Cast Me, Tony!
Patio Playhouse

Last night I went to the Peri Playhouse Community Theater for the auditions for Tony and Ann Peri's new musical. They had posters hung everywhere. It was amusing to see that Ben Damon was cast in all their shows. Hm! The 12 hopefuls were milling around outside, in the lobby, and in the theater. Even John Doe, the resident set guy, was auditioning. The undercurrent was tense. Cattle calls (an affectionate term for auditions) are a combination of intense competition, meeting old friends, and trying desperately to do your very best.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2004
Jumpers
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Tom Stoppard is one of the greatest wordsmiths ever, and his 1972 play, Jumpers, now on Broadway, is an early expression of his agility. It's a little razz-ma-tazz, a lot of philosophical fol-de-rol, and a speculation on God, Man, moral philosophy and logic. Stoppard shows his glittering mind as it explores conundrums of reality and contradictions in perception.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2004
Match
Plymouth Theater

Frank Langella is a theatrical treasure. In Match, by Stephen Belber, zippily directed by Nicholas Martin, with a fine set by James Noone, now on Broadway, he has a great time (and so do we) as he plays a former dancer/choreographer in a camp caricature with a tres gay sensibility. There's much amusing banter as he interacts with an interviewing couple, the grim Ray Liotta and the delicate, sensitive Jane Adams who prompt him to talk about his life and times.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2004
Assassins
Studio 54

Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, about famous killers and would-be killers (like John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinkley, Squeaky Fromme) of famous people (like Lincoln, Kennedy, Sharon Tate), with songs by Sondheim and book by John Weidman, is a piece of expressionist theater that occasionally works as vibrant musical drama, but often sinks into inane verbiage.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Ain't Misbehavin'
Dallas Theater Center

Dallas Theater Center opened the Fats Waller Musical Show, Ain't Misbehavin', on April 13, 2004, following five days of previews. There's no plot line, just two hours of rousing music associated with Waller. The most recognizable songs include: "Two Sleepy People," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," "It's a Sin To Tell a Lie," "Honeysuckle Rose," and the title song. The performers are first-rate, especially Dallas regular, Liz Mikel, who commands attention just by walking onto a stage. Her interpretation of "Squeeze Me" was interrupted several times by applause.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

Despite its title, Anita Bryant Died for Your Sins has little to do with her except that her crusade against homosexual rights makes gay Horace Poore, the main character, apprehensive. Despite being touted as a contemporary Our Town, the major likeness here is that Horace narrates the play. He does so by typing-out-loud the story of how he gets through life amid the events and changes of the 1960s and '70s, bound up with what happens to his family.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Barefoot in the Park
Charlotte Rep - Booth Playhouse

Everything about Charlotte Rep's new production of Barefoot in the Park is smartly done. So I enjoyed myself, despite the fact that I never saw a single compelling reason why Rep had revived Simon's lightweight comedy. Milking yuks from a 40-year-old script isn't nearly the same as demonstrating enduring relevance -- or making good on the promise in Rep's season brochure to present a "fresh look" at the 1963 smash. Breach of promise, if you ask me.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Boy Gets Girl
Off-Tryon Theater Company

As playwright Rebecca Gilman deftly ratchets up the tension in Boy Gets Girl, we realize that the onslaught of suspense isn't her chief concern. Yes, she wants us to viscerally experience the feelings of violation and paranoia that bedevil New York magazine writer Theresa Bedell when an ungainly blind date morphs into a vindictive stalker. And we do. But Gilman also wants to investigate why Tony is out there in the middle of the night, seeing whether Theresa's light is on.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Cripple of Inishmaan, The
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

When The Cripple of Inishmaan opened Off-Broadway in 1998, it was accompanied on Broadway by another of Martin McDonagh's plays, The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Although it was Beauty Queen that picked up a handful of Tony Awards and much critical praise, it does not make Cripple a less worthy play. (And at least nobody dies.)

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Dirty Blonde
Theater Three

Theater Three has a solid hit in Dirty Blonde, Claudia Shear's comedic musical salute to Mae West, the bawdy 1920s musical comedy performer with an attitude. Julie Johnson does Mae justice in an all-out recreation, with all the peccadilloes firmly intact.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Ears on a Beatle
DR2 Theater

Twenty/twenty hindsight is always helpful when you're deciphering who might be a safety threat to America and why. In retrospect, the FBI's surveillance of rock legend John Lennon seems like a waste of time and taxpayer money, though a case could still be made that among his fans and worshipers lay radicals far more dangerous than the former Beatle (e.g., if only the FBI had followed the Beach Boys' activities more closely, tabs might've been kept on their wild-eyed-songwriter friend, Charlie Manson). And of course, the clear irony in Mark St.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Embedded
Public Theater

Embedded wears it politics on its sleeve, on its face, and on its masks. Yet it's not a polemic. It is a parody, but it's also a serious look at war. Probably the most accurate description is that Embedded is a series of set pieces, some brilliant, some broad, some harrowing, some obvious, which add up to a moving piece of theater but which fall somewhat short if one considers them together as "a play."

David Steinhardt
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Raisin in the Sun, A
Royale Theater

Lorraine Hansberry's profound, funny, powerful play, A Raisin in the Sun,, now on Broadway, is as poignant and relevant today as it was in 1959 when it was first produced. This story of the struggles of a black family in Chicago in the 1950s to survive, to grow, to make it in a difficult, frustrating world, is a gripping domestic drama with a fine cast. Hansberry was a wonderful writer with a keen ear for the nuances of the flow of people's speech and deep insight into their inner workings.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Sly Fox
Ethel Barrymore Theater

Sly Fox by Larry Gelbart by way of Ben Jonson, is a splendid farce, with the entire cast made up of star farceurs. They don't make better than the comic master Bob Dishy, whose takes reveal hilariously what he is thinking, as he delivers Gelbart's priceless lines.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Michael Feinstein
Houston Symphony

The anticipation is building in Montgomery County as the Houston Symphony prepares to open its new season at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion later this month. But I got a wonderful sample of musical delights to come while attending this week’s opening of the Exxon Mobil Pops with Michael Feinstein. The orchestra has never sounded better, and energetic conductor, Andrews Sill, was every inch the equal of the fine musicians in his charge.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
April 2004
Anchor Pectoris
La MaMa ETC

Gerald Thomas, who's worked internationally, has conceived, designed and directed Anchor Pectoris, was presented recently by La MaMa. Thomas' form is unique and exciting: two actors move downstage, one of them representing the playwright; the other a sort of conversational sounding board. There are several actors behind a scrim, and they represent -- with varying degrees of non-realism, but always referring to life -- the playwright's artistic and political concerns as he discusses them.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
After Ashley
Actors Theater of Louisville

Smart barbed exchanges about sex and marriage between a restless 35-year-old mother and her 14-year-old son make for an attention-grabbing start to Gina Gionfriddo's provocative and unexpectedly funny, After Ashley, the sixth and last full-length play in this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville.

As the uncomfortably personal scene ends between Ashley, the mother (Carla Harting), and Justin, the son (Jesse Hooker), who is home sick from school, the stage goes dark and attention gets another jolt.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
At the Vanishing Point
Actors Theater of Louisville

Playwright Naomi Iizuka's At the Vanishing Point, the fourth entry in this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, is an imaginatively and lovingly crafted paean to one of Louisville's most historic and fascinating neighborhoods -- the aptly-named Butchertown. This is the area where the stockyards and meatpacking plants shared space with homes of butchers, distillery workers, and others in collateral jobs.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
bridge and tunnel
45 Bleecker

In the extraordinary one woman show, Bridge & Tunnel, written and performed by Sarah Jones and playing at 45 Bleeker Street, Jones gives us a succession of immigrant characters, mostly living in Queens, whose lives and personas are explored with amazing sensitivity and skill as she, with minimal costume changes, switches from male to female, from old to young, and to accents from all over the world. Although the piece boasts lots of humor, it is basically an exploration of the hearts of the characters, and, as directed by Tony Taccone, Ms.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Bug
Barrow Street Theater

Bug by Tracy Letts, now at the Barrow Street Theater, is a naturalistic slice of motel life among working-class Oklahomans performed by actors with a sense of being seldom seen on the stage today. We are looking through the wall where a real life seems to be going on. Shannon Cochran, Michael Shannon, Amy Landecker, Michel Cullen and Reed Birney are a rare acting ensemble, directed with an enthralling sense of timing by Dexter Bullard. This is what "The Method" was about -- real people with genuine emotions.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Bells Are Ringing
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

In the 1950s, instead of voice mail, there were answering services. Callers gave messages to real people who conveyed them to subscribers. Comden and Green, inspired by such a woman handling their messages from a dingy brownstone basement, replicated her fictionally as Ella working for Susanswerphone. They tailored Ella to fit the talents of old friend Judy Holliday. Both star and situation rang true in the NYC of their day, accounting for a long Broadway success and subsequent transfer to film.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Book of Days
Martin Experimental Theater at Kentucky Center for the Arts

Lanford Wilson's Book of Days, written in 1999, opens in a style reminiscent of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, with citizens of a small Missouri Bible-Belt community spotlighted inside a circle of chairs as they take turns enumerating the place's assets and good points. But when Walt Bates (an excellent Larry Singer), the town's rich and respected "feudal lord," who owns the local cheese factory, is murdered during a tornado, the civilized veneer that masks the evil buried in hearts and minds of nearly everyone gradually crumbles.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Burkie
OnStage Playhouse

It's a four-letter word with five letters. We don't want to talk about it. We are afraid of it, but we can't avoid it. I've witnessed it twice. One from afar (as does Burkie's Jess) and once very close-up and personal (as does Jon). The word—dying.

Why would anybody want to see a play about dying? Possibly to understand the process of watching it happen? To prepare ourselves for the inevitable? And, in the case of OnStage Playhouse's Burkie, to experience excellence in theater.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Diary Of Anne Frank, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

There are four versions of Anne Frank's diary. The last incorporates extra notes along with the original, one she edited herself for publication, and one her father Otto edited and made it his life's work to disseminate. His forms the basis for the Hacket couple's script. Writer Cynthia Ozick has been right to question the sentimentality, the toning down of what must have been grittier reality than what appears onstage here. All you see of the Dutch are two brave former employees who help sustain the Franks.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Empty Plate in the Cafe du Grand Boeuf, An
Studio Theater

Like a memorable meal, the play An Empty Plate in the Cafe du Grand Boeuf makes one eager for more. Each course is such a delight that one scarcely knows where to begin. In the first place, it's astonishing that a company such as Bialystock and Bloom could be capable of creating this fragile souffle of a play.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Fiddler On The Roof
Minskoff Theater

Yes, it's good to have this wonderful show back on Broadway. On the other hand (to use Tevye's expression), there are serious casting flaws.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Embedded
Public Theater

In Embedded, written and directed by Tim Robbins, we learn that the media lies to the public and that the government controls the media. Gosh! I never knew that. We also learn that Tim Robbins is a better director than writer. The most interesting part of his show is the projections of dazzling old war films and splay of lights during the scene changes. The rest is simplistic Agit-prop polemic diatribe, mostly declaimed in a Brechtian manner, including masks for Bush's cabinet, but without Brecht's innovative theatrical tangents and delights.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
From Door To Door
Westside Theater - Downstairs

Few themes in playwriting are as reliable as that of parents passing their fears, traits, customs and traditions down to their children. In capable hands, the opportunities for nostalgia and recriminations can be inexhaustible. James Sherman, who showed a sweet knack for Jewish family comedy with his Beau Jest, mines a slightly darker vein in this tale of three women and the choices they made.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Anna in the Tropics
Royale

Anna in The Tropics is about Cuban workers (most of them are also the owners, actually) in a Tampa cigar factory in 1929. A new lector is hired from Cuba, and his job is to read to the workers while they work. His choice of material: "Anna Karenina." Passages from the novel are woven into the play as he reads, and we study the book's effect on the other characters. Of course, life reflects art, and the lector takes up with one of the married women.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
84 Charing Cross Road
Studio Theater

On the eve of St. Valentine's Day, Milwaukee's Chamber Theater dishes up a delightful helping of English trifle in the form of 84, Charing Cross Road. The play is based on the real-life writings of New York scriptwriter Helene Hanff. Its title is based on the address of a London bookseller's shop (more about this below). Charing Cross is something of a signature piece for the company, as it was first performed in 1982. Chamber Theater has revived it several times over the years, always with the same two actors portraying the main characters.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
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
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
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

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