss of the Spider Woman, he's back as production manager of Finer Noble Gases. Better still, he's rejoined his dad, Michael, as VP of development at Vic Pix. The significance of that comes clear from the moment you enter the Central Avenue Playhouse.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Flower Drum Song
Music Hall - Fair Park

David Henry Hwang's updated version of Flower Drum Song inaugurated its national tour on September 2, 2003 at the Music Hall at Fair Park as the closing production of the Dallas Summer Musicals. In a pre-show conversation with Hwang, who attended the first Sunday matinee, he said, "I saw the potential for this show that had been on the shelf for 45 years.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Graduate, The
Civic Theater

The Graduate was a wonderful film in its time, but it fails as a play, even though the touring cast is generally well chosen. Jerry Hall, as Mrs. Robinson, is all right, with some good moments. She certainly is quite attractive, and, in shadows, accomplishes her nude scene. Devon Sorvari, as Elaine Robinson, ends up being totally "valley girl." The rest of the cast is there, but not too convincingly. Rider Strong never grasps the depths of Benjamin or understand his motivations. Dennis Parlato as Mr. Robinson has one excellent scene.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Avenue Q
John Golden Theater

The message of TV's "Sesame Street," tucked in amid the array of alpha-numerical lesson plans, is that, despite the occasional obstacle, "everything's a-ok." While its multi-ethnic casts, resident grouch and human- monster interactions hint at a world of diversity and occasional miscommunication, the Children's Television Workshop nonetheless concocts an inviting urban landscape, full of "friendly neighbors" with their doors open wide to "happy people like you."

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Avenue Q
John Golden (moved to off-Broadway's New World Stages)

The Broadway lark, Avenue Q, is an adult kids' show -- a charming Sesame Street / Muppets singing, dancing delight. It's a clever concept performed with great charm by an outstanding cast of singing puppet characters mixed with non-puppet actors. The skill and range of Stephanie D'Abruzzo, John Tartaglia and Rick Lyon is amazing, and every cast member is Broadway level.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Aida
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

The theme of romance in a time of war is hardly new, but this sparkling production of Aida nonetheless captures our interest with its soulful tale of an enslaved African princess and her Egyptian lover. As the show opens, the two neighboring territories, Egypt and Nubia, are at war. This brings together the victorious Egyptian captain, Radames, and one of the captured Nubians, Aida. Her outspoken manner piques Radames' curiosity, and soon this interest turns to forbidden passion.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Alpha
SouthEnd Performing Arts Center

Seeking to apply his fight choreography skills to a female combat drama, Tony Wright quickly discovered there were no existing scripts to suit his needs. So the actor/playwright, who directed last year's slumber party version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, cooked up his own futuristic sci-fi potboiler, Alpha, now playing at the SouthEnd Performing Arts Center.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Absolutely! (Perhaps)
Wyndham's Theatre

Luigi Pirandello is the greatest Italian playwright of all time, and fully merited the Nobel Prize in Literature bestowed on him in 1934. The current production, unnecessarily retitled "Absolutely! (Perhaps), premiered in 1917, and is usually known as "Right You Are If You Think You Are." The new version, by Martin Sherman (best known for Bent), ever- so-slightly tightens the original and is eminently actable. This is the seventh of Pirandello's 44 plays, and like many of them, is an elaboration of one of his short stories.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Below The Belt
Steep Theater

Who really associates Ionesco and his kin with a social context? Isn't it easier -- and safer -- to nowadays look upon those mid-century protests simply as showcases for imaginative technique? But neo-absurdist Richard Dresser's social context is not so comfortably ignored: three "company men" stranded in a foreign country, employed in the manufacture of something they know only by its toxic effect on the local environs, their lives circumscribed by the prison-like bureaucracy their employers impose on them.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Blue/Orange
Intiman Theater

Joe Penhall, now in his mid-thirties, has been writing plays for a decade. His biggest success has been Blue/Orange, which premiered at London's National Theatre in 2000, transferred to a West End run, and understandably won the Olivier, Evening Standard and Critics' Circle awards for Best Play. The Intiman Theater has mounted a stunning production that is fully the equal of the London original.

The play takes place in a modern National Health Service psychiatric hospital in London.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Born Yesterday
Utah Shakespearean Festival

While experiencing Garson Kanin's old chestnut, Born Yesterday, at the Utah Shakespearean Festival, I could close my eyes and hear Judy Holliday, as Anne Newhall essayed a delightful characterization of Billie Dawn.

The play is set in 1946 in the plush sitting room of parvenu millionaire junk dealer Harry Brock's (Craig Spidle) suite in the swankiest hotel in Washington, D.C. Harry is accompanied by his entourage, including his beautiful but none- too-cultured girlfriend, Billie Dawn (Anne Newhall). Harry has come to D.C.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
August 2003

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