Christmas Carol, A
Guthrie Theater

Maybe it's the looming holiday season, but my reaction to the Guthrie Theater's 25th production of A Christmas Carol is a decided bah, humbug.  The adaptation of Charles Dickens' venerable tale has all the hallmarks of a classic, from a sumptuous set to talented actors to a bevy of special effects.  But the whole enterprise has left me empty instead of uplifted. It isn't the actors' fault.  A talented cast -- led by Philip Goodwin as Scrooge -- wrestle plenty of humanity out of the Christmas tale.  Scrooge is given some extra depth, especially in scenes with the woman

Ed Huyck
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Dinner Party, The
Mark Taper Forum

Neil Simon's new play is a dud, one that resembles a bad translation of an equally bad French drawing-room comedy by Marivaux or Feydeau. The setup we are asked to believe is that three divorced couples have been invited to partake of a mystery dinner in the private dining room of a swanky Parisian restaurant. The six men and women arrive separately and are shocked to come face to face with their respective ex-spouses.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Durlovely, Durlightful, Durang
Rudyard Kipling

No playwright writes funnier lines than Christopher Durang at the top of his form. And that's one reason the Roundtable Theater's take on his one-act, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls, a devastatingly hilarious send-up of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, is such a riot. The other reason is the expert timing and daftness the four actors, under Dan Welch's skilled direction, exhibit as they plow through the absurdities of their characters and the plot.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Fever, The
Tsunami Bakery & Café (and other venues)

This provocative, trenchant, one-person play by Wallace Shawn (who conceived it to be performed in homes and apartments, for groups of ten or twelve -- and who performed it himself in New York for many months), is set in a cheap hotel room in an unnamed country where the hero (Paul Mackley), a functionary for a human-rights organization, lies suffering from a malaria-like illness which gives him the fever of the title and triggers a stream-of disjointed-consciousness monologue.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Hysteria
Steppenwolf Theater

You are in my study, not some boulevard farce! protests the Father Of Modern Psychology, but nowadays, the mere mention of Sigmund Freud's name constitutes a joke, and so a certain vaudeville atmosphere is unavoidable.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Kiss Me, Kate
Martin Beck Theater

Yes, it's another op'nin of another show, but the new revival of Cole Porter's splendid tuner, Kiss Me, Kate, is anything but ordinary. Staged with nothing less than pure extravagance and cast to perfection, it is a reminder that Broadway was once big and bold, and it steadfastly tries to inject that in every inch of its boundaries. Far too many years have passed since this delightful musical has been staged, and Sam and Bella Spewack's book is still fresh and funny, proving that old tricks sometimes are the best remedy for a sluggish season of musicals.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Ghosts
Century Center Ballroom Theater

As part of the ongoing series of Henrik Ibsen plays at the Century Center for the Performing Arts, Ghosts is the fourth to be revived in this space, though it is actually the third of Ibsen's plays in chronological order, written in 1881 right after A Doll's House, perhaps his most revered work. Ghosts is an even darker look at the ultimate dysfunctional family headed by Mrs. Alving (Kathleen Garrett), a somber matriarch who tells her detailed past to the rigid Pastor Manders (Mark Elliot Wilson).

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
How The Bitch Stole Christmas
Fez

Another wonderful night will be had at Jackie Beat's Christmas special, confirming that in the acidic drag-queen sweepstakes, Jackie certainly is the one to beat. Dressed to the holiday hilt, Jackie still continues to shed her special brand of holiday joy in the guise of her razor-sharp wit and unmatchable bitchiness. A few segments of How The Bitch Stole Christmas sag, notably her reading of a poem from a fed-up housewife fan that recounts her evil revenge on a lout hubby.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Putting it Together
Ethel Barrymore Theater

To put it bluntly, Putting It Together, the Stephen Sondheim "review" that just opened on Broadway, just isn't that well put together. A barrage of 35 of his greatest hits, including songs from Company, Merrily We Roll Along, A Little Night Music and Follies among others, is given tepid treatment, despite the mega-wattage of stars Carol Burnett, Bronson Pinchot, George Hearn and Ruthie Henshall. Quite honestly, I've never experienced Sondheim's admittedly wonderful music performed in such a bitter vein.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Rainmaker, The
Brooks Atkinson Theater

It never really became apparent to me how influential N. Richard Nash's 1954 The Rainmaker, was until watching WPIX recently where I suffered through "Three Men And A Little Lady" and noticed that Tom Selleck and Nancy Travis rehearse a scene from the play early in the picture. It is meant to parallel the Selleck-Travis budding romance, but when watching Scott Ellis' newest incarnation currently on Broadway, one finds it is just better to stick with the original source.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Amadeus
Music Box

It has been 20 years since Peter Shaffer's acclaimed play Amadeus has been on Broadway, and the newest revival is dignified, well acted and also thoroughly wrongheaded. The playwright has revamped the show to remove some of the melodrama that has always bothered him, but in the process has removed the play's sinister allure.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Angels in America - Part One: Millennium Approaches
Southern Oregon University - Department of Theater Arts

For its final drama of the 1900s, Southern Oregon University presents Tony Kushner's acclaimed play, Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches. The play, its production and its realization lift the Department of Theater Arts to a new level of achievement, integrity and artistic courage. It will draw controversy here in this small Oregon city, more than in many of the metropolitan and international locations where Angels has been presented and gained praise.

Al Reiss
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Barnum
Players

With red and gold predominating and circus paraphenalia on stage and side stages, The Players of Sarasota might be performing under the Big Top.  Problem: guests from Sailor Circus don't appear until the rousing "Follow the Band," so the antics are indeed mild for a town noted for circus.  This does not apply to Steve Dawson as the dauntless Barnum, who leaps onto the central platform to "defend the noble art of humbug." He takes our vote, and eyes, whether he's performing magic tricks, bouncing on a trampoline or skimming along a high wire.  He persuades us a kid (slick Geo

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Bash
Canon Theater

Neil LaBute's trio of riveting monologues in Bash share a common setup: a seemingly ordinary, innocent person reveals dark, evil secret in banal, deadpan fashion.  In the first monologue, "Medea Redux," Calista ("Ally McBeal") Flockhart turns in a skilled performance as a young woman sitting in a pool of harsh light and recounting for the police how and why she came to kill her small child.  The monologue describes her seduction at 13 by her high school science teacher, an act that contrasts her sweet, trusting humanity against his unctuous, cynical nature.  Pushed to

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Fame
Pantages Theater

Fame musical tries hard to seem fresh and original after its previous outings as a movie and syndicated tv series but doesn't quite make the grade. How many variations on the struggling-high school student theme can we sit through? What also disappoints in this road show production is the sameness of the music and lyrics, the sound of which is severely flattened by the electronic amplification of the miked cast.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Full Circle
Oregon Cabaret Theater

For the millennium, Oregon Cabaret Theatre offers a premiere of an original production, Full Circle. Like most Oregon Cabaret shows, this is a musical. But it isn't like other OCT musicals. It's a mix of fable, parable, myth, dream and hyper-reality in the metaphor of satire. Giancarlo draws principally from Native American myths, bringing them into circular transitions with modern life: civilization and its discontents. The show opens with a visually satiric prologue, a dance by "Modern Persons" who bridge time.

Al Reiss
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Guys And Dolls
Downtown Cabaret Theater

A number of years ago, the Downtown Cabaret in Bridgeport gave a successful, spirited production of this wonderful show, with both music and lyrics by one man, Frank Loesser. Now, Damon Runyon's delightfully down and dirty denizens of Times Square, clothed in a perfect riot of stripes and plaids (courtesy of Dodger Costume Rentals), on a free-form, color-drenched set (designed by J.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Exact Center Of The Universe, The
Century Center Theater

Joan Vail Thorne's The Exact Center Of The Universe takes us to semi-familiar territory in its story of Vada Love Powell (Frances Sternhagen), an aging Southern belle in the 1950s. She's alarmed by her son Appleton's (Reed Birney) shotgun marriage to a sweet Italian girl (Tracy Thorne), all the while being visited by his new bride's twin sister (also played by Thorne), who is softening the blow for her beloved sibling. Vada Love is a feisty old bird, but not your garden-variety, crotchety old widow.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Heartbreak House
Actors Theater Of Louisville

How satisfying it is to feast at the banquet of words and ideas provided by the wily Mr. Shaw in his Heartbreak House. Actors Theater of Louisville has set a splendid table for this production of what Shaw, ever in competition with Shakespeare, called his King Lear.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Hellcab
Ivanhoe Studio

The Hellcab, with its original cast and director, is revving its ignition in Los Angeles on December 1st, but the meter is still running in Chicago, as it has been, continuously, since 1992. Richard Cotovsky, the sixth and most recent of the title vehicle's pilots through the Boschian labyrinth of Christmas Eve in the Big Windy, has the face of a Veronica's Veil and the voice of a field medic in the Hundred Years' War, both of which convey the subtlest of rages and the greatest of compassions.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 1995
Kiss Me, Kate
Martin Beck Theater

New York, don't bite your nails worrying if they botched up Kiss Me Kate like they did Annie Get Your Gun. Kate is (as in the title of the show's deliciously nostalgic waltz) "Wunderbar." Although un-billed playwright John Guare has done a little tweaking of the original book that Bella and Sam Spewack ingeniously fused with William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, there is no radical revisionism at work here.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Price, The
Royale Theater

The excellent revival of Arthur Miller's The Price currently on Broadway is a fitting companion piece to this season's earlier, acclaimed production of his Death of a Salesman. In fact, it stands ever more firmly at the forefront of Miller's canon.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Rainmaker, The
Brooks Atkinson Theater

In this forever lovely 1954 play, traveling con-man Bill Starbuck brags he can bring rain to the drought-beset western town by "pitching sodium chloride up to the clouds, electrifying the cold front, neutralizing the warm front, barometricizing the tropopause and magnetizing occlusions in the sky." With Scott Ellis' magical staging for the Roundabout Theater Company, there is little doubt in our gullible minds that he is going to do it.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Tango Argentino
Gershwin Theater

Tango Argentino is the show that started a real craze when it hit Broadway 14 years ago. This group of dancers and musicians don't aspire to the splashes of glitz and glamour that marked the Forever Tango troupe two years ago. This company was the first to mainstream the tango internationally, and it still appears rooted in integrity, if somewhat lacking in theatrical imagination. It remains a show designed more for purists than for tourists. The format for this presentation is simple: sensuous movement and evocative music.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Bartenders
Theatre/Theater

Louis Mustillo, a veteran character actor ("High Incident"), comes from a bartending family and has spent time behind "the stick" himself.  He puts his twin talents to good use in Bartenders, a one hour monologue comprising five sharply etched portraits of modern-day barkeeps.  Mustillo uses his strong voice and moon-shaped but expressive face to bring these different barmen to life.  One is a colorful, slangy New Yorker who loves working at a businessman's bar where a choice quip and a flattering remark produce regular and generous tips; another is a lonely, drunken

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Amadeus
Ahmanson Theater

Thanks to tour de force performances by David Suchet and Michael Sheen and to a smooth, glowing production by Hall and designer William Dudley, Shaffer's take on the Salieri/Mozart conflict comes across with considerable power twenty years after first written and performed. It doesn't hurt that the production has come to L.A. after a long run in London, where performances were well honed and the script rewritten.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Apple Tree, The
Goodspeed Opera House

In this revival of The Apple Tree, supervised by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, Joanna Glushak's dazzling transformation in a twitch of her dusty broom from Ella, the grimy bedraggled chimney sweep to Passionella, the blond Hollywood movie star with a voluminous bosom, makes the journey to East Haddam a priority.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Betrayal
Yale Repertory Theater

Under the discerning direction of Liz Diamond, the Yale Repertory Theater is presenting a meticulous production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal, which proves that the pen can be more cutting than the sword in this lethally-surgical examination of adultery.  Over the past 40 years, this English playwright, whose name is synonymous with modern theater literature, has written 16 plays, all of which are noted for their spare style, intense pauses and somewhat ambiguous plots.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Beyond Dorothy Parker
Actors Theater of Louisville - Victor Jory Theater

As Dorothy Parker once said to her boyfriend, 'fare the well,' Ella Fitzgerald croons on the recording played just before the lights come up on the world premiere of Beyond Dorothy Parker, a one-woman play written and directed by Barbara H.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Carbon Copy Building, The
The Kitchen

I admit it, I'm lazy as hell when I read the comics.  If I have a minute or two, my eyes will sweep across the three or four cartoon blocks in a strip, searching for the funny.  If I have less than a minute, I'll focus right on the last strip, and if it's cute, I'll backtrack to see the set-up.  Of course, that's not the way to treat what some consider an art form, and it's impossible to treat certain cartoonists that way.  Heaven knows, Ben Katchor's work demands a sedate, museum-like trek from block to block, the cumulative effect being more important than any kind of fina

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Contact
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

Contact comprises three absorbing and provocative dance dramas. In a forest glade, 1767, a servant pushes a pretty girl on a swing while an aristocrat spreads a picnic basket.  The aristocrat is obviously beguiled by the girl, whose insinuating legs are sent flying over his head like clipping scissors.  His interest in her grows more amorous as she playfully taunts him with each provocative shift of her body. When the doting aristocrat departs to get more champagne, the girl notices that the servant's previously passive behavior is becoming more aggressive.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Come Blow Your Horn
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

Until the third act, both this first autobiographical play and the actors seem a bit long in the tooth. The sarcastic humor of Come Blow Your Horn, however, holds up better than most of the other what-would-become-famous one-liners. Stephen A. Gonya looks perpetually worried rather than a slick playboy, as if he knew his days in that role were numbered. J. Paul Wargo beguiles as his 2l-year-old brother who wants to fill his slick shoes and silken shirts, while gathering material to be a writer.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Complete History Of America (Abridged), The
Actors Theater of Louisville - Victor Jory Theater

Looming over the stage and frequently rolling her eyes at the nonsense being spouted by three frisky actors as they purport to lead us throughThe Complete History of America (Abridged) is a giant head of Miss Liberty herself.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Defending The Caveman
Pantages Theater

I watched Rob Becker's 90-minute stand-up routine about the differences between men and women -- especially husbands and wives -- with constantly conflicting emotions. One moment my inner voice said, "How familiar, how old hat," the next it shut up and I found myself laughing. Never uproariously, never out of some kind of shock of recognition as at early Lenny Bruce / Richard Pryor. Becker isn't that bold or original; his cutting-edge is about as keen as a butter knife.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Dame Edna: The Royal Tour
Booth Theater

Janet Reno wants me to do a makeover. She wants me to bring out her hidden femininity, says Dame Edna candidly and with a sincerity that could serve as a lesson in misplaced diplomacy. Notwithstanding this endearingly egotistical superstar's illusions of being a renowned "beauty consultant, investigative journalist, chanteuse, swami, adviser to British royalty, grief counselor, spin-doctor and icon," Dame Edna is to be seriously considered as a force for the millennium.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Do I Hear A Waltz?
George Street Playhouse

Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents' musical, Do I Hear a Waltz?, is rarely produced -- and for good reason, as the revival at the George Street Playhouse demonstrates. Laurents' book, based on his The Time of the Cuckoo, is characterized by trite situations and some unappealing characters. Leona Samish (Penny Fuller) an unmarried American school teacher, travels alone to Venice with dreams of romance.

Donald Collester
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Edmond
Source Theater

Is the moral to David Mamet's modern parable, Edmond, "Don't walk out on your wife or the bogeyman will get you?" Indeed, this is what happens to Edmond (Rick Foucheux in a strong, anguished performance that doesn't quite succeed in eliciting our sympathy for one of Mamet's most unsympathetic characters). Declaring bluntly to his wife (Lucy Newman-Williams) that he stopped loving or desiring her years ago, he threatens to leave, only to have her evict him. Cut loose from propriety, he is promptly swallowed up by his own demons.

Barbara Gross
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Epic Proportions
Helen Hayes Theater

Howevermuch the ancient Israelites would have loved to sprint across the desert towards the promised land, fate decreed that they spend forty years slogging across the sand, turning a joyous deliverance from Egypt into a tedious shlep. To some extent, the same thing happens to Larry Coen and David Crane's zany comedy, Epic Proportions, which has the campiness and punchlines to be a romp but succumbs to inconsistency and clumpy pacing.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Faith Healer
Rudyard Kipling

Four mesmerizing monologues by three characters -- faith healer Frank Hardy, his wife Grace, and his manager Teddy -- constitute Brian Friel's Faith Healer, the celebrated Irish playwright's exploration, in the style of "Rashomon," of the trio's shared lives.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Fiddler On The Roof
Derby Dinner Playhouse

Could I sit through yet another performance of the oft-seen Fiddler on the Roof, I wondered? Indeed I could at the sterling presentation by Derby Dinner Playhouse that won my admiration from the outset and held my undivided attention throughout. One of the great works of the American musical theater, Fiddlerwon the Tony Award for best musical of 1964.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
October 1999

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