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
Anton in Show Business
Actors Theater of Louisville - Bingham Theater

Another popular entry at the Humana Festival of New American Plays was Anton in Show Business, written by the mysterious Jane Martin (often thought to be a pseudonym for director Jon Jory). This spoof covers it all, from the naive ingenue (Monica Koskey), to the seen-it-all, 36-year-old veteran (Gretchen Lee Krich) and the surgery-enhanced TV star (Caitlin Miller). These three unlikely actresses all wind up in a Texas production of Chekhov's The Three Sisters. Like Chekhov's characters, they all search for meaning in a world of politics, greed and corruption.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Anton in Show Business
Actors Theater Of Louisville

If Jon Jory, producing director of Actors Theater of Louisville, is indeed the pseudonymous Jane Martin, playwright, as many believe, his/her Anton in Show Business is a smashing valedictory for his soon-to-end 31 years heading the renowned institution.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Barrymore
Theater Works

With such props as table and throne, swords, a rack of costumes and a full length mirror, scattered in disarray, the stage is aptly set for rehearsal of a revival of Richard III -- one that will never take place.  Ed Dennehy as John Barrymore, a month before his 1942 death, lopes through the house in a raincoat, with raffishly tilted hat, cane in one hand, "medicinal" black bag in the other.  Off-color limericks roll off his tongue, as do snatches of memories of his career and relationships with his illustrious theatrical family and four wives.  What he can't remember

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Communicating Doors
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Weird, loud electronic music blends into thunder on the balcony from which Julian (stereotypically villainous Walter Rhodes) steps into the tasteful hotel suite parlor. He opens the door to another loud phenomenon, Phoebe, a.k.a. Poopay, a dominatrix he's hired as a "sexual consultant" to his old friend. "Old" also depicts dying Reece (convincingly aged and feeble, despite Erik R. Uppling's actual youth), who wants her to witness his sworn responsibility for the death of his two wives.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Dames At Sea
Downtown Cabaret Theater

The Downtown Cabaret is presenting Dames At Sea, a 1930s spoofy musical with book & lyrics by George Haimsohn & Robin Miller and music by Jim Wise. It is billed as "a salute to a time when dance was all tap, all scenery silver and the only Berkeley we cared about was Busby." Trouble is that this is a second-rate musical; there's not a song among the 16 pleasant ditties that really captivates.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Diary Of Anne Frank, The
People's Light & Theater Company

The 1997 re-write of The Diary Of Anne Frank is having its Philadelphia-area debut here in a controversial production. The results are arresting, justifying the gutsy choices. The new adaptation shows us an Anne Frank who is strong and outspoken and part of a family that is obviously Jewish, in contrast to the old version where the Anne was saintly, and the Jewishness was submerged in universal generalities. The story, as you will recall, covers two years from the time the Jews go into hiding until they are discovered by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Don't Dress For Dinner
Venice Golden Apple Dinner Theater

This British version of a French boulevard farce takes place in a barn converted into handsome but un-Frenchified country-house. It's a few hours' train ride from Paris, where everyone talks with English accents. Owner Bernard (Michael Harrington, looking every inch a marital cheat), thinking his wife Jacqueline (attractive Beth Duda) will be off for a weekend with her mother, books a cook to make a dinner for his mistress to celebrate her birthday. When Jacqueline intercepts the booking confirmation call, the madness begins.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Eclipsed
MeX Theater

One of the most harrowing crimes against women waged by the Catholic Church in Ireland is the painful subject of Patricia Bourke Brogan's Eclipsed. The play is based upon the factual existence of the Magdalene Laundries operated for "penitents" well into the 1970s, according to director Rebecca Luttrell Briley's program note. Young women who bore children out of wedlock or were sometimes their orphaned offspring were kept under lock and key at a convent workhouse in Killmacha, Ireland, to wash, iron, and mend the clergy's clothing, bedding, and linens.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Gypsy
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

When Roberta MacDonald takes "Rose's Turn" all through the theater, it's ironic. Why? Because the whole show has been her turn. Sure, Wendee Bresee blossoms out nicely as Gypsy Rose Lee, after her stalwart childhood as the untalented Louise, nicely understated by Brianna Houck. And after Taylor Vaughan passes for talented Baby June, Sarah Jackson brings spirit to grown up June Havoc's revolt against her mother. You couldn't wish for a nicer agent for them or piner after Rose than Larry Barrett's Herbie. But whenever MacDonald is on stage, it's no one else's.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Hobson's Choice
Milwaukee Repertory Theater

Hobson's Choice brings the welcome return of Nagle Jackson, former artistic director of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater (1971-77). His talents are evident in this well-oiled production, an early example of women's liberation that manages to puncture many of the cultural taboos of English life in the 1880s. The play makes a heroine out of its main character, Maggie, who certainly puts Gloria Steinem to shame in her zeal to move beyond the domestic chains that shackled women in the Victorian era.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
King And I, The
New Jersey Performing Arts Center - Prudential Hall

When the curtain goes up on this touring production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I to reveal the teeming port of Bangkok against a twinkling backdrop of stars, one is simultaneously transported back almost fifty years to its legendary Broadway opening and to the l850s when a young English school teacher, Anna Leonowens, arrived to teach the 67 children of the King of Siam.

Kathryn Wylie-Marques
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Grapes Of Ralph, The
St. Mark's Theater

Dubbed "sketch comedy that doesn't suck," the comedy troupe known as Ralph don't suck by any means but could benefit a bit by watching some of their influences, which they cite as including "Mr. Show" and "South Park." Basically "The Grapes Of Ralph" is a sketch show, not unlike "Saturday Night Live" except grosser and usually funnier, and the comedy has a refreshingly un-PC bend to it.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Las Horas De Belen
P.S. 122

With its compelling theme and striking presentation, this Mabou Mines production became an instant experimental classic when it opened in finished form in May 1999. Framed within the structure of hourly devotional prayer in use since medieval times, the story of the unwed mothers, prostitutes and other undesirables that inhabited the refuge/prison is told with words, song and mime. Once admitted to Belen (the Spanish equivalent of Bethlehem, in an ironic name choice) established in 17th-century Mexico City, the women could never escape their strictly-regimented existence.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Arms and the Man
Gramercy Theater

Theater of the most noxious kind, this disastrous revival of George Bernard Shaw's 1894 play Arms And The Man engages in the eye-rolling fop school of dramatics. Every performance is ten times more mannered than it needs to be, the art direction more involved than it needs to be, and the line delivery a lot more pronounced than needed. This is a production that bathes itself in excess but never seems to realize that subtlety is always the ticket to creating the best kind of human comedy, more like the kind Shaw had in mind when he wrote this play.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Another Summer
Derby Dinner Playhouse

Landing the rights to produce the musical version of the much loved On Golden Pond play and film was quite a coup for Derby Dinner Playhouse. Ernest Thompson, who wrote both play and screenplay, has now written the musical's book as well as lyrics for composer Roy M. Rogosin's 18 songs. This is the third incarnation for the show, still very much a work in progress after short engagements in New Hampshire and Michigan. Its six-week stay here will allow for a great deal more fine tuning.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Babysitter, The
McCadden Theater

This adaptation of Robert Coover's pungently satirical short story shows that literature and theater can be mixed successfully.  Utilizing a narrator (Pearsall) and seven gifted actors who have been choreographed in seamless fashion by Vincent D'Altorio, reality and fantasy are explored -- make that deconstructed -- by D'Altorio in contrapuntal fashion.  Triggered by the arrival of a beautiful young babysitter (Rhonda Patterson) at the home of the Tuckers, the story goes back and forth in time to dramatize the impact her budding sexuality has on everyone.  We become privy to

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Boys In The Band, The
Artswatch

1968 was the year both Hair and The Boys in the Band rocked and shocked theatergoers with their in-your-face depictions of a homosexual subculture and lifestyles that scorned Establishment values. By an odd coincidence, those two iconoclastic trail-blazing shows are being offered in Louisville at the same time in the year 2000: Hair at Actors Theater of Louisville and Boys by The Agenda at Artswatch.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Bullshot Crummond
FSU/Asolo Conservatory in Cook Theater

Mix up all the typical characters, plots, situations, locales, and staging devices from B movies like the Bulldog Drummond detective mysteries and WWII Gothic spy story serials; make 'em go crap-spackle poop; and the result is tasty spoonfuls of spoof. As the dastardly German Otto Von Brunner tells his black-leathered accomplice Lenya after a poorly-screened parachute drop, "We seem to have crashed in the right place." They repay bushy-white-haired Prof.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Count Of Monte Cristo, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Richly textured and authentic, Vicki S. Holden's wonderful costumes clothe a drama that's anything but. One reason Dumas pere's "The Count Of Monte Cristo" has proven so commercially viable is that he peopled a moving, interesting story that began with a fateful voyage and ended with a romantic sailing into the sunset. No such full circle in the plodding, often dull knock-off that Asolo Theater Company commissioned.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Director, The
ArcLight Theater

All through Nancy Hasty's twisty, hugely entertaining new play The Director, I couldn't help but wonder what the late Lee Strasberg would have made of it. A psychological drama about a young playwright named Annie (the wonderful newcomer Tasha Lawrence) who calls upon a once-notorious theater director-turned-janitor (John Shea) to helm her latest play, it is one of the rare instances of theater genuinely turning on itself, an intriguing dissection of the dehumanization that can often result in "committing to the work" a little too much.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Fabulous Palm Springs Follies, The
Historic Plaza Theater

Palm Springs is synonymous with Hollywood glamour and ritzy recreation, so it's no surprise that a local show incorporates both elements into one highly original and entertaining show. Now in its ninth year, The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies lives up to its name. It is truly a fabulous cavalcade of performers, ranging from aging vaudevillians such as The Mercer Brothers to an equally ancient stand-up comic (Dave Barry) and juggler (Nino Frediani). There's also a headliner from yesteryear, in this case, Anna Maria Alberghetti.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
From My Hometown
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stackner Cabaret

It has been almost three years since the musical revue From My Hometown left Milwaukee for its hometown, New York. Time has seasoned this show in several important ways, and Hometown now makes a welcome reappearance. Although some minor tinkering with the script is evident, the story remains the same: a talented trio of R & B singers arrive in New York.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Gross Indecency: The Three Trials Of Oscar Wilde
Arena Players - Mainstage

Set in 1895, this courtroom drama uses historic letters, newspaper reports, trial transcripts and Oscar Wilde's own writings to chronicle the fall of the famous playwright from the bright lights of the London theater to conviction and imprisonment for sexual acts of "gross indecency" with young men. Wilde, played with great passion by Stephen Wangner, is quite flip about his lifestyle early on, while at the same time denying the acts with which he's been charged.

Mark Donnelly
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Hair
Actors Theater of Louisville

Seeing Hair again after all these years made me think of the Time Warp song and dance from another cult musical of the young and disaffected , Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show. Especially that line from the song about being spaced out on sensation like you're under sedation. Those wild Sixties days of youth in rebellion against the Vietnam War and bankrupt Establishment values as they got high on drugs, rock music and all varieties of sex were indelibly captured in the ground-breaking, and still incredibly powerful, score by Gerome [sic]

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Hidden Sky, The
Prince Music Theater

The opening scene of this world premiere musical features an Arabic-sounding wail that perfectly sets the tone. This is a fable about the rediscovery of Arabic numerals and the development of logic and science that are based on the Arabic arithmetical system.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Hysteria
Florida Studio Theater

Having been asked by Florida Studio Theater not to reveal the identity of the character who gets the action going in Hysteria, as well as not to talk about the play's surreal elements, what's a critic to do? Well, I can tell you that it imagines how, in Sigmund Freud's last days living in London, while suffering from cancer of the jaw, he deals with visits from his doctor, a mysterious woman, and Salvador Dali.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Invention Of Love, The
Wilma Theater

Starting in middle age, men frequently get an urge to revisit their pasts. Some, like Faust, want to become young again. Others fantasize about just going back for a visit with ourselves as young. Ah, what we could teach ourselves! With A. E. Housman, the ultimate pedant, the potential is intriguing. Tom Stoppard has chosen Housman to be his time-traveling subject in The Invention of Love -- an absorbing story of a man at the end of his life, examining his formative years. Like most Stoppard plays, it is intellectual yet rich with emotion.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Fuddy Meers
Minetta Lane Theater

Now playing in an open-ended run at the Minetta Lane Theater after a smash engagement at Manhattan Theater Club, David Lindsay-Abaire's wacky look at a really dysfunctional family has charms to spare but too often falls into that pseudo-Coen Bros. funk that has marked too many comic plays of late. The tone is so bustling at times; you just wish everyone would take a Valium and get some rest. Still, this would be more of a gripe if the cast weren't so wonderful and the overall look of the play so striking (by the remarkable Santo Loquasto, no less).

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Bomb-itty Of Errors, The
45 Bleecker

As I noted in mid-1999, Shakespeare is invading off-Broadway theater at an alarming rate.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
January 2000
Beauty Queen Of Leenane, The
Milwaukee Rep - Stiemke Theater

The Milwaukee Repertory Theater has back-to-back hits in January/February, with Of Mice and Men playing on the main stage  and The Beauty Queen of Leenane in the smaller, more intimate Stiemke Theater.  The plays, though separated by more than 60 years, share marked similarities.  Loneliness, isolation, desperation and love of the land weave the plays together, though the circumstances couldn't be further apart.  Beauty Queen takes place in a small house in rural Ireland, where a mother and daughter lead a bleak existence, not much different from the dri

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2000
Cowardy Custard
Theater Works

Mad about the Boy accurately describes how Theater Works audiences seem to feel about Noel Coward, judging by some of the theater's major successes with works by and centered on him. It's the way I feel about how B. G. Fitzgerald performs them. To celebrate the theater's 15th anniversary and centennial of Coward's birth, a glutinous concoction of his songs, doses of autobiography, sketches, and play scenes is enriched by Fitzgerald's perfect pronunciation and urbanity. Whether admonishing"Mrs.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2000

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