Distant Fires
Stamford Theater Works

Distant Fires deals with black and white issues derived from sharply drawn characters, not polemic. Danger and hopelessness hang over the construction crew -- five men at work atop a ten-story building in Ocean City, Maryland, in the heat of the summer. On a marvel of a set, the actors speak their lines, quite eloquently, while actually pouring and spreading cement, actually recreating the duties of laborers. Three of the workers are black.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
February 1996
Annie Get Your Gun
Drury Lane Theater

The plot resolution -- the heroine deliberately losing a contest for love of a man who won't have her any other way -- presents problems for our egalitarian society, but Irving Berlin's score for Annie Get Your Gun remains irresistible. And once the Drury Lane ensemble demonstrate that they can sell "No Business Like Show Business" as if it were written only yesterday, we have full confidence they can pull off the rest. And they do.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
Blithering Heights: The Improvised English Gothic Romance
Ivanhoe Theater

Blithering Heights is another of the full-length improv offerings by The Free Associates, this one in the style of the Bronte Sisters. The evening I watched, they worked with audience suggestions to come up with heroine Catherine Milton, in love with Hunter, a man whose family business was secretly running a bordello. The family who take care of Catherine (by turning her into a servant and convincing her she was ugly and going bald) try to keep her from meeting the hero by locking her in the cellar.

Effie Mihopoulos
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
Caine Mutiny Court Martial, The
A Red Orchid Theater

When is the overthrow of authority justified, what is the responsibility of the individual to blow the whistle, and who profits -- always, who profits? Herman Wouk posed those questions in 1950 within the microcosm of a court-martial trial for a mutiny aboard an American warship. The 1954 movie version drowned any possible controversy in a flood of spectacle and sentimentality, but director Wilson Milam and an all-star ensemble or intensely committed actors delve into the ambiguities of the original material.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
Four Dogs and a Bone
Actors Theater of San Francisco

At the Actors Theatre of San Francisco, John Patrick Shanley's viper-tongued, dramatic indictment of Hollywood, Four Dogs And A Bone, receives an expert mounting from director Louis Parnell. This cautionary tale about the stratagems and mayhem of making feature films shows serious artistes from the East trying to make it in L.A. Not only has the producer gone over budget, he's under-insured the production. Curvaceous Brenda puts the moves on him to increase her part, while aging, libidinous Colette puts the moves on the writer.

Larry Myers
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
Gaslight
Stage Door Theater

Patrick Hamilton's classic 1939 potboiler receives a first-rate, Broadway-quality production at American Conservatory's Stage Door Theater. The talky thriller, made into a popular movie with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, became the prototype for our contemporary psychological drama, paving the way for such saw-horse vehicles as The Shrike, The Little Foxes and, of course, The Heiress. The term "gaslighting" was coined after the original production, meaning "convincing someone what they see isn't there."

Larry Myers
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
Father, The
Roundabout Theater

Take away a man's last vestige of pride and identity, Strindberg seems to say, and you drive him headlong into madness. Such is the direct thematic line of The Father, a psychodrama that still shocks and agitates nearly 110 years after its first publication. Beset by the women in his house, each of whom has a different approach to raising his daughter, Captain Adolf finds solace in the male hierarchy of his military duties.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
Richard Rodgers Theater

A secretary may not be a toy, but if you're Des McAnuff, a Broadway show is. McAnuff and designer John Arnone go all-out to turn this revival of How To Succeed into something out of FAO Schwartz -- all movement, eye-popping colors, sound and silliness. That it works, mmm.. 90% of the time, is a credit first and foremost to Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock & Willie Gilbert's miraculous book, one which, even played perfectly straight, could only offend the most humorless feminists.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
Charley's Aunt
Candlelight's Forum Theater

It is easy to imagine a troupe of collegiate players devouring this venerable antique with gusto, wringing maximum fun from the quaint language and manners, as well as the pivotal man-in-a-dress gag, until Brandon Thomas' vintage romantic comedy sparkled like new.  Unfortunately, the Forum cast are seasoned professionals, veterans of countless Plautian bedroom farces -- and it shows. 

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 1995
Hellcab
Tamarind Theater

To know a society, Dostoyevsky wrote, one must look inside its prisons and hospitals. Modern addendum: and drive a cab. Playwright Will Kern has done just that; his eight-month stint hacking it in Chicago gave fruition to a short, pungent, bittersweet play whose title, Hellcab, sums up its point-of-view. A series of blackout vignettes, Hellcab depends on raw, earthy dialogue and deft acting to show the truth of life on the mean streets of a big American city today.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
December 1995
Crazy For You
Country Dinner Playhouse

Crazy For You has been drastically reduced in size and spectacle to fit the Country Dinner Playhouse's arena stage, but the music, and one exceptional performance, save the show.

Patrick Rainville Dorn
Date Reviewed:
November 1995
Master Class
John Golden Theater

In his late, lamented opera show on New York's WKCR-FM, Stefan Zucker and his call-in listeners were constantly torn between the merits of expressive singing and pure Bel Canto loveliness. Even for these opera buffs, Maria Callas was an acquired taste, thrilling in her best moments, shrill and ululating in her worst, but most precious for what she represented: opera as a way of style, of purity, of life.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 1995
Blue Man Group
Charles Playhouse

In Tubes, Blue Man Group offers a frenetic clown show, exploring competition, conformity and technology with an anti-intellectualism that pooh-poohs art criticism even as it invites analysis. It's mask work—three blue, bald, silent heads with the timing of the Russian clowns. Their understated mime looks effortless, but there's careful analysis behind it. If you don't dig one element of their work, you'll dig another. They lunge at the information superhighway with metaphors on screen, and make audience members feel like Alice at the mad tea party.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
October 1995
Death Of A Salesman
Raven Theater

So much attention has been paid to Willy Loman as Tragic Hero, we often forget that he is, as the play's title states, a salesman -- kin to the cynical shysters of Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross and the butt of countless jokes trading on his ancestral stereotypes. Tom Higgins' Willy is a salesman first, however; a gladhander brimming with bluster and bonhommie.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 1995
Green E, The: The Environmental Elvis
Cafe Voltaire

I guess growing up in Athens, Georgia, makes you susceptible to Elvis. Comedian David Payle, who just moved to the Windy City from down South, has come up with a scheme to use Elvis' popularity to help save the environment. Thus comes the birth of The Green E - The Environmental Elvis. In a flashy white jumpsuit, Payle goes through a gamut of songs -- the Elvis trademark melodies, all right, but different lyrics. They're all rewritten by Payle to be environmentally conscious.

Effie Mihopoulos
Date Reviewed:
October 1995
Alice
Brooklyn Academy of Music

What with Calvin Klein forced to remove their nubile waifs and wafers from the sides of buses because of their “troubling” sexuality, this may be just the time to consider Charles Dodgson and his photographic obsession with a girl named Alice. Of course, Dodgson kept it in his pants—and on the page, his letters to Alice burned by her mother. But the book he wrote as one “Lewis Carroll” has inspired more adaptations than perhaps any other work of fanciful fiction.

"Alice in Wonderland," like all picaresque adventures, has its pluses and minuses as a dramatic vehicle.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 1995
Dangerous Corner
Atlantic Theater

The only thing dangerous about this production of Dangerous Corner is the way it turns the play’s malevolent irony into a sarcastic joke, second-guessing the audience’s laughter at J.B. Priestley’s often improbably revelations by staging each pronouncement with arch body language punctuating stilted dialogue. David Mamet doesn’t just fall into this trap, he leaps in, director’s manual first. He spreads the cast out across the Atlantic Theater’s vast stage, robbing Priestley’s cocktail-party-turned-murder-mystery of its tension.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 1995
Armando Diaz Experience, The
ImprovOlympic

Improv, by its very nature, is risky. Even strong performers have good nights and bad ones.  The night I saw The Armando Diaz Experience, Theatrical Movement & Hootenanny was an off-night for what seems to be a good improv cast. Uninspired, the troupe fell back on subjects that bring easy laughs: B-movies and an audience's titillation with adolescent sex fixations.

Effie Mihopoulos
Date Reviewed:
September 1995
Cast On A Hot Tin Roof
Ivanhoe Theater

The Free Associates celebrated their fourth anniversary of Cast On A Hot Tin Roof; four years of improvising plays in the manner of Tennessee Williams from on the spot audience suggestions. They do this exceptionally well, which is probably why they still have an audience for their tailor-made plays "not by Tennessee Williams" (as they state in the program notes).  So closely in his spirit do they follow, you could almost swear you're seeing a new, posthumously unearthed tidbit Williams wrote and tucked into a drawer. 

Effie Mihopoulos
Date Reviewed:
August 1995
Defending the Caveman
Helen Hayes Theater

So much of what's on Broadway is opulent to the point of being over-produced, it's invariably nice to come across a down-dressed, lower-key evening of intelligent comedy. Rob Becker's Defending The Caveman fits the bill in many ways; Becker's monologue offers a lot of amusing material about the basic differences between men and women, and he has a malleable face that can go from couch potato to Cro-magnon in seconds flat.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 1995
Smokey Joe's Café: The Songs of Leiber & Stoller
Virginia Theater

There's an idea behind Smokey Joe's Cafe - do as many Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller rock and roll songs as you possibly can in two hours - but there isn't really a concept. That's why director Jerry Zaks and choreographer Joey McKneely will give some numbers a theatrical "story," while the rest of the time they'll drop any pretense of an overall style and just let the talented cast step out and sing.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 1995
Big Wind on Campus
Don't Tell Mama

Taking a page from the Family Secrets book, Gregory Henderson comes up with one of the more impressive solo turns in recent memory. As impressed as we are by his skill at metamorphosing into old men, good ol’ boys, and gay majorettes, we’re also grateful that the seven vignettes comprising Big Wind on Campus have enough humor and forward momentum so as not to depend totally on Mr. Henderson’s enviable skills as a characterizer. 

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
February 1995
B.S.: The Completely Improvised Hospital Drama
Ivanhoe Theater

In a city full of improv companies, the Free Associates have to be one of the hardest working.  Not satisfied with Cast On A Hot Tin Roof, The Completely Improvised Play Not By Tennessee Williams, and Pick-A-Dick - The Completely Improvised Select-A-Detective Play, the group have added B.S.: The Completely Improvised Hospital Drama. The facility in question is Benevolent Saints Hospital, "One of Chicago's finest."  Even the program hype is a stitch: "Located somewhere between here and Belmont and eternity, B.S.

Effie Mihopoulos
Date Reviewed:
February 1995
Cats
Winter Garden Theater

Innovative for its time but terribly overrated mish-mash. The make-up and theater decor are wonderful, but the dancing is unexceptional, as is much of the music. The second act picks up with a shaggy fish story and "Memories," but it's too little, too late.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
1994
Forever Plaid
Royal George Cabaret Theater

Is there an audience on earth that won't be delighted by Forever Plaid? I don't think so. This irresistible, miniature musical revue is the ultimate nostalgia trip and feel-good show. On the surface, all is innocence, but Plaid's a savvy little vehicle, ninety uninterrupted minutes of wide-eyed humor and golden-oldie songs that would bring smiles to the heads of Mount Rushmore.

Richard Allen Eisenhardt
Date Reviewed:
October 1994
Miss Saigon
Broadway Theater

Nearly nine years have passed since hype and controversy overshadowed the actual content of Boublil/Schonberg's "Madame Butterfly" riff, Miss Saigon. On first viewing, I was stunned by John Napier's set design -- not so much for its furniture and spectacle but its incredible sense of space; the upstage area seemed to extend past infinity. I had quibbles with the sometimes iffy lyrics and the unmoving love story, but every time Jonathan Pryce slithered across the stage, all was forgiven.

While my admiration for Mr.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 1994
Gangstertown
Chicago's Gangstertown

Audiences at this brand of theater don't usually ask for much, so it's a pleasure to report that the dinner and the entertainment at newly-opened Gangsterland are both much better than they have to be. The latter consists of a song-and-dance revue featuring semi-authentic 1920's hits by Gershwin, Porter, etc.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 1994
Gangstertown
Chicago's Gangstertown

Chicago's corrupt gangster and political history are always good for a laugh -- or a new marketing concept. The latest project to milk the good old days of bootlegging and gang warfare is Chicago's Gangstertown, a revue based on the idea that fun-loving audiences want an eating & entertainment package that takes the Roaring Twenties very lightly. (Gangstertown opens on the site of another concept piece, Dry Gulch Dinner Theater, which ran since 1980 but closed this summer.

Richard Allen Eisenhardt
Date Reviewed:
September 1994
Phantom Of The Opera, The
Majestic Theater

Late in the first act, there are fifteen glorious minutes when everything comes together: music (the title song, "The Music Of The Night"), set (candelabras rising from the mist as the Phantom and Christine gondola their way across the prettiest sewer you ever saw), performance -- everything. When the Phantom first brings Christine down to his lair, the show is transported to the realm of legend.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
September 1994
Ann Hampton Callaway
Rainbow and Stars

There’s magic at Rainbow and Stars, with a hot cappuccino and a sharp, swingin’ cabaret artiste who works the crowd with a sweep of her head and the glint of her bugle beads.

Though a foggy night clouded the window view atop floor 65 of Rockefeller Center, this was still the place to celebrate autumn’s arrival in New York, with Ann Hampton Callaway the ideal hostess to usher the season in.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
September 1994
Betsy Salkind: The Lady is a Squirrel
Don't Tell Mama

Not just a squirrel but a tomcat, a seagull, a cow, and a stand-up comedienne. Such are the many personae of Betsy Salkind, visually a dead-ringer for MTV celebrity Kennedy, stylistically an offshoot of Lily Tomlin, Reno, and Andrea Martin. Salkind ties all her bits together with an animal theme, be it an unfunny cat that complains about second-class treatment or a very amusing squirrel that nibbles a giant piece of matzoh down to its last farfel.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
September 1994
Blue Man Group
Astor Place Theater

Gonzo performance art that may be the most fun you've ever had with your clothes on. Even if the thought of paint-filled marshmallows, cascading waves of toilet paper and fish-as-art doesn't fill you with anticipation, go anyway; maybe they'll let you wear the spurting gorilla suit. A recent look-in saw Blue Man going ever-so-slightly more commercial (including an opening sequence of verbal messages to the audience) and still burdened with one too many musical interludes, but hey, even heaven must have a rusty harp or two.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
August 1994
Boys from Syracuse, The
Fashion Institute of Technology - Haft Auditorium

There are quite a lot of people up on F.I.T.’s Haft Auditorium stage; some are British, most are American, and a couple of them even know what the hell they’re doing. The rest are at a loss, as is this under-rehearsed, unmanageable production of one of the first great musicals of the modern era. 

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
August 1994
Dressing Room Divas
Duplex

Dressing Room Divas, a one-act comedy that combines a couple of fictional characters with caricatures of five forceful movie stars, is a paean to the 20th century sensibility of camp. The show's premise is too inane to bear scrutiny, but it involves Meryl Streep, Bette Midler, Julie Andrews, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Collins and two florists being held hostage in a tiny dressing room prior to a benefit at Radio City Music Hall.

Charles Wright
Date Reviewed:
July 1994
Grease!
Eugene O'Neill Theater

Well, I thought it was going to be fun. After a pre-show warm up by a smarmy, lip-synching dee-jay, Miss Lynch waddles to the stage as a prim but lovable homeroom teacher, bantering with the audience and getting laughs just by fixing her widened eyes on a "student" and devastating him with a shocked exclamation of "GUM???" But all too soon, the amps kick on and Grease! becomes the equivalent of a transistor radio on the beach: loud, canned-sounding, and too staticky to entertain.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 1994
Amphigorey
Perry Street Theater

Charles Addams is no longer the only macabre cartoonist co-opted by the lively arts. Now Edward Gorey (he’s the one who does the opening animation for TV’s “Mystery” series) gets another off-Broadway revue (Gorey Stories came previously), with musical numbers derived from his mildly nasty ditties.

As a visual presentation, Amphigorey works splendidly; powder-faced actors (many with huge, darting eyes) cavort on the ink-on-white set, walking at odd angles, striking eccentric poses, and truly getting into the spirit of sepulchral comedy. 

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 1994
Beauty and the Beast
Palace Theater

Am I the only one on this planet who didn't see the movie? If so, lucky me because I enjoyed Disney's virgin theatrical venture, Beauty and the Beast, far more than those who gripe that it's a pale (and slavish) imitation of the animated film. One can say that Disney concentrated on spectacle, but ironically, the sets and "illusions" aren't particularly impressive.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 1994
American Enterprise
Theater at St. Clement's

Recently in danger of closing its doors due to funding gouges, New York State Theater Institute has survived and continues to bring serious theater to Troy, NY— and sometimes down into Manhattan. After a charming Beauty and the Beast and a ham-fisted Slow Dance on the Killing Ground, the company is back with American Enterprise, Jeffrey Sweet’s bio of entrepreneur George M. Pullman (John Romeo).

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 1994
Broken Glass
Booth Theater

In Broken Glass, his remarkably vital return to Broadway, Arthur Miller tries to connect three concurrent tragedies: a middle-aged woman’s sudden paralysis, her husband’s impotence and the subsequent hardening of their marriage, and Kristallnacht - happening a continent away but on the front page of every newspaper. 

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 1994
Avenue X
Playwrights Horizons

Put aside worrying about how close Avenue X’s Italian vs. black underclass strife comes to West Side Story’s white vs. Hispanic underclass since both musicals involve frustrated youth and simmering street violence, and this a cappella musical will hook you quickly and for keeps.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 1994

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