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
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
Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine
City Center - Stage I

I can't wait for the movie version of Warren Leight's Side Man. Many plays make for very awkward, stagy films, but Leight's wonderful ode to jazz musicians and their tumultuous offstage lives, I think, will translate beautifully. It seems that way because Leight writes his characters not unlike the 1950s heyday of the motion picture, where actors were given great dialogue that seemed a little larger than life but true to their natures, not to mention that it was great to listen to from an audience perspective.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Major Barbara
American Airlines Theater

Capable mounting of G.B. Shaw warhorse, as usual proving that the playwright can be astonishingly brilliant yet still anemic when it comes to flesh-and-blood drama. Playing the title, Cherry Jones does her patented Cherry Jones; it's more fun to watch David Warner's matter-of-fact Undershaft, Dana Ivey's snappy matriarch and Zak Orth as mama's boy Stephen.

The trouble with Major Barbara is that it hits its dramatic height in scene two (at the Salvation Army) and becomes little more than a verbal tennis match after that.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Thousand Clowns, A
Longacre Theater

If nothing else, this revival of Herb Gardner's modern classic erases the bad taste left by the sour Judd Hirsch revival a few years back. Iconoclastic Murray has become sympathetic again, and for once we really understand why his well-paid job writing for a children's TV show has become an unendurable nightmare. Helping are fine supporting performances from Robert LuPone, Mark Blum, and especially Bradford Cover, who imbues the thankless role of social worker Albert with pathos and confusion.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
15 Minute Play Festival, The
Bunbury Theater

Bunbury Theater's current offering of six 15-minute plays in celebration of its 15 years entertaining Louisville audiences turns out to be one of its finest -- a real treat to mark the occasion. Entries were submitted from all over the country, and the excellence of the final choices would seem to indicate that overall quality was high, indeed.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Among the Thugs
Goodman Theater

When American journalist Bill Buford set out to explore the roots of the violent behavior exhibited by British soccer fans, he never thought his report would contradict all the common theories regarding working-class hostility and economic disenfranchisement.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Blur
Manhattan Theater Club: Stage II

Quite possibly the worst production to grace the usually strong stages of Manhattan Theater Club, Melanie Marnich's Blur couldn't possibly be more like its title. Hazy, plodding and lacking any genuine emotion, this production (helmed by MTC artistic director Lynne Meadow), chronicling the regressive eyesight of a LOA (Leber's Optic Atrophy) patient, shows a lack of eyesight on the part of its makers as well, turning a potentially interesting, loopy play into a "what-are-they-thinking?" spasmodic mess.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Book Of Liz, The
Greenwich Street

I don't agree with a friend who thinks that Comedy Central's wacked-out sitcom "Strangers With Candy" is the best thing on television, but I can certainly see why he would think so. It is a comic program that is truly, genuinely odd and operates on such gonzo logic, it becomes addicting. You just can't wait to see what weirdo will pop up next and what he'll say, and the show's refreshing bravado is appreciated in this age of sanitized blurs mistaken for ace comedy.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Butterfly Dreams
Bank Street Theater

The best stories of all are the ones that teach us something, still better if they are true. This Chinese tale is based on the life of Zhuang Zhou, noted philosopher of the Confucian school. He absented himself from society for long periods to continue his quest for wisdom (Tao). Even coming closer to his goal did not prevent him from misjudging human nature.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Beard Of Avon, The
South Coast Repertory

Amy Freed's contribution to the "who wrote Shakespeare" controversy is a sometimes sharp and witty, sometimes dubious and too-cute comedy that receives an A-level production at its SCR world premiere. Sparkling performances by Mark Harelik (as Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford), Douglas Weston (as Shakespeare) and Nike Doukas (as Queen Elizabeth) help lift the text and make it fly, though not without much flapping of wings.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Beauty And The Beast
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

Technical wizardry and scenic design dominate the current production of Beauty and the Beast, which is now making its initial Milwaukee appearance. The Disney musical made its Wisconsin debut in Green Bay about a year ago, and it also has played in nearby Chicago. Of course, the Broadway production is still going strong in its fifth year. That longevity says a lot about the Disney mystique, which has turned a simple fable into a slick, well-paced and dazzling theatrical production.
 

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Beehive: The 60s Musical
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 that this season it returns with two new, quite diverse musicals.

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Body of Bourne, The
Summer Cabaret At Yale

The brief but incandescent and courageous life of Randolph Bourne is re created in The Body of Bourne, a play by John Belluso now in its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum. Developed in the Other Voices Project, the Taper's workshop for disabled theater artists, Bourne deals with a severely handicapped man who by dint of intellect and charisma overcame his limitations to become one of America's boldest and bravest intellectuals.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Body of Bourne, The
Mark Taper Forum

The brief but incandescent and courageous life of Randolph Bourne is re created in The Body of Bourne, a play by John Belluso now in its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum. Developed in the Other Voices Project, the Taper's workshop for disabled theater artists, Bourne deals with a severely handicapped man who by dint of intellect and charisma overcame his limitations to become one of America's boldest and bravest intellectuals.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Candida and her Friends
Theater For The New City

A college professor (Brian Runbeck) is about to have his comfortable worldview upset.  He accepts an invitation to visit a former student, Candida (Caroline Strong), but instead finds she has become a siren with a live-in transvestite "slave" Rudolph (Neil Levine).  Candida peppers her reminiscences about the Italian classes she attended nine years previous with Latin sayings and suggestive remarks.  Her offer of a fun time in the bedroom prompts the professor's hasty retreat.  As he muses in his office over this episode, another former student appears. 

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Compania
Teatro La Tea at Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center

Quick mood shifts, absurd happenings and unexpected consequences -- this is Eduardo Rovner's fast-paced comedy. Since its premiere in 1995 Compania has been widely performed throughout Latin America and Spain, but incredibly this is its first appearance on New York stages.  The tranquility (and boredom) that empty nesters Ana and Osvaldo enjoy is broken when he returns late one evening.  It seems he has met a woman, Magda. Too excited to notice Ana's increasing unease, Osvaldo tracks his adventure from glances to hand holding to renting a hotel room.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Charlie Victor Romeo
MacGowan Little Theater

Man vs. Machine is the theme of NYC-based Collective Unconscious' powerful new play, Charlie Victor Romeo. The 10-person company based its text on black-box transcripts of six plane disasters.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Continuum, The
Yale University

This must count as one of the more moving presentation of the genocide inflicted on the Cambodian people during the reign of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979. Yet Singapore-based director Ong Keng Sen uses essentially clear-headed, non-sensationalist means: spoken and taped descriptions, film clips and projected text. At the center is Em Theay, once a dancer in royal court spectacles in Phnom Penh but now, at age 69, a main contributor to the recovery of Cambodian traditional arts. It is a wonder that she is still alive.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Food Chain, The
Poway Performing Arts Company

The Food Chain is PowPAC's latest audience challenge -- and those familiar with playwright Nicky Silver are used to his challenges. He assaults you with language. He tests your feelings about sexuality. He investigates human frailty and defies you to object to his statements. While the The Food Chain is a comedy, it quickly dissects the human condition with deep and dark undertones. Amanda's (Annmarie Houghtailing) husband of three weeks, Ford (James M. McCullock) has been gone for two of those weeks. She calls a crisis hot line manned by Bea (Eileen Ivey).

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Eli's Comin'
Vineyard Theater

Revue uses songs by the late Laura Nyro to tell minimal, allegorical story of various women overcoming addiction. Despite the 50s-infused, stoned-soul pop tunes, it's a repetitive drag till the last couple of songs, when the show finally gets its groove on.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
It's All True
Adrienne Theater

In 1930s movies Mickey Rooney said "C'mon kids, let's put on a show." And in real life, in 1937, Orson Welles did virtually the same thing, cobbling together a musical in a disconcertingly haphazard manner. Jason Sherman's new play, It's All True, recreates the tumultuous birth of that musical, The Cradle Will Rock, but he gives us so much more.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Joleta
4305 Village Theater

Towne Street Theater, which moved this year into a brand-new, spiffy location in Leimert Park, is offering the world premiere of Harriet A. Dickey's Joleta. A fascinating study of a contemporary black family's struggle to come to grips with its complex and flawed history, the play looks at the way thwarted love, skin-color consciousness and power struggles have affected each member of the Lyles household.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Judy Garland, Live!
Theater Works

What is a cabaret or club concert doing in a place like Theater Works? Stage draped in black, decked out with potted plants? Tommy Femia's non dramatic imitation of a middle-aged Judy Garland seems somehow out of place, as do her satirical remarks. Though he mimics her phrasing and often sounds like her, he's mostly in a different register, missing that famous catch in her voice.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
King Hedley II
Virginia Theater

This guy has written the same play five times now, said the disgruntled theater patron at a recent performance of August Wilson's newest Broadway offering King Hedley II, and while I mostly disregard such generalities as a reviewer, this one stuck with me the whole evening. Such cases have been made for people like filmmaker Woody Allen, who in his thirty-plus movies has generally gone to the same well several times in his effort to portray neurotic New Yorkers, usually played by himself.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Rocky Horror Show, The
Circle in the Square

I went to see The Rocky Horror Show as a virgin, and came out a fan. Soon after my initiation I went back to see it a second time, with some cast changes, and loved it even more. (As did my wife, who saw an earlier production in London.) Dick Cavett, as the emcee, asks at the start of each show, "How many of you are virgins?" The implication is that the show requires some inside knowledge, but that's not so. Neophytes are welcome and should have no problem understanding the spoof of horror movies from the 1950s or 60s.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
I Sing!
Maverick Theater

I Sing! is the type of show that will have the real New York cynics vomiting in the aisles. Could a show be so unassumingly straightforward and unabashed about being a sentimental musical? For those of us who have yet to succumb to the "Everything sucks!" philosophy, I Sing! is one big sweetheart of a show.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The
Minskoff Theater

The latest grade school pageant masquerading as a Broadway show, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer starts with the germ of an enterprising family entertainment: a romantic musical adventure tale of young Tom and pal Huck Finn and their involvement in a shady town murder. The tuner then proceeds to turn the germ into a deadly virus; that is, shows that have no business in 1700+ capacity theaters foolishly trying to put one over on the unsuspecting audience.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
May 2001
Actors Alliance Festival 2001
St. Cecilia's Playhouse

Actors Alliance San Diego's Actors Festival, an annual event, includes 24 plays, most of them new, many being showcased for the very first time. Each play is performed just twice, with itinerant Actor Todd Blakesley serving as the Festival Artistic Director. The schedule is hectic, mixing new works by talented local playwrights with works by McNally, Bradbury, Mamet, and Dr. Seuss.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2001
American Iliad
Victory Theater

Donald Freed, a rare writer of political drama, returns to the subject of Richard Nixon, a character whose dark, twisted soul he unraveled in a previous one-man play, Secret Honor. This time around, Freed works on a larger canvas, one filled with portraits of such personages as J. Edgar Hoover, Clyde Tolson, JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Black Elk and Horatio Alger. The play takes place in Nixon's mind during the last 3 or 4 minutes of his life and is a reverie, a reflection, on America in the last century.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2001
Art
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts

For a substantial sum, Serge buys a white-on-white painting; his two best friends' reactions and assessments nearly blow them apart. On the surface that's what Art is about. What it is, however, is itself art.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2001

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