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Talk about midlife crises! Now that they're happening to early baby boomers, what are they like, and are they typical?
The California desert's answer to both Paris and Las Vegas is The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies, and it is truly fabulous. It is produced with all the spectacle and technical expertise one would expect from a first-class, professional show. This "Follies" is, shall we say, a wee bit different from the offerings in Las Vegas and Paris. The beautiful, leggy, and talented chorines are, shall we say, seasoned pros. The kid in the group is Jill Gordon, 58, with Beverly Allen the matriarch at a mere 84.
What would the holiday season be without its traditions? Milwaukee is luckier than most this holiday season, since it's being honored with a rousing production of Hello, Dolly! Though Dolly's script won't overtax anyone's brain cells, it is a pure delight in the capable hands of Skylight Opera Theater. Chicago-based director Marc Robin chooses to honor tradition, not to tweak it, as one might be tempted to do almost 40 years after the play first opened.
What are they waiting for? The Jackie Wilson Story has been playing to sellout houses since it opened in February 2000, it quickly became the hottest ticket at the 2001 National Black Theater Festival, and every newspaper, magazine, website, radio and TV station in town has caroled the praises of Chester Gregory II's portrayal of the song stylist whose fame and the price of such has served as a cautionary tale for aspiring entertainers to this day.
In this sequel of sorts to his wonderful Freak, John Leguizamo gets his freak on, recalling his sexcapades and relationships with women from childhood to his own recent parenthood. Leguizamo never moves across the stage in the same way twice; he could do the show with laryngitis and still be a riveting stage presence.
The Tale of the Allergist's Wife is a play that refers to many serious ideas without ever once having one of its own. Is that a bad thing? Depends. Do you want to think while at the theater, or would you prefer to pretend you've been thinking? For those who prefer the latter, Tale is ideal. Charles Busch's dialogue is certainly very funny, and Valerie Harper, who hasn't made me laugh since she played Rhoda on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, is sensational. I sat in the very back row of the rear mezzanine, and she sold every punchline with wit and physicality.
Who can knock a gentle, good-natured little musical with a droll sense of humor and a couple of pretty songs? I can, when said musical is more than two and a half hours long, visually boring, drearily inconsequential, and often dull as a dishrag. Certainly dozens of chuckles (though nary a guffaw) pop up in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn's tribute to the P.G.
British humor has always seemed oxymoronic to me, and I am admittedly unacquainted with the works of P.G.Wodehouse about the bumbling, though good-natured, wealthy idler, Bertie Wooster (engagingly played by John Scherer), and his omniscient, manipulative butler, Jeeves (impeccably played by Martin Jarvis). One also cannot avoid the global reputation of Andrew Lloyd Webber, although, in this case, the production is so uncharacteristically undersized, just a few moments into the evening, its creator is soon forgotten.
With a nod to 1950s music and kitsch and a typical array of acrobatics, animals and clown antics, the latest installment of the Big Apple Circus is, while not especially thrilling, still a guaranteed-good- time family night out. Big Apple veteran clown Barry Lubin (as "Grandma") wins our affection as ever, especially with an amusing bit on a stairmaster.
Inspired by the Old Testament "Book of Esther," The Book of Candy is author Susan Dworkin's contemporary spin on the story of Queen Esther, a Jewess, who, in order to save the lives of her people, becomes the anti Semitic King of Persia's most trusted and beloved concubine. If the result, taken from Dworkin's own novel of the same name, is a bit labored and unwieldy, it is also an entertaining and topical consideration of current mores in the light of ancient history and biblical lore.
This is a return engagement for the ultra campy en travestie charade that is once again setting its sights on the presumably responsive gay set. That it will surely fail to humor anyone else on the planet is a major drawback. Perhaps the show's San Francisco admirers, during its six-season run in the 90s, saw something special in this audaciously costumed but mostly poorly-acted parade of famous film stars. The premise, however, has potential.
If the only barbershop quartet lyrics you know are to "Sweet Adeline," get thee over to the cabaret room upstairs at Studio 54 and catch this quartet of drag queens who mix filthy double-entendres, Yiddish quips and audience participation with their eclectic a cappella song stylings. A little of this parody stuff would ordinarily go a long way, and the foursome do overstay their welcome a bit, but their vocal arrangements are rich and intricate, and their rhymes are often fiendishly clever.
You get off the subway in Astoria, Queens, and you enter a world of middle-class, well-kept row-houses as well as lower-middle-class, multi-story walk-ups. There are many tales behind those doors. Playwright David L. Patterson weaves a delightfully humorous yet warm and, occasionally, passionate story with Finger Painting in a Murphy Bed.
Farce is a matter of tastelessness -- jealous if not errant spouses and lovers, as well as outrageous characters giving weight only to trivialities.
If Gauguin goes to New York -- and it has all the makings of doing so--it will require a powerhouse tenor, since only seven of the score's twenty-two songs do not have the title character singing, and composer Grant Robbin is very fond of elongated final notes delivered at soar-to-the-rafters volume.
Following the Brighton Beach trilogy and Lost in Yonkers, it appeared Neil Simon was on the brink of creating a host of mature masterworks. Instead, he's moved backwards, papering over thin material with joke after joke (Laughter on the 23rd Floor) or caught between punchlines to build something more serious but frustratingly contrived (The Dinner Party, Proposals). 45 Seconds From Broadway, however, is the most disappointing to date.
45 Seconds From Broadway is Neil Simon's valentine to the people in the orbit of Broadway, without whom it could not survive, who spin the threads that make up the rich fabric of theater. It is also a love song to that humble, hallowed haven for theater personages, the Edison Cafe, fondly nicknamed the "Polish Tea Room" (a take-off on the flashy Russian Tea Room, where Hollywood types mostly convene).
Elaine Stritch doesn't just work in showbiz, she is showbiz. Now in her seventies, and in a new show highlighting her long, rocky career path from Broadway ingenue to industry survivor, Stritch doesn't pull any punches in relaying how she got where she is right now. And she doesn't apologize for any of it.
Elaine Stritch's gravel-dusted voice bears witness to a lifetime of roaring successes, strange interludes, and hard times. But that voice also provides a stirring and sassy solo tour through this artist's sometimes funny, sometime frenetic, and more-often-than-not frenzied life in the theater. Although the trim and attractive Stritch is ill-served by the foolish-looking black tights that costumer Paul Taxewell has chosen for her to wear throughout the performance, she is otherwise brilliantly served by material she and John Lahr, as co-constructionists, have devised.
Richard Greenberg's latest is a frustratingly elusive comedy, one that tracks two generations of a very Jewish family, the first in 1940s lower Manhattan, the second in 1990s La-La-Land. We're encouraged to play the inter-generational connections game (e.g., how was the sister in act one reflected in the daughter in act two?), but Everett Beekin's two parts really don't connect that well, the focus is often unclear, and the finale feels blah.
If there are skeletons to be found in a family, you can count on Richard Greenberg to exhume them. At least two, of his many excellent plays, Three Days of Rain, and Safe as Houses, are notable for their generation-bridging tremors and traumas. This time Greenberg shows a concern for the fate of a Lower East Side Manhattan Jewish family in the 1940s. If Greenberg makes their present and their future amusing to watch, he also keeps everything else about them obscure and strangely illusive.
Plays in translation are bastard stepchildren of the originals, especially when the version presented is written by someone who cannot, and thus never has, read the original. I don't read Norwegian any more than Jon Robin Baitz does, but I have spent enough time in Norway, with Norwegian friends, and with direct translations of Ibsen plays, to know that Hedda is a peculiarly Norwegian type. (Buy me a drink and I'll tell you about the time, many years ago, when two local amazons abducted me off a railway bridge in Oslo, until they, both in their 20s, learned I was underage.
There's an old saying: "Shoemaker, stick to your last." Remember when Michael Jordan tried to play baseball? Carol Burnett wrote a play (with her daughter), Hollywood Arms, now on Broadway. Sorry. She's a great performer. The acting, by Linda Lavin, Michele Pawk and Frank Wood, is fine, but you also know the one about a silk purse...
Creaky and unfocused, this semi-autobiographical play by Carol Burnett and her late daughter, Carrie Hamilton, has stretches of entertaining humor and believable familial squabbles, but its parade of short scenes and lack of dramatic thrust take their toll early. Not bad (Burnett should definitely write another), just incredibly familiar stuff. Think of it as a weak, third-generation Brighton Beach Memoirs, and then see something else instead.
A trumpet heralds the start of the play. The sound of laughter gives way to dialogue between a man (Bruno Pesenti's sad Pierre) and woman (Catriona Morrison's intense Violaine) counterpointed by choral music. Their faces are lit like apparitions emerging from blackness. The man whispers to us, and music reinforces the theme of suffering with Christ. How leprous he looks! She comes forth, mostly in grey, to introduce her family and the characters of the community.
Two years ago, the intricate beauty of Copenhagen reminded us what a great craftsman Michael Frayn is. Like Alan Ayckbourn on acid (and speed), Noises Off becomes a clockwork comedy machine, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny but mostly awe-inspiring, with the playwright five steps ahead of the audience (who are busy trying to take in five different gags all happening onstage at once). I'm with John Simon that the Broadway revival cast is good, but an all-British ensemble would be better.
Sometimes there's no specific reason why a show doesn't grab an audience, and Thou Shalt Not is a puzzling case in point. Apart from a couple of easily-corrected directorial miscues (like expecting the audience to applaud after a scene of choreographed coitus), there's nothing wrong, per se, with this new musical by David Thompson, Harry Connick, Jr. and director/choreographer Susan Stroman.
In An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein, six actors with range and flair play a series of extremely off-center characters in Silverstein's bizarre, quirky, mostly insightful short plays. It's sometimes outrageous, sometimes overdone, but most of it is lots of fun. Good abstract set by Walt Spangler, good lighting by Robert Perry, zany costumes by Miguel Angel Huidor, and snappy direction by Karen Kohlhaas contribute to an odd but enjoyable evening.
She opened her set with the Cy Coleman/Carolyn Leigh standard "The Best is Yet to Come" and Ann Hampton Callaway, in her debut at Feinstein's at the Regency, was not kidding. Two minutes later, we were getting our kicks as she went bouncing along Bobby Troup's "Route 66." Just as the aforementioned are closely identified with Tony Bennett and Nat King Cole, respectively, so are the rest of the tunes Callaway has chosen identified as "signature" songs for some of the greatest jazz and pop vocalists of our time.
What a fabulous idea: Londoner Dave Gorman got it into his head to meet as many other Dave Gormans as he possibly could -- even if it meant flying to New Zealand, Italy, the South of France or wherever else to meet them. In his genial solo, Gorman tracks his encounters, furnishing snapshots and tape recordings as proof. At first it's amusing how he charts the miles traveled against the number of meetings to come up with a graph of an ideal ratio -- 400-500 mpdg (miles-per-dave-gorman).
Now that we've all had our fill of critics telling us "what we need right now" (one would hope), I'm going to come right out and say what we don't need: lackluster Broadway shows that have found residence on the Great White Way out of a desire to fulfill audiences' cravings for frivolity, an excuse to suck away two hours or more of time and be convinced they're doing some good to the theater community. By Jeeves could the most odious example yet.
Nearly 20 years ago, Buried Child took America by storm. Playwright Sam ShepardÆs fresh voice was an energizing wake-up call for theater audiences. Buried Child is one of several plays Shepard wrote about the American family during this period. It is an allegorical play, full of raw energy, tension and surreal elements. Filled with contradictions, strange behaviors and a shocking secret, it entranced audiences and won the Pulitzer Prize. So how does it hold up?
Blind boy seeking an independent life meets scared-of-commitment hippie girl. The result makes for a sweet little play, a coming-of-age story with a twist. Don Baker (cute Jeff Sargent, convincingly sightless), in his 20s, has left his Scarsdale home and overly protective mother after an almost affair with his music teacher. In center city, next door to Don in what's described as an equally dreary but less neatly-appointed apartment resides eager-beaver Jill, 19. Married for six days three years previously, she's had numerous affairs since.
If my complete delight and absorption in the lives and times of those three gutsy women and one man who light up Bunbury Theater's production of Ivan Menchell's The Cemetery Club mark me as a soft hearted old codger, so be it. No apologies! Director Juergen K. Tossmann, Bunbury's producing/artistic director, has assembled a dream cast for this touching and humorous look at three middle-aged Jewish widows from Forest Hills in Queens, New York, who once a month go to the graves of their husbands to talk to them and kibitz.
Washington, D.C.-based actress Holly Twyford makes her Milwaukee debut in Lee Blessing's Chesapeake, the fall season opener for Renaissance Theaterworks. Her performance is absolutely outstanding. Since she's the entire show in this one-actor production, it puts Chesapeake at the top of the "don't miss" category for the current season. Director Joe Banno also directed Twyford in the Washington production of this play, and he works his magic to excellent effect at the Off-Broadway Theater.
The mass hysteria the Salem witch-hunt provoked in the 17th century was no more or less insidious an epidemic than the one McCarthyism fostered during the 1950s. America need never forget the political, moral and ethical issues on trial, in either century, thanks to Arthur Miller's arresting drama of intolerance The Crucible. It is the play he wrote specifically to denounce the too-often-rampant inequities of so-called justice.
Entering Poway Performing Arts Company's home, it's apparent this will be a different kind of theater experience. Mounted animal heads, antlers, Texas memorabilia, and much more adorn the walls and lobby. A second clue of things to come is the pre-show music. It's been a long time since I've seen an audience listening and reacting to pre-show and between-scene music. Sound Designer Lou Alliano's selection of country tunes enhance the jocular mood of the evening. The John Ivey set, dressed by Camel, Inc., has the perfect feel of a large country farmhouse.
Think of Edgar and Alice as the Swedish Al and Peg Bundy, trading barbs and dirty tricks up until the very last moment when they realize that despite everything, they can't live without each other. By treating August Strindberg's play more as wickedly dark comedy than viciously Bergmanesque drama, director Sean Mathias gives the estimable Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren much to play with, even if they can't quite make the underplotted, repetitious first act and occasionally off-the-wall second act turn into some kind of powerful statement about codependency.
In a perfect world, all musical comedies would begin with a song like "Comedy Tonight" (second choice, "Another Opening, Another Show"). And they'd all be performed in big-stage, small-house spaces like that at Stage Right, where the increased suspension of disbelief demanded by close-up viewing is more than redeemed by the infectious excitement traversing ]the fourth wall at such close range.
Vampyre Rebellion II and Vampyre Extinction by Ted Falagan open and close this year's Halloween collection from The Fault Line Players. Vampyre Rebellion II finds Hollis (Ted Falagan), an ongoing character, in his continuing search to destroy evil. Falagan, the playwright, balances humor and drama cohesively, as usual including a double-double cross, as well as fun and fisticuffs. Vampyre Extinction pits Hollis (yes, back again) against the evil Christophe (John Byrom) and Porsche (Bari Goldman).
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