Freedom of the City, The
Lincoln Center Festival `99

Brian Friel wrote The Freedom of the City in 1973, one year after the terrible Bloody Sunday massacre in Londonderry, in which 13 civil rights marchers were fired upon and killed by British soldiers. In his play, Friel artfully creates three unfortunate innocents: Lily (Sorcha Cusack), a mother of 11, the streetwise young Skinner (Michael Colgan), and the more serious and astute Michael (Gerald Crossan).

Diana Barth
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Gathering, The
Playhouse 91

President Reagan's decision to go to Bitberg, West Germany in 1985, to visit the cemetery where German soldiers are buried amidst numerous Nazis understandably created a stir among Americans, both Jews and non-Jews. In Arje Shaw's engrossing new play The Gathering, as produced by the Jewish Repertory Company, the proposed visit prompts more than a mild verbal protest from Gabe, a widower, and a survivor of the Holocaust and the concentration camps.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Hurrah At Last
Gramercy Theater

Rather like a planet circling the sun is the appropriately titled Roundabout Theater Company, which, not because it wanted to, has been forced to move its location twice this decade. While awaiting the completion of its new theater on 42nd Street, the Roundabout production of Richard Greenberg's Hurrah at Last is currently at the Gramercy Theater on 23rd Street. McCarter Theater audiences had a sample of Greenberg's use of dramatic irony when his dark and disturbing play, Safe As Houses, had its world premiere there in March, 1998.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Chasing Monsters
Westport Country Playhouse

How did you spend your summer vacation?  Did you ever sit through a play and not understand or believe one thing that was happening on stage?  Well, I did.  This play, written by a young man whom I know as a very nice press agent with the Keith Sherman Agency in NYC, is a downright puzzlement.  How could experienced actors like Michael Learned, who is always a joy, and Ralph Waite, who has trod the boards in the best, and Jim McKenzie, longtime Executive Producer, choose a play as incoherent and repetitive as this?  It truly boggles the mind.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Amy's View
Barrymore Theater

The Dame who played a Queen (and won the Academy Award for it), now reigns over Broadway. The incomparable Dame Judi Dench is recreating her London Award-winning performance in David Hare's Amy's View. There is nothing, even in her most recent and exceptional screen portrayals ("Mrs. Brown," "Shakespeare in Love," to say nothing of the BBC-TV comedy series "As Time Goes By"), this actor does on the screen to compare with the visceral life she brings with her on the stage.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
As You Like It
F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theater

The New Jersey Shakespeare Festival opens with a winner with a fast-paced production of this beguiling comedy from the Bard. The real star of As You Like It is director Scott Wentworth, who shapes the performances and paces the production to the delight of the audience. Jennifer Van Dyck is marvelous as Rosalyn. Orlando is well-played by Ryan Artzberger. Amanda Ronconi makes for a lovely Celia. NJSF vet James Michael Riley scores again as Jacques, the melancholy and bitter fool, while Scott Whitehouse comes close to over the top as the jester Touchstone.

Donald Collester
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Alchemist, The
Stratford Festival - Festival Theater

Memories of Sid Caesar's brilliant satires arise while watching this classic, written by Shakespeare's major playwriting competitor. The period and platitudes in which Ben Jonson existed are vividly depicted in the recent hit movie, "Shakespeare In Love." Much of that scenario is apparent in this play, as it reflects the corruption of London society confronted with the Great Plague. The rapscallion elements thriving amid such social conditions are in full bloom.

Alan Raeburn
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Barrymore
Weiss Arts Center

Barrymore is a tour de force for an accomplished actor, who gets to play John Barrymore at the end of his career and life.  It requires a performer of considerable talents.  Since William Luce's play ran on Broadway with Christopher Plummer (in a Tony-winning performance), Dennis Parlato has a tough act to follow.  Yet he surprises and delights as the dissolute, charming and great thespian. A veteran of the Summerfun Company some years back, Parlato has gone on to several Broadway musicals. 

Donald Collester
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Bristol Renaissance Faire
Bristol Renaissance Faire

Do you want to see blood?

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Closer
239 West 45th Street

Closer, which comes to Broadway after deservedly winning the London Evening Standard and Critics' Circle awards, is sexier and more provocative than any other new play this season -- British or otherwise -- on Broadway. Under the playwright's own flawless direction, the play deals wittily yet uncompromisingly with the inability of four mature, passionate people to find either permanence or closeness in their intricately interlocked relationships. This is a comedy of manners that matters, as it skillfully dissects a circle of betraying and betrayed lovers.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Cronica De Una Muerte Anunciada
Repertorio Espanol

Like a cherished ritual, each of the townsfolk recount the fateful Monday morning when the Vicario twins (the nearly identical Donald Lopez and Francisco Martinez) took their revenge on Santiago Nasar for deflowering their sister. Any one of dozens of people might have been able to stop the brutal knifing right on his doorstep, but somehow the moment eluded them. Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez says they called it a death foretold, meaning that destiny had decreed Nazar's fate.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Game Of Love And Chance, The
Kennedy Center

As directed by Jean-Pierre Vincent, once the head of the Comedie Francaise, Marivaux's classic story receives a charming production by the Theater des Amandiers. The Game of Love And Chance was first performed in 1730. This revival ran for more than 100 performances in France and a week in London before crossing the Atlantic for a brief visit at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater.

Barbara Gross
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Got Apathy?
Brave New Workshop Theater

The Brave New Workshop, whose satirical revues are grounded in an improvisational process that evolves into scripted shows, has long specialized in political satire. Interestingly, perhaps because our current crop of politicians provides their own self-satirizing blunders, recent Workshop shows have been short on big comic payoffs. Got Apathy? skips the politics for a change, but mines a much more consistent vein of humor.

Michael Sander
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Guys And Dolls
Central Piedmont Community College Theater

There's a period of adjustment as you walk into panoramic Pease Auditorium. The youths portraying Nathan Detroit and his lowlife cohorts are less believable playing the ponies than they would be playing video games. Nor is director Eddie Mabry's youth brigade in line with the unique Damon Runyon patois, which adds an absurd formality to the flavorful venality. Fortunately, Mabry's choreography invariably hits the target.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
East Is East
Manhattan Theater Club - Stage I

Arriving from the London stage, this play lies smack in the middle of the perennial noisy family farce tradition but with a few intriguing twists. Author Ayub Khan-Din injects many themes -- bi-culturalism, international politics, religious identity, inter-generational conflict -- in this loving but frank portrayal of Pakistani immigrant George Khan's household. George's marriage to his English wife Ella has produced a brood that is more accepting of their father's culture than his Muslim religion. Alternately domineering and loving, George (a very believable Edward A.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Hellcab
Ivanhoe Studio

What makes this cab run? Since Hellcab's opening in 1992, no less than eleven actors (whose faces appear on the line of posters featured on the theater's marquee) have put their personal stamp on the role of the humble hackie piloting his yellow ferry through the stygian wilderness of Christmas Eve in the city. The alumni roster of ensemble members whose interpretations comprise the urban bestiary he meets on his pilgrimage reads like a storefront-circuit Who's Who (with several names -- notably Paul Dillon, Andrew Hawkes and Marc Grapey -- now making Coastal waves).

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Henry IV, Part Two
Oregon Shakespeare Festival

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival begins its 1999 production of Henry IV, Part Two, by re-creating the curtain call scene of last year's Henry IV, Part One. The play ends with a speech from Henry V, scheduled for the 2000 season. The theme of the production is transition; from the past, from decay and disease of a nation and people, toward a new future of purpose, victory and renewal -- for some.

Al Reiss
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
How I Learned To Drive
Arena Stage - Kreeger Theater

During the powerful last scene of Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, in the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage, Rhea Seehorn astounds as the Teenage Greek Chorus playing the heroine as a child. Although in her twenties, she looks preadolescent as she stares out wide-eyed at the audience, wearing a smocked dress and bobby socks. A few feet away, her adult alter ego, Li'l Bit (Deidre Lovejoy), reenacts her molestation at the age of eleven by Uncle Peck (Kurt Rhoads) during her first "driving lesson," which marked the last day she remembers inhabiting her body.

Barbara Gross
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
It Ain't Nothin' But The Blues
Vivian Beaumont Theater

[Reviewed at Lincoln Center] Actually, it's quite a lot besides the blues, which is the problem with this great idea / so-so execution of a revue, whose Tony nomination and good word of mouth have assured it a move out of Lincoln Center and into the Ambassador for the autumn.

Creators Charles Bevel, Lita Gaithers, Randal Myler, Ron Taylor and Dan Wheetman earn points for simplicity. The concept: put a talented cast on stage and let them sing three dozen classic, bluesy tunes, including ballads, rave-ups, down n' dirty swamp ditties and gospel rousers.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Les Mal-assortis
Galleria Toledo

The French Institute of Naples presented a lively adaptation of mid-17th-century French playwright Evaristo Gherardi's comedy, whose title can roughly be translated as The Misfits. The characters seem to be midway between the traditional commedia dell'arte stock types, with mostly improvised dialogue, and the lighter and more structured comedies of the next century. Cast with local actors -- all with excellent French -- the overall tone is less elegant and earthier than American audiences might be accustomed to.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Ring Round The Moon
Belasco Theater

Half a century can make a difference in an audience's tastes, perception, and interest. With regard to Jean Anouilh's wistful 1950 comedy, Ring Round the Moon, be prepared to receive the play's poetic and pedantic delicacies as you would a rare visit from an eccentric old aunt whose once-elegant graces have been corrupted over the years by the grim truth of reality.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Via Dolorosa
Booth Theater

David Hare is better known as a playwright than as an actor. Yet in Via Dolorosa, Hare proves to be almost as at home reciting his own text as he is writing it. Hare's visits two years ago to Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip prompted him to set down on paper his memories and reactions to a wide mix of tempestuous people in this most turbulent of places. The goal seemed to be to put a personable and sensible spin on the baffling conflicts between Arabs and Jews.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Into The Woods
Theater Charlotte

With its cunning cottages and sequoia-scaled trees -- plus a hardy beanstalk overarching the proscenium -- this Sandra Gray set is the most awesome set I've ever seen at Theater Charlotte. Sandra isn't the only Gray who's responsible for the glitter of Into The Woods. As tech director, George Gray peppers the proceedings with a variety of fireworks to accompany the fits and spells of the resident witch.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Accomplice
Actor's Theater of Charlotte - Duke Power Theater

Prepare to be bamboozled. This murder mystery is fiendishly dedicated to deception before you've settled into your seat. Even your sacred playbill isn't completely on the level. Then prepare to be royally amused. The jokes and the sexual give-and-take come fast and furious. Surprises grow and multiply. Most fascinating, the sands are frequently shifting. Which two characters are plotting foul play? Who is being double crossed, and who is the murder victim? Even where we are is subject to abrupt change.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
May 1999
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)
Park Square Theater

Linda Kelsey, familiar from "The Lou Grant Show" and other television appearances, proves to be an engaging stage presence in playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald's comic, feminist take on a couple of classic heroines. As cloistered academic Constance Ledbelly (an unnecessarily oafish name), she travels back in time to find out the truth about the women who played opposite Othello and Romeo, and discovers some truths about herself as well.

Michael Sander
Date Reviewed:
May 1999
Novecento
Sala Grande, Teatro Colosseo

Born aboard The Virginian to immigrant parents, Danny Goodman (aka Lemon Novecento) never left that ship his entire life. A vicarious traveler, he knew the tiniest details of London and Paris streets, gleaned from conversations with crew and passengers. Out of the blue, his natural gifts for jazz piano came to the fore, and he made a completely new take on that form, to the delight of the trans-Atlantic voyagers. The high point of his life was a competition with a disdainful Jelly Roll Morton, the latter reluctantly conceding Novecento's gifts.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
May 1999
Camping With Henry And Tom
Charlotte Rep - Booth Playhouse

The sparse action of this wilderness summit meeting has roots with deep import. Henry Ford, entrepreneur and bigot extraordinaire, has plotted to whisk President Warren Harding away from the surveillance of the Secret Service and the prying of the press. Ford hopes to buy an abandoned power plant from Congress at less than a penny on the dollar. Then, prefiguring Hitler's crazed final solution, Ford wants to buy the presidency and rid his nation of those fiendishly clever Jews who conspire to make life in America so miserable.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
April 1999
Doll's House, A
Theater Charlotte

A longtime expatriate, Ibsen knew that you had to travel far and suffer much to find true happiness. In Theater Charlotte's production of A Doll's House, we slowly discern that Nora Helmer has suffered much from her husband -- almost always unknowingly. Diligently seeking Torvald's favor, with admirable discretion and coquettish craft, she has never stopped to ask whether he was worth it. In the classic turning point, Ibsen skillfully reveals the contempt behind Torvald's condescension.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
April 1999
Weir, The
Walter Kerr Theater

Becoming bored during a play makes you aware of details you would otherwise tend to overlook. Take the howling wind that is heard outside designer Rae Smith's dismal Irish pub in a small Irish town. Except for its eerie B-movie effectiveness, it is a B-movie contrivance. But so are the lengthy ghost stories, as told by the pub's five occupants, that make up the fabric of the play.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 1999
Annie Get Your Gun
Marquis

Let it be said at the outset that I came to Annie Get Your Gun already armed with good will; I'd heard that despite the show's emphasis on marksmanship and shooting matches, not a single gun is fired on or off stage. As someone who loathes unnecessarily loud and startling noises, I felt grateful to director Graciela Daniele for finding clever and completely convincing ways of representing gun shots other than the piercing blasts New York theater too often accepts (Les Miz, Everybody's Ruby -- are you listening?).

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 1999
Amazing Grace
Children's Theater of Charlotte

Jill Bloede and Shay Youngblood are attempting to breathe new life into a moribund tale. Mary Hoffman's original book could be read as a bedtime story in as little as 10 minutes. So concise is the flavorless text of Amazing Grace that sometimes it's downright hermetic, and Caroline Binch's original illustrations vividly recall the artwork of elementary reading primers -- not a beautiful recollection.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
March 1999
Chicago
Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads
and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders."
[from "Chicago," by Carl Sandburg]

Al Reiss
Date Reviewed:
March 1999
Fever: A Tribute to Peggy Lee
Hennepin Center For The Arts

Connie Evingson, an adept singer with a cool jazz style, is a popular Twin Cities performer. She premiered and developed her Peggy Lee homage at Illusion's Fresh Ink workshop series and then brought the show in for a regular commercial run. Evingson does not impersonate Lee, although her blonde looks and Scandinavian background would qualify her for that approach. Instead, she sings in her own style many of the songs identified with Lee and, in between numbers, narrates snippets of biographical material.

Michael Sander
Date Reviewed:
March 1999
A un passo dall'alba
Teatro Verdi

Milan's most congenial experimental theater, the Teatro Verdi, hosted a production by sister site Teatro del Buratto that combined black-light puppetry with the customary avant-garde, mixed media presentation.  Inspired by the works of George Perec and Italo Calvino, the text concerns three travelers on a voyage of self-discovery.  A rather obnoxious sophisticate (Evelina Primo as Camilla) finds herself with the most unlikely and detestable companions: a mute woman (Ornella Vancheri as Io) and a next-to-useless guy (Gennaro Ponticelli as Moro). 

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
February 1999
Death of a Salesman
Eugene O'Neill Theater

By special arrangement with the Roundabout Theater Company, Broadway's Eugene O'Neill Theater is the new home for the Goodman Theater of Chicago's acclaimed production of Arthur Miller's great, tragic social drama, Death of a Salesman. As imaginatively staged by Robert Falls (the Goodman's artistic director), and empowered by a trio of extraordinary performances among many fine ones, this Salesman comes as close to a fresh approach as you are ever likely to have seen.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
February 1999
Good Person Of Szechuan, The
Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechuan invites and receives an "un-Brechtian" produc tion at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, yet the playwright's ironic comments on human exploitation of one class by another come through clearly. Here, Brecht mixes his commentary with melodrama. The Oregon production puts broad comedy, even slapstick, into the mix.

Al Reiss
Date Reviewed:
February 1999
Fosse
Broadhurst Theater

What are "Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries," "I Love A Piano" and "Mr. Bojangles" doing in a show about choreographer Bob Fosse -- the one who smoked and drank and worked himself to death? The one known for injecting darkly sexual overtones into every leg extension and finger curl?

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 1999
Forbidden Broadway: Cleans Up its Act!
Stardust Theater

There's a mouse in the house. No, that's not a reflection on the Stardust Theater, the new home of Forbidden Broadway after its years uptown. The rodent in question is Walt Disney, which figures repeatedly into the new line-up of Gerard Alessandrini's revue of Broadway spoofs. Not only is there an extended Lion King parody, but the four-member troupe often (perhaps too often) tweak the Disneyfication of Broadway, seeing it as the manifestation of Mayor Giuliani's campaign to G-rate all New York entertainment. It's an easy target and not the show's funniest.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 1999
Hedwig And The Angry Inch
Jane Street Theater

So many mini-genres are crowding New York theater right now—magic shows, angry British lower-class dramas, explorations of Jewish and/or gay identity—it's rare to come across a piece that's absolutely, uncategorizably new and different. When that show is also good, we're almost tempted to overpraise it. Back in February 1998, I took that risk with Hedwig and the Angry Inch, John Cameron Mitchell's fascinating, sometimes terrific mix of rock and roll cabaret act, performance art piece and cross-dressing spoof.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 1999
Side Man
John Golden Theater

The first half of the pallid 1998-99 Broadway season clogged the stages with such negligible entertainments as Getting and Spending and The Blue Room. Part two offered a slew of revivals and British plays.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 1999

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