Fault Line - September/October Offering
Fault Line Theater

Debbie Fabiano's eternally yours [sic] explores the accidental deaths of Vincent and Susan Tarezzio (Ted Falagan and Alicia Wright) and their subsequent traditional Italian wake. The stereotypically squabbling couple and their dog Tippy, en route to a vacation destination, are more intent on arguing than watching the road. Micha Hamilton's Mama Tarezzio is right on, an authentic grieving Italian mom. Kevin Hettinger plays brother Dominic, dramatically overbearing and occasionally over projecting. Orrick Smith's off-stage voice booms with authority.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Finding Mother
Theatrx

What if an adoptee, in search of her birth-mother, finds a complete family of eccentrics? Even an embarrassment? Even more? Playwright Stephen Storc asked himself that question and answered it with Finding Mother. Start with Mr. and Mrs. Average American, Jacky and Richard Chandler (Courtney McMillon and Nick Kennedy) and their two average kids, a teenage daughter (Liz Lansing) and preteen son (Steffen Calac). Add Jacky's desire to find her mother.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Front Page, The
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

The Milwaukee Repertory Theater opened its 2001-2002 season with a solid production of the chestnut The Front Page, offering a look back at life in the 1920s. The play is set in the press room of a Chicago criminal courts building. It's late at night, and a cluster of "newspapermen" (women reporters were rare or nonexistent) await a hanging scheduled for the following morning. There's virtually no action in the sleepy first act, so characters have plenty of time to loaf, play cards and muse about life.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Grand Hotel
Signature Theater

Adapted for Signature Theater's intimate performing space by artistic director Eric D. Schaefer, this elegant, mostly well-cast production of Grand Hotel emphasizes relationships of the "ship of fools" docking at the darkly luxurious hotel in 1928 Berlin. Minus the exuberant dancing enlivening the 1989 Broadway adaptation, which under Tommy Tune's direction, garnered five Tony Awards, including Best Choreography, this Grand Hotel compensates with fine singing, ably accompanied by musical director Jon Kalbfleisch and his orchestra.

Barbara Gross
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Guys And Dolls
Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

Opening just two weeks after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Guys and Dolls seems like a New York that's cloaked in a hopelessly innocent time, when the greatest dangers were associated with gambling and alcohol. Oh, for the good old days!

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
First Love
New York Theater Workshop

The premise of Charles Mee's experimental comedy is laudable: compress a lifelong romantic relationship (and, metaphorically, all relationships) into its high and lowpoints -- first meeting, restaurant date, sharing of cultural signposts and sexual appetites, dish-smashing fight, mournful farewells, reunions, and resigned resumptions.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Homecoming
Westside Theater

You could say that Lauren Weedman's one-actor, multi-character, autobiographical, 90-minute play starring herself -- Homecoming - is about her identity crises as a teenager. Adopted as an infant, Lauren lets us know she is growing up rather uneventfully in your conventionally functional middle-American family. Except for grandmother harboring suspicions that she might have been dropped on her head as a newborn, and her condescending older sister Lisa reminding her that she has two moms, the real one and this one, Lauren is otherwise content with her family.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Urinetown
Henry Miller Theater

What's not to like about an entertaining, irreverent musical, performed by a superb singing and dancing ensemble with wonderful comedic gifts, that pokes fun at some of political theater's most enduring and boring pretensions?

Quite a lot, actually.

David Steinhardt
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Adding Machine, The
14th Street Theater

Elmer Rice wrote The Adding Machine in 1923. It was the first American foray into expressionism, and its best scenes successfully Americanize the bleak comedy of Carl Sternheim. It's the story of poor Mr. Zero, a bookkeeper who's replaced by an adding machine. Worse, he's executed for then murdering his boss. Thereafter, we find our hero in the afterlife. Imbued with the American work ethic, he escapes heaven in a panic when he learns that all they do there is enjoy themselves. He elects instead to count, summing up sand and pebbles.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Adding Machine, The
14th Street Theater

If Elmer Rice were writing plays today, he would probably take on the pernicious effects of globalism as applied to the little guy. Writing in 1923, Rice's metaphor for negative changes that new technology brings was the adding machine. In Jonathan Silver's adaptation of The Adding Machine, Mr. Zero (Paul Marcarelli) has been slaving away at a department store for ten years doing exactly the same job: adding sales receipts by hand. Precisely on his anniversary day, his boss (Joshua Dickens) fires him.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Balmoral
Taproot Theater

The special joy of great farce is in watching the precision workings of detailed parts, all functioning in a perfectly tuned, well-oiled machine. In Balmoral, the familiar types and devices of farce are melded to a social and political satire. It begins with the intriguing question, What if the Communist revolution had happened in England rather than Russia? How would a "class-less" utopia look in that most stratified of societies?

Jerry Kraft
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Blood Brothers
Theater Three

Rarely has so much exceptional talent been squandered as that which transpired at Theatre Three's production of Willy Russell's (Shirley Valentine) Blood Brothers. Under the disjointed misdirection of Terry Dobson, three of Dallas' finest divas managed to shine in spite of Dobson's focus totally missing the mark. Liz Mikel was superb as the narrator/seer and handled transitions seamlessly. Her stage presence was commanding, and her powerful voice complemented her actions. Sally Soldo as Mrs.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Chaplin
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

If only The Producers had got their hands on this -- a sort of "Wintertime for Chaplin"! Conceived to be "A Memory as Entertainment," the show presents the developmental stages in Charlie's life (birth, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood) as they took place on theatrical stages (music hall, streets, vaudeville, movie sets). Scenes of his mother's artistic and mental deterioration, his father's drunken demise, his and brother Syd's consignment to workhouse change to ones of searching for love and (more successfully) artistic success and financial security.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
EAT-TV: The Gourmet Musical
Oregon Cabaret Theater

It's perhaps inevitable that the recent uptick in TV cooking shows would result in a musical spoof. But would you expect to find such a show in a remote town in southern Oregon? Well, get your utensils ready and prepare to dig into Eat-TV: A Gourmet Musical. It's playing all summer in a converted church that serves as the resident home of Oregon Cabaret Theater. This homegrown musical is the recipe of Ashland playwright/choreographer Jim Giancarlo, who is also the company's artistic director.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Enter The Guardsman
Oregon Shakespeare Festival

What's this, a musical on the stage of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Bowmer Theater? I mean, real songs, a libretto, people holding hands, looking at one another moon-eyed and singing to one another? Welllll, times and policies do change. And in this case, it's definitely a change that is right on. Enter the Guardsman enters full-voiced, in full costume, and with full humor as the ensemble cavorts outlandishly. Based on Ferenc Molnar's droll and witty play, Guardsman is finely tweaked by writer Scott Wentworth, who has made it ripe for today's audiences.

Steve & Herb Heiman
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Fuddy Meers
Oregon Shakespeare Festival

What kind of a name is "Fuddy Meers," anyway? My computer spell check rejects it over and over (seeking out fuzzy-minded, perhaps?), but after seeing this most unusual drama, comedy, farce, melodrama, slice of dysfunctional family life, I won't reject this most unusual production. On the boards until season's close, Fuddy Meers is a "Swan Song" presentation at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's soon-to-be scrapped Black Swan Theater. But back to the question of what is Fuddy Meers?

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
God's Man In Texas
Florida Studio Theater - mainstage

It's no accident that God's Man in Texas premiered at Actors Theater of Louisville's Humana Festival. Theatrically, it demands dynamic interpreters; FST is blessed with all three. Dramatically, could the title not apply to any of them? At Rock Baptist Church, Dr. Philip Gottschall (sharp-spoken, spiffy William Metzo) stars in pulpit, on TV, and among Houston's power elite as mesmerizing preacher and builder of a mega church cum community.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Hamlet
F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theater

Jared Harris, who is making his New Jersey Shakespeare Festival debut as Hamlet, has a distinct advantage over other actors who have played the coveted role. When he sees the ghost hovering over Elsinore Castle (through the magic of digital wizardry) he recognizes him not only as the father of Hamlet but as his own real life father, the renowned Irish actor Richard Harris.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!
Triad

This musical review based on Allan Sherman's lyrical parodies set to familiar music, welded into a very entertaining pastiche by Rob Krausz and Douglas Bernstein, is now playing at the cabaret space Triad on West 72nd Street. With a lively cast, talented at both singing and comedy, great absurd costumes by Michael Louis and zany staging by Krausz, it's a fun-filled evening.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Arsenic and Old Lace
Utah Shakespearean Festival - Randall L. Jones Theater

Arsenic and Old Lace is kind of an old chestnut, but J. R. Sullivan's farcically savvy direction and the cast's inspired comic performances fill it with exuberant fun. Mortimer (Brian Vaughn) seems the only normal note in a zany family. One of his brothers thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt (Kieran Connolly), and the other is a criminal whose latest face-lift makes him resemble Boris Karloff (David Ivers). His maiden aunts, Abby (Laurie Birmingham) and Martha (Leslie Brott), have developed a unique way of practicing Christian charity.

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Intimate Evening With Sam Harris, An
Arci's Place

Singer/actor Sam Harris scored big on Broadway, earning a Tony nomination for his starring role in the Cy Coleman musical The Life. More recently he won acclaim in the West Coast revival of "Hair." The trim, boyish-looking Harris is scoring big in his debut at Arci's where his friendly demeanor and stand-up comedy-implemented set proves an asset in this intimate room. Dressed in Ninja warrior basic black, Harris has a somewhat retro look that is as disarming as the casual attitude with which he frames his diverse and varied material.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Annie Get Your Gun
Marquis

One of the songs in Irving Berlin's delightful score to Annie Get Your Gun states, "anything you can do, I can do better," and that adage has never been more pertinent to this show's surprising longevity on Broadway. The unflappable lead character, Annie Oakley, has been played by Ethel Merman, Debbie Reynolds, Bernadette Peters, and most recently to reportedly wondrous effect by C&W superstar Reba McEntire.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
1776
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

Recreating the Continental Congress of May through July of the year of its title, a musical centering on debate comes out firmly in the affirmative in a production as warm as summer. So realistically presented are the viewpoints challenging John Adams, we seem to be in the crowded Philadelphia "court" and...is that suspense we feel? Gary Marachek's firm Adams grounds the action with help from Robert Turoff's alternatingly wise and funny ole Ben Franklin.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Absence of a Cello, The
Lamplighters Community Theater

Ira Wallach's The Absence of a Cello explores that special terror of getting hired. Ex-physics professor Andrew Pilgrim (Donal Pugh) is in the interview process. His wife, Celia Pilgrim (Kathy Hardman), a renowned authority in her field, and he quickly learn that deception is the only way to get a job with "Corporate America." In consort with the deception is their daughter, Joanna Pilgrim (Jennifer Cruz), and Andrew's sister, Marian Jellicoe (Jeannine Morton), along with neighbor Emma Littlewood (Lois Corbett) and her grandson, Perry (Jonathan Kabacek).

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Ah, Wilderness!
Utah Shakespearean Festival - Randall L. Jones Theater

The most luminous production at the Utah Shakespearean Festival this season is Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!, a gentle family portrait dramatically different from the tragic depictions he usually penned. Although O'Neill calls the play "a comedy of recollection," wish fulfillment describes it more accurately. This is the family O'Neill would like to have had rather than his dysfunctional real one (indelibly chronicled later in Long Day's Journey Into Night).

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Anything Goes
Derby Dinner Playhouse

What's not to love about Derby Dinner Playhouse's sparkling take on Cole Porter's giddy romantic shipboard musical in which, indeed, Anything Goes? The dazzling music and lyrics by this native son of Peru, Indiana, are excuse enough to brush aside the silly plot and simply revel in the non-stop gorgeous and witty songs: "I Get a Kick Out of You," "You're the Top," "Easy to Love," and "It's De-Lovely," to name just a few.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Blue Window
MCC space

Julia Gibson's remarkable restaging of Craig Lucas's acclaimed 1984 play Blue Window is further evidence that instead of mounting lackluster new plays by such playwrights, maybe we should just relive their older, great ones. In the wake of David Rabe's horrifying The Dog Problem (a real dog if there ever was one on stage), David Mamet's trite The Old Neighborhood, and even Lucas's own misguided folly Stranger recently, we seem to need to be reminded of why we once thought they were great.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Blue Bird, The
Williamstown Theater Festival.

Maurice Maeterlinck was a Belgian, writing in French in the first decade or so of the twentieth century. His work epitomized symbolism. Nonetheless, his The Blue Bird was first produced at that bastion of realism, The Mosow Art Theater, in 1908, directed by Mr. Stanislavski himself. The play's success led to the Nobel for Maeterlink in 1911.

In The Blue Bird, two children set out to find the elusive Blue Bird, with the help of a magic hat that lets them see the souls of all things.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Cirque Plume: Melanges
Big Top in Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center Festival 2001 presented Cirque Plume for its annual foray into noveau cirque.  The group is the oldest one of this kind in France, where the genre originated.  After presenting street theater for a few years, they created their first show in 1984, even before this kind of show had a name.  Melanges (Opera Plume) is part street theater, part mime and part bravura acts with a generous dose of the poetic thrown in.  The overall concept brings a four-member ragtag rock band together with assorted odd types.  A feisty

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Central Avenue
Fountain Theater

Central Avenue was Los Angeles' Beale Street or Bourbon Street, the heartbeat of a black ghetto which thrived from the 20s to the 50s, replete with churches, vaudeville and movie houses, restaurants, nightclubs and after-hours joints.  Anchored by the famous Dunbar Hotel where the likes of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Paul Robeson and W E B DuBois stayed, Central Avenue was passed over by historians and writers until recent years.  Thanks to books by Bettye Cox, Stephen Isoardi, Johnny Otis and Buddy Collette, Central Avenue has finally been paid its due.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Cirque du Soleil - Mystere
Mystere Theater

Las Vegas seems the perfect venue for this colorful, glitzy extravaganza.  Part circus, part theater, and a whole lot of pizzazz -- "Mystere" is a spectacle of sight, sound, and sensation.  It is essentially a series of astonishing feats of physical strength and agility accompanied by spectacular lighting, costumes, and special effects.  The live music adds another dimension, heightening the aura of excitement.  Each of the acts is unique so that it is almost impossible to single one out above any other.  Among these remarkable performances is the balancing act of "Hand to H

Irene Herman
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Dying Gaul, The
Intiman Theater

Stories of how Hollywood corrupts the artistic temperament with its toxic brew of power, money and glamour are hardly new. Playwright Craig Lucas is interested in something more substantial and more interesting than that hackneyed formulation. In The Dying Gaul, he uses a deceptively simple story of one writer's unhappy experience of L.A.-style compromise to examine essential questions of self. It is an exploration of how identity, persona, authenticity, social role-playing, ambition, desire and repression combine to shape and distort the individual.

Jerry Kraft
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Friends And Enemies
Bitter Truth Playhouse

David Silverstein (Andrew Harrison Leeds) is a Jewish kid from Cleveland. Mahmoud Rasmi (Amir Salehi) is a Palestinian kid from Jordan. Both become roommates at George Washington University in Washington DC, as part of an international summer study course. They are each thirteen when the play opens and reach the age of eighteen by play's end. It's almost a too-neat conflict that Heidi Joyce sets up, with the kids standing for symbols of the inability of Arabs and Jews to get along.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
God's Man In Texas
Horse Cave Theater

Since it premiered in 1999 at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, David Rambo's God's Man in Texas has been seen and lauded at seven -- now eight -- other theaters. And 14 more productions are scheduled around the country for this compelling work. Warren Hammack, artistic/producing director at Kentucky's Horse Cave Theater (celebrating its 25th anniversary this year) was acclaimed for his role in the three-man play -- where all three parts are strong ones -- last winter at the Hippodrome State Theaters in Gainesville, Florida.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change
Mary G. Steiner Egyptian Theater

Last summer the Egyptian Theater Company got a great idea: Why not stage a couple of musicals in repertory throughout the summer? That way, short-term visitors would get to enjoy one show, and residents or those who were around longer could see a couple of them. They called the program Summer TheatreFest, and the idea was so popular, this season it returns with two new, quite diverse musicals.

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Julius Caesar
Utah Shakespearean Festival - Adams Shakespearean Theater

Julius Caesar is one of the most disappointing productions to appear at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in recent years. The problems begin with the casting; both Jeff Swarthout (Cassius) and Donald Sage Mackay (Brutus) are poor matches for their roles physically, and Mackay compounds the problem by fashioning such a cold, cerebral Brutus that it's difficult to become involved with him at all. Even his relationship with Portia (Carrie Baker) is so distant and passionless, it's hard to believe they are husband and wife.

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
George Gershwin Alone
Helen Hayes Theater

It's tricky putting someone's life on stage. Especially if they're quite famous, because growling watchdogs of accuracy will leap on your presentation of the facts, which almost always have to be fudged a little for the sake of drama. In the case of George Gershwin Alone, Hershey Felder's solo, 90-minute excursion through the life of the composer of the title, who died at a very young 38, you almost wish there were more created drama.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Last Night Of Ballyhoo, The
Parker Auditorium

In 1996, five years after Alfred Uhry brought the world Driving Miss Daisy, he was commissioned to write a play to coincide with the Olympic Games being held in Atlanta. The Last Night of Ballyhoo went on to win both a Tony and an Outer Critics Circle Award when it premiered on Broadway. The play's theme deals with Jewish anti-Semitism in Atlanta in 1939 -- that is, anti-Semitism practiced by Jews upon other Jews. The script ranges from subtle remarks, easily missed, to sledgehammer attacks.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Last Train to Nibroc
Florida Studio Theater

Meets don't get any cuter. Boy: nice, good looking Raleigh, just medically discharged from the service. Girl: pretty, pageboy-neat and proper Amy, an aspiring Christian missionary. Setting: December 27, 1940, an eastbound train from L.A. carrying the bodies of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathaniel West, famous writers like Raleigh hopes to go to New York to become. Tired and put out from visiting a "changed" fiance and then having a pushy seat partner on a previous train, Amy's wary of sitting by a soldier. Then they find they're from the same area in Kentucky.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
If You Ever Leave Me, I'm Going With You
Cort Theater

Critics have tried time and again to kill old-fashioned, punchline-laden boulevard comedy, but audiences end up having the last laugh—literally. Even the most familiar jokes and situations, if handled snappily, can make for a pleasing night of relaxed entertainment.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
July 2001

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