Imaginary Friends
Ethel Barrymore Theater

Imaginary Friends by Nora Ephron is an odd, experimental play -- two famous writers, Lillian Hellman (Swoosie Kurtz) and Mary McCarthy (Cherry Jones), in a fantasy that works theatrically. The women are great foils for each other as they literarily and theatrically jab enmity back and forth. There is great style in the play's inventiveness, although the verbal encounters are a tad over-written.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Imaginary Friends
Ethel Barrymore Theater

When Lillian Hellman reached the pinnacle of her second career, switching from the stage to personal memoirs, the esteemed novelist/essayist/critic Mary McCarthy had the temerity to attack the grand dame. "Every word she writes is a lie," she smiled, guesting on The Dick Cavett Show, "including 'and' and "the.'" Hellman, catching the nationwide telecast, responded swiftly, slapping McCarthy with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit calculated to financially crush her detractor.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Metamorphoses
Circle in the Square

This Chicago import from Lookingglass Theater Company made a big splash last March when it opened at Circle in the Square, my favorite Broadway venue. About a dozen of the fabulous myths narrated by the great Roman poet Ovid are retold around and inside a spacious pool of water. The medium is perfect for simulating the mutability of mortals who become playthings of the gods. Trouble is, the Lookingglass gloss on Metamorphoses strips away the sensuality and the wit of Ovid, overlaying a mocking comedy of its own.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Hank Williams: Lost Highway
Manhattan Ensemble Theater

You go to a play called Hank Williams: Lost Highway for the music of the legendary singer, and your favorites are all there, played live by a dynamite country band, in the production now at the Manhattan Ensemble Theater. It's all framed in a bio-entertainment that is pure bio-charm. It's a good dramatic play as well about the self-destructive life of Williams, with a fine cast, all first rate musicians, led by Jason Petty as the singer/songwriter in a recreation that is almost a reincarnation.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Say Goodnight Gracie
Helen Hayes Theater

Frank Gorshin has an impressive arsenal at his disposal as he engagingly recounts the century-long odyssey of George Burns, who rose to stardom from humble beginnings as Nathan Birnbaum in the Lower East Side. There are antique photos of the hood projected behind Gorshin onstage, followed by authentic movie and TV clips. Simulations of old Burns & Allen radio shows, recorded with Didi Conn, seem to emanate on cue from an ancient Philco.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Tartuffe
American Airlines Theater

From director Joe Dowling comes a misfired Moliere that points up Tartuffe's structural weakness: all of the first half centers on papa Orgon refusing to listen to anyone. If he would just shut up for thirty seconds, there'd be no play. This leads to some labored, even annoying patches, especially with an uneven cast trying to put this Roundabout mounting over. Brian Bedford's always a pro but he feels a bit by-the-numbers here; Henry Goodman makes an interestingly earthy, almost Shylockish title character - I'd like to see his Tartuffe in a better production.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Tartuffe
American Airlines Theater

Moliere's Tartuffe, now at the American Airlines Theater, is a great contemporary production of a 340-year-old play in a marvelous rhymed translation by Richard Wilbur. It's played against a somewhat ponderous period set by John Lee Beatty, with super costumes by Jane Greenwood which amplify with wit the characters' foibles. The first-rate cast includes Henry Goodman as the loathsome, slimy Tartuffe -- Goodman gives good loath and marvelous slime -- his eyes sparkle with glee in his villainy.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Thoroughly Modern Millie
Marquis Theater

The Tony-Award exploits of Sutton Foster are still on view in the title role of Thoroughly Modern Millie, more than sufficient reason to take advantage of "Season of Savings" discounts available at 1-800-ILOVENY and ilovenytheater.com. This budding superstar belts, taps and charms with the best of them. And the award-winning villainess, Harriet Harris, is still stopping the show with her dragon-lady shtick as Mrs. Meers.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Bartenders
John Houseman Theater

Bartending is a classic, noble profession. You have to be everyone in one day to all strangers, you have to make everyone feel at home, welcoming and attentive, and knowledgeable and smart and fast. So says Louis Mustillo in his revelatory opus on the minds and hearts of bartenders he's known and loved.

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Adult Entertainment
Variety Arts Theater

Adult Entertainment is Elaine May's hilarious spoof on the porno industry and Robin Byrd's TV show, the morons involved in it, and what happens when they start to read books and plays. It's written in May's unique comic voice, and her daughter, Jeannie Berlin, has the great dead-pan delivery of her mother. We start with comedy and segue into real humor as the porn stars delve into literature.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Amorous Ambassador, The
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

American Ambassador to England Harry Douglas (gleaming-eyed Don Walker) wants to use his weekend country home to rendevous with sexy neighbor Marian (sophisticated Alison Dietz) while his wife Lois (Jenny Aldrich, so lovely you wonder why her hubbie would stray) visits a spa. Little does amorous Harry know, when he solicits butler Perkins (Ron Halvorsen, veddy proper) to be "the soul of discretion," that Perkins has just made the same promise to Debbie Douglas.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Boston Marriage
Public Theater

A note on the just-closed Boston Marriage by David Mamet: This attempt at a 19th-Century comedy of manners dotted with deliberate anachronisms is Mamet's shot at Wilde, and it wildly misses. Occasional humorous quip aside, this style experiment falls short, as does the acting of Kate Burton. She says all the lines quite clearly, but her foil, Martha Plimpton, does better (the latter also has an inner life for her character).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Blue Room, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

What made Arthur Schnitzler's 1896-97 (not staged until 1921) round of sexual sketches history-making were its explicitness and dramatizations of Freudian findings. With his updated full circle of couplings, moved from Vienna to New York, David Hare says nothing new about their psychology or any other phase of the human condition. Nor does he shock. About all I can figure of the play's box office success in NYC and London is that audiences wanted a glimpse of Nicole Kidman nude.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Christmas Carol, A
Goodman Theater

With Kate Buckley, the director of Among The Thugs and A Few Good Men, at the helm of this year's Christmas Carol, audiences might have anticipated the Cratchit children marching through the streets of London on a rampage. Most noticeable about Buckley's interpretation, however, is its singularly un-violent nature. Gone are the searing images and volatile emotions associated with the Henry Godinez Carol of recent years, replaced in this 25th anniversary production by a more even-tempered verging-on-bland ambiance.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Christmas Schooner, The
Bailiwick Arts Center

Despite its overwhelming commercial success since premiering in 1995, the question of whether The Christmas Schooner is to be a solemn historical pageant or a razzle-dazzle musical has made for an uneven progression in its development. But Phil Gigante recognizes the fundamental task of a director is to make everything look like it belongs on the same stage and has assembled a meticulously-integrated show, playful without being cloying, with carefully-crafted personalities and stage business rooted therein assigned each last chorus member.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Crowns
Second Stage Theater

Crowns is an exhilarating evening of music and message. Emblazoned around the edge of the proscenium is the following credo: "OUR CROWNS HAVE BEEN BOUGHT AND PAID FOR: ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS WEAR THEM." The "crowns" are hats that the women in this all-black cast wear with pride, dignity, steely determination and a healthy dose of pure vanity! Through them, an entire culture is revealed, as is the psyche of the women wearing them. "We are queens and these are our crowns" they proudly state.

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Dance of the Vampires
Minskoff Theater

New York audiences and press have been unkind to gothic rock and roll spoofs, from goofy sleepers like Zombie Prom and Zombies from the Beyond to the truly zany Bat Boy. That's not likely to change with Dance of the Vampires, a gigantic cauldron of puns, kitsch, heavy satire, and shameless Mel Brooksian mugging that would be a lot more fun were it not so long and so aggravatingly LOUD (even non-musical dialogue is miked at teeth-rattling levels).

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Def Poetry Jam On Broadway
Longacre Theater

They're young, they're vibrant, they're full of words and ideas, and, for the most part, they're a treat to watch as they share their thoughts about food, sex, womanhood, machismo and race. Considering that Def Poetry Jam is a Broadway show, the level of anger expressed at the American government's policies is also heartening, if occasionally misplaced or put in far too black-vs.-white terms.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Def Poetry Jam On Broadway
Longacre Theater

The first thing I knew I had to do before I went to Def Poetry Jam was to try and put out of my head whatever pre-conceived notions and prejudices I have about the current street culture, how it does nothing for me and why it doesn't speak to me, including hip-hop music and rap. (I do remember when rap used to be called patter and Gilbert and Sullivan had the market.) So I was completely unprepared for the exhilarating experience I ended up having courtesy of hip-hop mogul/entrepreneur Russell Simmons and his collaborator and director, Stan Lathan.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Fourth Wall, The
Primary Stages

A.R. Gurney stretches his wings by satirizing the kind of brittle, WASPy drawing room comedies by which he earns his keep. The premise - that a white suburban woman (Sandy Duncan) keeps a wall of her living room blank to represent the world "out there" -- is a tad flimsy for ninety minutes, but Gurney fills the evening out by spoofing the conventions of playwriting, the expectations of audiences, and the socially-constructed fallacy of American hegemony. And, yes, the laughs are there.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
La Boheme
Broadway Theater

The only thing "radical" (and, to my mind, objectionable) about Baz Luhrmann's production of La Boheme, which is re-set in mid-1950s Paris, is that he gets a little cute with the subtitles, both in modernizing the slang and in using kooky fonts for emphasis. Otherwise, it's a tasteful and emotionally faithful mounting of Puccini's opera, boasting a ravishingly beautiful mise-en-scene for the cafe scene and a group of appealing performers.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
La Boheme
Broadway Theater

Those expecting more of the brilliantly colored, feverishly paced phantasmagoria that Australian director Baz Luhrmann and his designer wife Catherine Martin created for their movie musical, "Moulin Rouge," are in for a big let down. This bare-bones, shadowy production, far from glitzy, is downright gloomy. A huge neon sign, L'Amour, embellishing a Parisian rooftop is the only element Moulin Rouge-ish. The rest of the set, as designed by Ms. Martin and barely lit by Nigel Levings, is subdued and depressingly colorless.

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
La Boheme
Broadway Theater

Baz Luhrmann's brilliant production of La Boheme by Puccini, set in 1967, is a truly spectacular spectacle. The inspired design by Catherine Martin and lighting by Nigel Levings take the physical production of opera into a new, flashy, eye-filling dimension. The beautiful young people in the show, with their magnificent voices, make this powerfully-directed opera, with exciting, imaginative physical action in the staging, a great theatrical experience.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Man of La Mancha
Martin Beck Theater

In times of great woe, there's something about Man of La Mancha both reassuring and sad; reassuring because the musical, even more than the picaresque book, calls for courtesy, nobility and personal freedom as antidotes to a hostile environment. The unhappy part is that doddering Don Quixote's delusions cause as much harm as help -- as do so many well-meaning idealists.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Man of La Mancha
Martin Beck Theater

Man of La Mancha remains an inspiring musical for all time. This production, with a magnificent, ponderous yet airy expressionistic set by Paul Brown and magical lighting by Paul Gallo, starts with acting on the level of Children's Theater, with lines declaimed. Pretty dull, until a bit of theatrical magic when they create horses out of scraps, Brian Stokes Mitchell opens up his pipes, and it's a musical!

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Medea
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Well, it sure isn't boring, though in the first ten minutes, with the female chorus yapping away incoherently, this Deborah Warner-directed Medea is damned annoying. And then Fiona Shaw arrives, a truly fascinating actress who manages to be simultaneously mannered yet mercurial. It's as if Warner told her to find specific gestures for every line of dialogue--and then kept every one of them in the show.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Medea
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Fiona Shaw's performance in the title role is the talk of Broadway, the surest Tony Award up there. With a new translation of the venerable Euripides text by Kenneth McLeish and Frederic Raphael and a radically fresh vision of the tragedy by director Deborah Warner, this is not the majestic termagant Medea of old. The murderous mom has been transplanted to the modern world and deposited in a curiously imposing villa with a plexiglass facade.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Hank Williams: Lost Highway
Manhattan Ensemble Theater

Country & Western star Hank Williams, one of our country's most dynamic and influential singer/songwriters, established his reputation and influence in only five years. He cut his first single, "Move It On Over," in 1946, at the age of 23, had his first of many hits "Lovesick Blues" and his spectacular Grand Ole Opry debut two years later. Death claimed him, the victim of painkillers and alcohol, in the back seat of his car en route to a concert New Year's Eve, at the age of 29.

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
December 2002
Amour
Music Box

Amour reached Broadway in September 2002 and closed a month later. It was the first Broadway musical to come from Michel LeGrand, the tunesmith who gave us such terrific songs as "I Will Wait For You" and "What are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?," as well as the film scores to "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and "Yentl." With a cast of nine and a four-piece orchestra, it was a slight, through-sung musical, running ninety minutes and drawing its flavor from the opera bouffe.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Acts of Providence
Sande Shurin Theater

Acts of Providence, two one acts by Edward Allen Baker, a strong writer with a good ear, is an intriguing evening of theater. The first play, Jane's Exchange, sets up a fascinating mystery about the relationships among four people in the kitchen of a bakery. The four actors, Amorika Amoroso, Joe Capozzi, Julie Karlin and the scintillating Tonya Cornelisse fulfill their roles perfectly, and Russell Treyz directs this engaging, fully satisfying piece with verve.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Annie
Paper Mill Playhouse

Leapin' Lizards! Can it really be time for another revival of Annie? The Paper Mill is reminding us that this is the musical's 25th anniversary. Although it seems like yesterday, it has been 19 years since the Paper Mill last staged the musical that ran five-and-a-half years on Broadway.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Betty Rules: The Exception to the Musical
Zipper Theater

Girls with electric guitars - even after Chrissie Hynde, Heart, the Bangles, etc. - it's still a relatively rare and empowering sight. So when Elizabeth Ziff cranks up her Gibson and giraffe-like Alyson Palmer thumps her thumb to the bass, there's a gusto and freedom present that goes beyond just the basic energy you get from hearing rock and roll. BETTY Rules follows the 17- year history of the New York trio, sisters Elizabeth and Amy and their partner in harmony, Alyson.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Book of Days
Signature Theater Company at Peter Norton Space

Lanford Wilson's best play in ages makes you feel like he's picked up a rock in Our Town and looked for what crawleth underneath. Dublin, Missouri seems like an idyllic American town, with good Christian folk going about their business, which includes tolerating the local theatrical production of Saint Joan and rooting for the son of the town's most successful businessman, a cheese maker, to make something of himself.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Celebration
Patio Playhouse

A "Celebration" it is not! Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt gave their audiences the longest-running production in New York, The Fantasticks. Celebration did not fare so well. One member of the audience at Patio Playhouse summed it up: This must have been during their dirty old men years.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Chicago
Cabot Theater - Broadway Theater Center

Wouldn'tcha know? Just as the first snowflakes settle on Milwaukee, along comes a blazing hot musical to warm things up.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Dirty Blonde
George Street Playhouse

Who could imagine that two misfit singles, who meet at Mae West's mausoleum in Queens, might build a future together? Claudia Shear, the actor-author of the hit one-woman autobiographical play Blown Sideways Through Life and co-author James Lapine did imagine just that and came up with a lovely play that many considered (including myself) the best new play to hit town in 2000. It uses an unlikely yearly pilgrimage on Mae West's birthday as the catalyst for an endearing romance, with a little biography of West woven through it.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Debbie Does Dallas
Jane Street Theater

Debbie Does Dallas is hilarious. The satirical little musical at the Jane Street Theater about five nitwit cheerleaders, led by Debbie, who want to go to Dallas to cheer for the Dallas Cowboys, is entertaining from start to finish. It has the funniest choreography in town, by Jennifer Cody, marvelous idiotic performances by the girls, who never cross the line into actual pornography, fine comic support by the three men who play many roles, and some of the most brilliant comic timing and direction in town by Erica Schmidt.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Movin' Out
Richard Rodgers Theater

Moving perilously close to Billy Joel-meets-The IceCapades, the all-dance musical Movin' Out wants to use Joel's tunes to tell the story of America's loss of innocence from the 1950s to the 80s. But the results, in the hands of accomplished but repetitive director/choreographer Twyla Tharp, dwell too often on dances of youthful courtship and only come to life in scenes where the Vietnam War and its psychological aftermath affect the characters.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Movin' Out
Richard Rodgers Theater

With the emphasis on "movin", let it be understood that this is a dance production, a modern ballet, not a Broadway musical or even a dansical, and it doubles as a Billy Joel concert.

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Amour
Music Box

Amour is closing, and too bad. It's a unique, original, entertaining romantic fantasy about a shy young man who can walk thru walls and the woman he loves from a distance, with some of the cleverest lyrics in town by Dieter van Cauwelaert, translated by Jeremy Sams, fine tunes by Michel Legrand and brilliant vocal arrangements by Todd Ellison. Some songs are Gilbert and Sullivanesque, some are Dr. Seuss. Direction by James Lapine is brisk, bright, imaginative.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2002

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