I Do! I Do!
Patio Playhouse

I Do! I Do! is, like Love Letters, a very personal experience. Each production takes on much of the personality, and interpretation, of the players and director. Patio Playhouse's current production is under the directorial leadership of Jay Mower and stars recent newlyweds Cheryl and Sam Warner. Add choreographer Kathleen "Kat" Perhach, music director Marianne Kripps, and the talents of accompanist Dylan Snodgrass, and Patio has a winner.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Hedda Gabler
Ambassador Theater

Everybody's favorite female monster is back on Broadway in a new translation by Jon Robin Baitz (Three Hotels), and none other than Richard Burton's capable daughter Kate playing the lead role. One of the unlikeliest of Broadway offerings, this Hedda Gabler is much like the bold, reptilian woman who bears the name: crafty and admirable but chilly and distant, making this well-mounted affair ultimately an exercise in futility.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Hedda Gabler
Ambassador Theater

I've never understood why Hedda Gabler is considered one of the most interesting and complicated heroines in dramatic literature. She always comes off as a capricious, cruel viper without being decent enough to evoke sympathy or vivid enough to cast an Iago-like fascination. Nicholas Martin's current Broadway revival of Ibsen's drama, while solid and lively, does little to make the play a grabber for our times.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Hedda Gabler
Ambassador Theater

The current production of Hedda Gabler, in a lively adaptation by Jon Robin Baitz, is a peculiar mixture: the play, as usual, starts off with so much exposition that it tends to bore. Then a gushing, very fey, Michael Emerson bursts in as Tesman, a mode he retains throughout the play, tilting all in a novel direction.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Mamma Mia!
Winter Garden Theater

There's no getting around that Mamma Mia! is -- as a friend who used to denigrate commercial Broadway product once put it -- crap.There's no defending it on artistic or intellectual grounds. It's a loud, glitzy excuse to shoehorn a bunch of ABBA songs into a ridiculous plot. Like so many new Broadway musicals, the show overwhelms the audience with volume, assuming that decibels will murder dissent. But is Mamma Mia! hateful? Far from it. The writers and performers are, if nothing else, cheerily blatant about the show's dumbness.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Mamma Mia!
Winter Garden Theater

I would give totally different reviews to the two halves of Mamma Mia!. Act One is sweet trivia of no consequence, with a couple of cute songs and some oldies but goodies that work fine. But the enthusiasm on the stage doesn't quite conquer the inane dialogue and foolish plot to reach the audience. The not-very-imaginative choreography is all right on the beat, with most people doing exactly the same thing at the same time. The costumes are a mish-mash of decades.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Noises Off
Brooks Atkinson Theater

Michael Frayn's Tony-winning play Copenhagen, which concentrated on the meeting of two scholars commiserating over atomic theory, left me colder than a blizzard breeze in Niagara Falls in January. Many adored this brainy, ultra-serious account of science versus intellect, but I likened it to a lecture by a brilliant professor who knew little of the ways of the human heart. The show was a surprise hit, though I suspect many patrons went along with it while secretly wishing they were having more fun elsewhere.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Urinetown
Henry Miller Theater

A one-joke musical it may be, but Urinetown has so much fun with the joke, not to mention so many other well-aimed satirical and sociological barbs, the overall effect is of something as fresh and urgent as it is laugh-getting. The Brecht-Weill-style tunes click, the lyrics tickle, and the supporting cast (especially Spencer Kayden as a little twerp and Ken Jennings as a Fosse-posed psycho) is a hoot and then some. A dash of second-act cynicism hampers some of the fun, but that's only because the authors really do have the courage of their convictions.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Abarcas del Tiempo, Las

see review(s) under "Las Barcas del Tiempo" in Criticopia.

Always...Patsy Cline
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

If you like country music, this "Patsy Cline song revue" is for you. And if you like pop music but think you don't like "country," this revue may make you think again. After all, Cline was a pioneer crossover songstress. She nuked the "sub" in a subgenre, her songs surfing into traditionally country waves such as "Honky Tonk Merry Go Round" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on to sophisticated ballads like "You Belong to Me" and "True Love." They're among two dozen numbers well paced and distinctively rendered by Kyle Ennis Turoff as Patsy Cline.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Agamemnon and His Daughters
Arena Stage

Arena Stage's contribution to the "Greek Invasion" during this season of the classics in Washington, D.C., is the world premiere of an intriguing Agamemnon and His Daughters. Kenneth Cavender provides a colloquial and intelligible adaptation of six plays by Euripides, Aischylos, and Sophokles (the program utilizes the Greek spellings) into a marathon three hours of theater.

Barbara Gross
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
As Bees in Honey Drown
Pilsen Theater

You can't cheat an honest citizen, and whether to remind audiences of that fact shapes productions of Douglas Carter Beane's cautionary tale about a con artist on the loose in fashionable boho circles. Most theaters play it safe, making the prey a calf-eyed innocent, the predator a giddy young gamine on a fling and their encounter something that could only happen in the never-never-land of New York City. Cenacle Theater director David Hart Waggoner, unafraid to put an edge on the satire, has instructed his actors accordingly.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Blue
Gramercy Theater

Phylicia Rashad makes a triumphant return to the stage in Blue, a breezy, wonderfully pleasing new work by Charles Randolph-Wright. Seeing how effortlessly she commands the stage, you wonder why she isn't on one more often. Best known as Claire Huxtable on the wildly popular "Cosby" shows, Rashad seems born to the stage, with her unmistakable presence and quiet gravity.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Bee-Luther-Hatchee
Off Broadway Theater

Next Act Theater opens its 12th season in Milwaukee with a provocative new work, Bee-Luther-Hatchee. It's clear why this play appealed to Next Act, a company that often delves into issues of gender, race and family relationships. In Bee-Luther-Hatchee, Shelita Burns, a young African-American woman, publishes the memoirs of Libby Price, a 72-year-old first-time author. The book, "Bee-Luther-Hatchee," tells of Libby's life in the South.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
California Suite
Coronado Playhouse

Coronado Community Theater's current offering is California Suite, New Yorker Neil Simon's not-always-subtle slap at Californians' life style. This 1976 classic refuses to age; it is still a delightful mixture of humor and drama as five couples, in four short plays, occupy a suite in Beverly Hills.

Hanna and Bill Warren (Allison Evans and Dave Rivas) are a long-time divorced, bi-coastal couple trying to determine the residency of their late teen daughter. Evans is a stereotypical New York power executive.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Chorus Line, A
Paper Mill Playhouse

It has been ten years since the Paper Mill Playhouse last staged A Chorus Line. That we can still feel responsive to the passionately shared personal life stories of dancers says something about the durability of one of the most emotional musicals you are ever likely to see. For those not in tune with the difficulties that mark the life of the gypsy, the musical will feel like a music and dance-propelled, group therapy session.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Danny And Sylvia: A Musical Love Story
American Century Theater

Every celebrity should be so lucky as to have his biography written if not by his mother, then by his publicist. Danny Kaye, entertainer extraordinaire, lucks out in "Danny and Sylvia: A Musical Love Story," with lyrics provided by Bob McElwaine, who between 1953-59 served as Kaye's personal manager, confidante and publicist. (McElwaine's previous theatrical credits include a commission to musicalize Herman Wouk's "Marjorie Morningstar," which effort was subsequently vetoed for production by the novelist.

Barbara Gross
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
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

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