Brothers And Sisters - Part II: Roads And Crossroads
John Jay College Theater

Part of Lincoln Center Festival 2000, this stage adaptation of Fyodor Abramov's trilogy of life in Russia's Far North continues over a second evening to show the same village five years after the end of WWII.

In this more somber Part II, the villagers' mood is temporarily lifted by a film clip of smiling peasants harvesting wheat -- until it is announced that the state grain requirement will be doubled. This effectively condemns them to another year of near famine; forced "loans" to the Party district committee further bled them.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
July 2000
Big: The Musical
Ritz Theater

This is a smaller Big and a delightful one.  It's a new production, using a script that's been adapted by director Art McKenzie.  The story of a kid whose wish to be grown-up is granted, for a while, was a wonderful film with Tom Hanks in 1988.  Then a lavish and costly musical version ran six months on Broadway in 1996.  FAO Schwartz put big bucks into the show, and director Mike Ockrent made it into a virtual commercial for the toy store.  After Big, The Musical closed, author John Weidman, songwriters David Shire and Richard Maltby, Jr.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
July 2000
Dance Like a Man
Tribeca Performing Arts Theater 2

A long-overdue Festival of Indian Theater brought U.S. premieres for works by two of India's most popular playwrights to the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. The one reviewed here, Mahesh Dattani's Dance Like a Man, asks whether a performer should have special rights within an upper-middle-class, traditional family.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
July 2000
Gift, The
Tiffany Theater

Backed by Hollywood and recording-industry money, it's obvious that The Gift has its sights set on a commercial triumph far exceeding its Equity-waiver origins. The producers have assembled a top notch cast, many of whom worked with the show's director on his previous outing, the camp musical Reefer Madness whose local success is taking it to New York this fall. But with everything it has going for it, The Gift has some major problems which might just keep it from becoming another Reefer.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2000
Good Doctor, The
Pasadena Playhouse

Light summer fare is the best way to sum up this mixed bag of short comic playlets set in Chekhov's time but given an American gloss by Simon, who even contributes a sketch of his own which has nothing to do with Chekhov ("The Arrangement," about a father introducing his virginal young son to a prostitute). Simon frames the evening by introducing a Chekhov-like character called The Writer (the estimable Harry Groener) whose narration links the action.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2000
Harold And Maude
Theatricum Botanicum

Colin Higgins' screenplay for "Harold And Maude" became a 1972 feature film project for director Hal Ashby, with Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort starring in the May-December story of the love affair between an 80-year-old woman and a teenaged boy. The film flopped, but Higgins turned the script into a play, which was directed by Jean-Louis Barrault in Paris and ran seven years. The film version then resurfaced as a cult hit and has spawned a slew of "Harold And Maude" websites.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2000
Filao
Damrosch Park Tent

Inspired by Italo Calvino's magical-realist novel "The Baron in the Trees," this "new circus" event is called Filao, a clever contraction of the French word for high wire. Now, after having toured Europe and America since 1997, Filao comes to Lincoln Center Festival 2000, its second-to-last venue.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
July 2000
Annie
Iroquois Amphitheater

Crusty old Harold Gray, who wrote and drew the Little Orphan Annie comic strip from 1924 until his death in 1968, once famously defended the strip's emphasis on violence with this retort: "Sweetness and light -- who the hell wants it? What's news in the newspapers? Murder, rape, and arson. That's what stories are made of."

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
June 2000
Rosemary Clooney
Regency Hotel

Rosie's back with a new beat, a Bossa Nova beat. It's not that the incomparable Rosemary Clooney was ever afraid of taking on a challenge during her amazing 55-year career as a professional "girl singer." Opening a two-week engagement at Feinstein's At The Regency to launch the release of "Brazil," her new Concord album, Clooney demonstrated on opening night that her heart, if not her soul, was on the beat that has proved daunting to many a popular American singer.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 2000
Current Events
Manhattan Theater Club - Stage II

Politics is always a tricky subject for a playwright to tackle; either you're preaching to the converted or talking to a brick wall. People don't come to the theater to be lectured; they want to be entertained. I'm happy to report that David Marshall Grant's Current Events emerges victorious on both fronts.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
June 2000
Far East
Florida Studio Theater - mainstage

Culturally, East -- specifically Japan -- is as far as can be from the "normal," Midwest country club world of Lt."Sparky" Watts. Having fallen in love with a young Japanese who waits tables at his newly-assigned base, 1954, he's trying to "Orient" himself. Enthusiastic Jason Kuykendall gentles a bit the brash WASP whose military stint began as an entrance qualification for Harvard Business School.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2000
Giulio Cesare
Rich Forum

Now in its fifth year, the International Festival of Arts & Ideas is spread over three Connecticut cities this time. Artistic Director Paul Collard picks from far and wide to bring together presentations ranging from the popular to the challenging, just as the festival's title promises. The lone Italian entry comes from the Societas Raffaello Sanzio, an experimental theater group based in Cesena, near the Adriatic coast south of Venice. Romeo Castellucci presents a combination deconstruction and sensual exploration of the Julius Caesar theme.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 2000
House Of Blue Leaves, The
Bunbury Theater

The House of Blue Leaves, John Guare's sad/funny, tragically hilarious farce, garnered some impressive awards, including best American play of the season, in its 1971 off-Broadway debut. Bunbury Theater's splendid revival of this now-classic work doesn't miss a beat while propelling the audience through a roller-coaster ride that could go off the track at any moment. Guare's plot, he has said, stemmed from a real-life visit by Pope Paul VI to New York in 1965 when the Pontiff's motorcade passed along Queens Boulevard on the way to the United Nations.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
June 2000
Glass Menagerie, The
Cap 21

Set in St. Louis on the eve of World War II, The Glass Menagerie is a family tale of hope, despair and deception. Mississippi transplant Amanda lives with her two adult children in a modest apartment with shabby furnishings -- a far cry from how she hoped to end up. Her husband abandoned them years before to turn Amanda into a single mother, a status that commanded none of the respect but all of the drawbacks that we have with us sixty years later. Son Tom, who doubles as narrator in the play, works in a warehouse for a piddling salary.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 2000
Hotel Suite
Gramercy Theater

Neil Simon's new pastiche of his one-act, hotel-based plays of old, now newly dressed up and called Hotel Suite, is truly the first theatrical experience that I can recall that is both remarkable and stunningly awful. The four tales represented are all by Mr. Simon and have varying degrees of success as plays.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
June 2000
Blind Alley
Puerto Rican Traveling Theater

This is a trio of one-acts, each with realistic female characters in a contemporary urban setting. Hopscotch shows teenagers Haydee (Monica Read) and Dee (Mariana Carreno) dickering over how to spend Christmas. With a mother doing time, Haydee has "graduated" from school dropout population to petty crime, so Dee's more stable situation of separated, inimical parents makes her seem a bastion of stability. Add to that Dee's vestigial moral schema, and she is on her way to escape from the squalid life depicted. Maybe.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
May 2000
Bruce Vilanch: Almost Famous
Westbeth Theater Center

The moppet-haired guy who usually sits to the left of center square Whoopi Goldberg on "Hollywood Squares" is the latest Hollywood denizen to get his own one-man gig.

While amusing at times, Bruce Vilanch's humorous diatribe exploring his long life as a gag writer, celebrity emergency jokester and sometime actor is seriously under-imagined and never as funny as the awards shows he has made a lucrative career writing for, it's almost like watching the outtakes of material that wasn't quite gut-busting enough to make it into Billy Crystal's oeuvre.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
May 2000
Broadway
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Hard to believe Broadway debuted as a fresh backstage story of a song and dance man hoping to become a star along with gaining a partner for his act and in marriage. She's the fresh young thing, so familiar in gangster movies, who has also attracted mobster boss Steve Crandal. They've since been seen in dozens of Prohibition-era backstage and gangster plays and movies, featuring more or less important music and comedy.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2000
Copenhagen
Royale Theater

In Michael Frayn's intense, thoughtful play Copenhagen, two physicists, Niels Bohr (Philip Bosco), a Danish Jew and father of quantum mechanics, and Werner Heisenberg (Michael Cumpsty), Bohr's young German protegee and author of "The Uncertainty Principle," meet in some sort of afterlife to debate the meaning of their lives, their collaboration, and their ideological conflicts.  Most specifically, they re-live a mysterious meeting that took place in Denmark in 1941, when Heisenberg was chief of the Nazi A-bomb project.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
May 2000
Collected Stories
FSU/Asolo Conservatory in Cook Theater

Asolo's Producing Artistic Director has saved his company's best-of-season for its end, a play with poetic ambiguity in a crystalline, compelling production. A relationship grows between a writer/teacher who begins as a tough, almost unwilling mentor and a student who mirrors her own talent when younger but is otherwise rapturously enthusiastic and pushy. The two become colleagues and, in mother-to-daughter fashion, share their feelings and experiences. Then, near her professional and physical end, Ruth feels her life and talent usurped by Lisa with a first novel.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2000
Grease
Derby Dinner Playhouse

All through Derby Dinner Playhouse's powerhouse production of Grease, that quintessential musical depiction of high-school days in 1950s America, I kept thinking that this show is just about as perfect in its way as Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend, the classic pastiche of 1920s British musicals. Both capture so beautifully through song, dance, and story the innocence of those times, though with Grease the innocence goes hand in hand with a crassness and laughable lack of sophistication wholly natural to characters of that time and place.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
May 2000
Hello Again
City Theater

City Theater has been utilizing a tiny space in a neighborhood of warehouses and earning respect -- even while the size of its audiences has been small compared to older Wilmington venues. But this company should get a lot more recognition as it moves into a new home on the same downtown block as Wilmington's prestigious Grand Opera House. Led by the youthful Jon Cooper, Michael Gray and Tom Shade, the company makes a great impression with its final production before the move.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
May 2000
Hypatia
Soho Rep

All right, I'm going to confess something. I'm not one of those critics who feels it necessary to go into long, windy plot synopses just to prove how crafty I am at understanding narrative. I happen to find that it robs readers of their sense of discovery, and I like to leave them with a little something to feel out for themselves. Well, in the case of Mac Wellman's new play Hypatia, you're totally on your own folks.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
May 2000
I Do, I Undo, I Redo
La MaMa ETC - Annex Theater

Now pushing ninety, prominent modern sculptor Louise Bourgeois has consistently shocked the public with barely-disguised, larger-than-life representations of male genitalia. When questioned, though, she has always played the innocent. Where all this comes from, Brazilian performance artist Denise Stoklos never quite broaches in I Do, I Undo, I Redo. Stoklos has pieced together excerpts from the French sculptor's writings to create this lively sketch combining biographical detail with trenchant personal observations.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
May 2000
I Wanna Be Adored
Red Line Theater

Early on in Marc Spitz's I Wanna Be Adored, a darkly comic take on the life of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, your heart sinks when you think you've pegged the play as a routine, earnest "why did he do it?" parable about someone you could care less about. Thankfully, you're proven very wrong in this playful, often hilarious take on celebrity, the afterlife and bizarre strip clubs.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
May 2000
Aida
Palace Theater

One of the tunes in the latest Broadway production by Disney, Aida, sings that "we lead such elaborate lives" ("Elaborate Lives," by the way, was once this show's moniker). Well, looking at what's presented onstage, you would absolutely have to concur. Apparently no expense was spared for this baby, from Bob Crowley's positively jaw-dropping costume designs and sets to Natasha Katz's inventive, rich lighting to the three credited writers of the book (Linda Woolverton, director Robert Falls and Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang).

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
American Buffalo
Atlantic Theater

I have a theory that on the set of Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia," everyone in the cast made a vow to do a New York play when it wrapped, because it seems that everyone from that film is illuminating Gotham these days, with Sam Shepard's True West on Broadway (starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly) and now an electric update of David Mamet's American Buffalo, featuring Anderson secret-weapons Philip Baker Hall and William H. Macy.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
Balladeer, The
KGB

Conceived and directed by Caden Manson (of Big Art Group), The Balladeer is a worthy candidate for cult status, unfolding like a downtown theater version of a midnight movie. An ambitious look at the tribulations of a confused group of high schoolers, the piece blends vulgarity, puppetry, ballads and nifty choreography into one brazen stew. For an alarmingly brief 45 minutes, the play manages to cover a lot of ground, but oddly, despite the obvious cleverness on stage, it still seems to come up short.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
Big Love
Actors Theater of Louisville

During a critics weekend at the Humana Festival of New American Plays,Big Love was a clear favorite among the offerings.  It's a cleverly designed twist on an ancient Greek tragedy, in which 50 brides conspire to murder their fiances on their wedding night.  In this updated version, playwright Charles Mee uses the framework to wage a modern-day battle of the sexes.  Traces of "Men Are From Mars, Women are from Venus," are evident in the banter between the brides, led by Lydia (Carolyn Baeumler), and the grooms, including Constantine (Mark Zeisler), who is pledged to o

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
Big Love
Actors Theater of Louisville

Seven brides for seven brothers, as in the old MGM musical, is an idea one has little trouble handling.  Raise the number to 50 brides (all sisters!) for 50 brothers, as Charles L.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
Copenhagen
Royale Theater

How's this for a pitch for a Broadway show?:

Anxious Producer: Okay folks, there's this Michael Frayn play that did really well in London...now, it's about a fateful meeting between a Danish physicist named Neils Bohr (Philip Bosco) and his impulsive but brilliant pupil Werner Heisenberg (Michael Cumpsty), all while Neils' wife Margrethe (Blair Brown) plays mediator and part-time narrator.
Unthrilled Backer: Why is she there at all if it is a meeting between two men?

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune
Adrienne Theater

One of Terrence McNally's earliest hits is receiving its first Philadelphia performance in years. It's a welcome revival. Its extended (no pun intended) full frontal nudity no longer shocks, partly because this production features 40-ish lovers of average looks and imperfect bodies. These are real people, not glamorous stars like Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer of the movie version. They've just finished having sex as the play begins, and now they start to get to know each other.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
Green Bird, The
Cort Theater

Julie Taymor is the kind of theatrical inventor that prompts people to say things like, "She throws in everything but the kitchen sink." Well, her latest concoction (actually a revival, this was staged at the New Victory in 1996), The Green Bird, actually features a kitchen sink. And toilets. And naked women. And swing dancing. And much more, leaving one with the impression that nothing is disposable in eyes of the gifted Taymor. This is both her greatest curse and blessing.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
Jesus Christ Superstar
Ford Center for the Performing Arts

To be completely fair, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar was always something of a silly idea. People singing and dancing to rock-operatic tunes, all while trying to convey the gravity of The Book. Pretty silly stuff. But what made Superstar such a kick was its unbridled bravado; the musical seemed to know what it was getting into, and provided patrons with what is probably Webber's most effective score to date, filled with exciting numbers that the Broadway of today seems to forego.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
Music Man, The
Neil Simon Theater

Susan Stroman's charming revival of Meredith Willson's classic tuner begs the question: Can they make them like they used to? The answer is a resounding yes; this one's as old-fashioned as they come, but nearly irresistible. Ace choreographer-director Stroman doesn't really bother to update the material (thankfully, there's no Jesus Christ Superstar-style boneheaded ideas here) -- an admirable choice lately, as many revivals of late dilute the impact of what make them work in the first place.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
House Arrest
Joseph Papp Public Theater

As a work of tenacity and dramaturgy, Anna Deavere Smith's latest one-woman show, House Arrest, is pretty arresting, but as thoughtful theater, it registers far below expectations. Using the presidency, past and present, as her focal point, Smith employs her usual tactics: she interviewed close to 300(!) public figures, ranging from politicians and Washington insiders to TV personalities and authors. In addition to her usual copious research, she composed a show using verbatim excerpts from her findings.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
Real Thing, The
Ethel Barrymore Theater

It has been far too long since New York has seen a Tom Stoppard play adorning Broadway, and after a season of soggy, overwritten debacles, one is happy to embrace anything that has already been tested, and just might deliver. The Donmar Warehouse production of The Real Thing, with its luminous London cast intact, proves to be the great reminder of the verve and wit plays once had.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
Altruists, The
Vineyard Theater

The black comic farce gets an overhaul (and I mean overhaul) in Nicky Silver's newest opus The Altruists, a tirelessly energetic but strangely unaffecting tale of a group of New York City residents who enter each other's lives through the aid of family relations, lovers and a dead body. Played with broad conviction by a first-rate group, Silver's writing is certainly admirable, especially in creating a rapid-fire discourse that doesn't grow too wearying. Clever as the play sometimes is, though, it has the feeling of being rushed.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Antigone
Florence Gould Hall

Anticipating Martha Graham's directive to know what the protagonist had for breakfast (Clytemnestra in that case), Jean Anouilh (1910-1987) in fact shows Antigone having her anachronistic petite cafe. Written and first produced during WWII, his adaptation of the Sophocles tragedy is full of domesticating, realistic details, and a modern psychological dimension clearly specifies each character's thoughts and motivations.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Anton in Show Business
Actors Theater Of Louisville

Jane Martin takes us backstage at the modern regional theater in the wickedly funny Anton in Show Business. Full of insider jokes and strange situations, the play does have something to say about modern theater, acting and friendship. It follows a doomed-from-the-start production of Chekhov's Three Sisters, presented by a fictitious San Antonio theater. The cast includes a TV star, a New York playwright and a aspiring young Texan.

Ed Huyck
Date Reviewed:
March 2000

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