Silence! The Musical
Venice Theater- Pinkerton

It’s not necessary but it is helpful to have seen the movie Silence of the Lambs, which the musical Silence! parodies. Its heroine Clarice hopes to become a full fledged FBI investigator by finding killer Buffalo Bill. She has to seek help from Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a cannibalistic killer in prison. A group of lambs helps narrate her quest.

Unlike the movie, the stage musical is almost incredibly vulgar, especially being shown in a staid place like Venice, Florida.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2018
Frankenstein
Theater Wit

Imagine a newborn baby—not a round, cuddly, greeting-card cherub, but a thin, pale, hairless anthropoid with the complexion of a peeled twig and a skull like a cracked eggshell. Now imagine this helpless infant's first experiences being rejection, privation, brutality and betrayal by those whose kindness cannot protect him.

Does it come as any surprise when this "monster" strikes out in mimicry of the cruelty shown him by his mentors?

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Arcadia
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Defying classification, Arcadia is a satire on “English country house plays” and excesses of academic and literary theories and research, a comedy because often funny and it ends mainly happily and with a dance, a drama because of conflicts between order and chaos as well as people and their times and indeed one that deals with the problem of time itself. Some will note there’s tragedy in what befalls a heroine and reputation for her scientific-mathematical findings.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Quack
Kirk Douglas Theater

The wellness industry takes a drubbing in Quack,  Eliza Clark’s acerbic comedy now in a world premiere at the Kirk Douglas. The quack in question is Dr Irving Bauer (Dan Bucatinsky), a vain, narcissistic, excitable dispenser of medical advice on national TV. His afternoon show (think Dr.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Popcorn Falls
Davenport Theater

Call it “lesser tuna” with a greater heart. Much like the still-remembered comedy, Greater Tuna, James Hindman’s Popcorn Falls is a two-hander where both hands play myriad roles to tell the story of a small community and its eccentrics. Here, the crisis is that the titular town has gone bankrupt and is about to be taken over by an evil mogul who has cut off their water rights. He demands payment and fully anticipates their default. One obstacle to his victory: a big check arrives, earmarked for the town’s theater.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Broadway Lights
Match Theater Complex

The wonderful Broadway Lights production Kelli Estes’s Lone Star Lyric troupe just provided Houstonians was performed at the local MATCH Theater Complex, located at 3400 Main Street in Houston. The event was a follow-up to the recent roadshow performances that took place during the group’s cabaret tour across North and West Texas under the auspices of both the Texas Hill Country Opera & Arts,and the Sweetwater Municipal Auditorium Applause Series.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Ferryman, The
Bernard B. Jacobs Theater

The Ferryman is Jez Butterworth's exemplary peek into the makeup of a rural Northern Irish family during the long-running political "troubles." On the stage of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, a suspicious meeting in a dark Derry alley evolves into a personal generational play, lavish with emotion, laughs, tears, and especially secrets. The secret in the alley weaves as an undercurrent through the extended family further north.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Wiz, The
Hobby Center

It was just before curtain time when Dan Knechtges, the very enthusiastic artistic director of Houston’s Theatre Under the Stars, stepped on stage to welcome the audience of the current run of the new TUTS production of the Charlie Smalls musical, The Wiz. Mr. Knechtges promised the audience it was “in for a treat,” and I am sure many agreed when the final curtain came down. With its creative book by William F. Brown, this 1975 Broadway success was a pioneer in the use of an all-black cast.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Midnight at the Never Get
York Theater at St. Peter's Church

If you want a bit of theatrical heaven, along with a smidgen of hell, a mini primer of late 60s gay history—with the obligatory nod to Stonewall included—and a lot of love, all both literally and figuratively, get thee to Midnight at the Never Get, the York Theater’s latest musical production, before it closes on Sunday, November 4th. With a 5-piece backup band, two talented leads, and a roster of original songs about life and love, both found, lost, and found again, the 90-minute musical is part theater and all cabaret, and the place to be.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Apologia
Laura Pels Theater in the Harold & Miriam Steinberg Center

Alexi Kaye Campbell's play, Apologia, presents a birthday celebration with little party spirit. In 2009, Kristen Miller (Stockard Channing), a bitter activist/art historian, born American is now living in an English countryside cottage, where she waits for her party guests. Expected are her grown sons, Peter and Simon (both played by Hugh Dancy) and their girlfriends and also her long-time best friend, Hugh (John Tillinger).

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Girl from the North Country
Public Theater

What do you get when you cross The Iceman Cometh and Pump Boys and Dinettes? I’m not sure, but I’m guessing it would resemble Girl from the North Country, a downbeat jukebox musical set in a Depression-era boarding house full of lost souls who interrupt their unhappiness long enough to sing snatches of roughly two dozen Bob Dylan songs.

For about an hour, this conceit works amazingly well.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Desperate Measures
New World Stages

If musical geniuses can update Romeo and Juliet to follow warring gangs the west side of New York or The Taming of the Shrew to poke fun at feuding actors who open in Venice, no one’s stopping those with lesser (but still notable) gifts from doing their own bard raiding. Good thing, too, or else we wouldn’t have the always entertaining, occasionally inspired, new musical comedy Desperate Measures by composer David Friedman and librettist/lyricist Peter Kellogg.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Winter Solstice
City Garage

’Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house….some very nasty things were taking place.

German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig doesn’t offer much Yuletide cheer in Winter Solstice, now in an American premiere at City Garage.  The play, a subtle political allegory, is set in Germany and centers on Albert (Taylor Lee Marr) and his wife Bettina (Natasha St.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Waverly Gallery, The
Golden Theater

It’s interesting to note that The Waverly Gallery begins with a solid brick wall, as does The Ferryman. It could also be said that while both plays inject humor into a difficult situation, the audience feels mounting trepidation. In this case, it’s 1989 in New York City; the action moves from Greenwich Village to the Upper West Side. The tiny underwhelming gallery of the title is run by an elderly, scrappy aging hippie named Gladys Green.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Pillowman, The
Underground Collective

When one of Milwaukee’s newest theater companies decided to mount a production of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, they got permission from McDonagh himself to cast the main character, a dark fantasy writer named Katurian, as a woman. The result is both powerful and mesmerizing.

The Pillowman, one of McDonagh’s earlier works along with The Beauty Queen of Leenane and A Skull in Connemara , opened on Broadway in 2005 at the Booth Theater. It starred Billy Crudup (from the film, “Almost Famous,”) and Jeff Goldblum (“Jurassic Park”).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Women of Soul
Black Ensemble Theater

Federico Garcia-Lorca once defined duende as "a mysterious power that all may feel and no philosophy can explain." The same enigma may be applied to the concept of "Soul Music"—a predominantly (though not exclusively) African-American artistic genre associated with individual expression of intense emotion arising from personal or tribal experience, typically manifested in embellishments such as key changes, cadenzas and spoken-word asides. What distinguishes the female voice of Soul, however, is the subtext of defiance injected into even the most docile of lyrics.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Ruffles, or a Progression of Rakes
The Tank

The theater of the absurd is alive and well, thank you. I don’t use the term in the loose sense, as applied randomly to nearly everything written after World War II that’s not realism. I use it in the strict sense,le théâtre de dérision, in which nonsense is baked into the form of the play as a philosophy.

I’m speaking of Normandy Sherwood’s play Ruffles, or a Progression of Rakes, recently produced by and at The Tank.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Resistible Rise of JR Brinkley, The
FringeHUB

JR Brinkley was a Kansas doctor—faux doctor, actually—in the 1920’s who gained fame with a cure for erectile dysfunction: implanting goat testicles in his patients. He was so celebrated that he ran for governor and won the popular vote, but his opponent won the election on a technicality, praise God (votes misspelling his name were discarded). He was ultimately exposed, discredited, and convicted of the obvious crimes. An American success story indeed.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Into the Woods
Crighton Theater

The music of Broadway composer, Stephen Sondheim, is unusually complex and sophisticated, but sometimes considerably dark as well. It would never be confused with the cheerful Rodgers & Hammerstein tunes that you might hum on the way home from a theater. So it is, that I tend to approach Sondheim with a bit of caution.

Such was the case when I attended last week’s opening weekend of Stage Right’s very wonderful production of Sondheim’s Into the Woods, with its unique musical peek into the world of childhood fairy tales.

David Dow Bentley
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Vietgone
David Henry Hwang Theater

Here’s a blast of rude, irreverent humor mixed with heartfelt drama and spiced with hip-hop. I’m talking about Vietgone, the play by Qui Nguyen which has just kicked off East West Players’s 53rd season (EWP is the nation’s longest-running Asian-American theatre, by the way). Nguyen has been produced by EWP before; he wrote the book for the company’s 2011 production of “Krunk Fu Battle Battle.” The playwright also appeared on stage to introduce Vietgone in hilarious and rambunctious fashion. He should do a solo show one day.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Ferryman, The
Bernard B. Jacobs Theater

“To be Irish is to know that in the end, the world will break your heart.” This quote from Daniel Patrick Moynihan readily applies to the dazzling production of The Ferryman. For all the dancing, singing, and telling jokes, at the heart is a terrible tragedy which we immediately sense will bear dire consequences. Quinn Carney (Paddy Considine), strong, affable, hard-working, lost his brother Seamus ten years ago.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Thurgood
Geva Theater - Mainstage

Despite already having knocked people out in splendidly acted versions, this important and enormously appealing play seems to be moving to “National Treasure” status in ever-more-polished versions. Geva’s has nowhere to go after its just-opened, new production, which closes November 16 and will probably sell out. But this one-actor account of the extraordinary life of our first African-American Supreme Court justice is so rewarding, inspiring, and just plain fun that succeeding versions are probably already in the works.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Gloria
Daryl Roth Theater

Christine Lahti isn’t doing an impression of Gloria Steinem. For example, she doesn’t attempt Steinem’s flat Midwestern regionalism, a product of growing up in Toledo, Ohio. But with the aviator glasses, the big streaked wig, and an outfit that could have come out of Gloria’s closet, she completely captures the look of this feminist icon, even down to the graceful hand movements.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Radiant Vermin
Odyssey Theater

L.A.’s newest theatre company, Door Number 3, hits a home run on its first at-bat with its production of Radiant Vermin, now running at the Odyssey Theater. Written by British playwright Philip Ridley, the play is about as savage an attack on petty bourgeois values as you’ll ever encounter.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Oxy, Ohio
McKaw Theater

More than a half-century ago—1956, to be exact—Michael V. Gazzo called our attention to the dangers of pharmaceutical drug addiction in a play premised on a returning war hero's craving for the morphine administered by medics during his recovery from wounds received in action. His entire family's happiness is soon threatened by affliction arising from his desperate search for the now-illicit curatives.

Nowadays we know better than to allow such suffering, right? Not according to S.J.

Mary Shen Barnige
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Something Rotten!
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

For once, Broadway musical fans are treated to an original show that doesn’t derive from a cartoon (Spongebob Squarepants, Annie), an ancient novel (Les Miserables), or an old film (King Kong). Instead, audiences are treated to something that, while not completely fabulous, at least it isn’t something that’s pulled off a shelf. It’s something completely new, and refreshingly so.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Winning Side, The
Acorn Theater

Hearing Tom Lehrer's song about Wernher Von Braun, a world-famous scientist, some may remember the lines, "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? / That's not my department!" Yet, the song continues, "Some have harsh words for this man of renown/But some think our attitude/Should be one of gratitude." This satirical song about is sung at the opening of the second act of The Winning Side, a stamp on this challenging play exploring questions about one man's politics, science, and ethics.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Wild Abandon
Irish Repertory Theater

The Irish Repertory Theater’s production of Wild Abandon, Leenya Rideout’s intimate one-woman autobiographical extravaganza—housed in the Rep’s second venue, an intimate 50-seater—is one of a handful of Off Broadway plays that everybody is talking about. Critics are raving, and audiences are returning again and again with friends in tow, as they simply cannot believe that any one person can be that talented and not already household name.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Hysteria of Dr. Faustus, The
Paradise Factory

The Hysteria of Dr. Faustus, produced by The Seeing Place Theater at The Paradise Factory, is yet another turn on the Faustus myth. It’s written by Brandon Walker, who also plays the title role, and it’s directed by Erin Cronican, who also plays Wagner and Mephistopheles.

The play opens with the 80-year-old Heinrich Faustus addressing his Wittenberg class (us). He storms off after some inexplicable student heckling. When he’s at his home desk we meet his assistant, Wagner.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Salome
Irondale Center

What a wonder Salome is! Oscar Wilde wrote it in French in 1891. His infamous crush, Lord Alfred Douglas, translated it into English, but Wilde was so dissatisfied with his work that, some critics tell us, he essentially translated it again. At any rate, the Lord Chamberlin suppressed the London production (which would have starred Sarah Bernhardt) and the play premiered in France.

It’s unabashedly hyperbolic, deliberately overwritten, as extravagant and overblown as dramatic prose can be. Wilde tells us everything six times. What style is this?

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Johnny Got his Gun
Ivy Substation

Like Joe Bonham, Johnny Got his Gun refuses to die. First a 1938 novel by Dalton Trumbo (later one of the Hollywood Ten), then a movie and now a play, Johnny Got his Gun has a life that will not quit. Good thing too, because its anti-war message remains relevant and important.

The latest version is an adaptation by British playwright Bradley Rand Smith which was first done in England a few years ago as a one-man play. Now Tim Robbins, artistic director of Actors’ Gang, has added an eight-person chorus to enhance and expand Smith’s text.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
On Beckett
Irish Repertory Theater - Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage

There are some performers who can do no wrong. Case in point: Bill Irwin. Who else could keep an audience richly entertained for an hour and a half with a subject as difficult and often unfathomable as the writings of Samuel Beckett? But Irwin loads the deck. Far from delivering a stuffy lecture, he allows us into the world where he and the Irish author meet through dialogue and stage directions.

Irwin offers us different interpretations of several Beckett passages, and to see the machinations worked out is as intriguing as anything now on stage.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Wild Abandon
Irish Rep - W. Scott McLucas Studio Stage

God bless the Irish Repertory Theater for providing such an inviting venue for performers like Leenya Rideout. Yes, she should be starring in a musical on Broadway, but here, we get the benefit of hearing her speak her own words, and sing her own songs. She is a dazzling talent; I lost track of how many instruments she plays, chief among them the violin. Her singing voice is delightful in several genres, equally comfortable in folk, rock and classic Italian. She’s lovely to look at, with undisputable acting chops.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Six Degrees of Separation
Redtwist Theter

You may think you know this play. Since its premiere in 1990, John Guare's observations on fashionable Manhattanites jolted out of their comfort zone by a hustler in search of glamour have been a popular fixture in the repertoires of commercial companies and after-school drama clubs alike.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Mother Night
59E59 Theaters

It would be so great if Mother Night were less topical. If we could listen to the hate filled propaganda which is being spewed out without having to ponder our current social and political situation. But no thinking person can fail to note the uncomfortable truth that so much of what we’re seeing onstage relates to what we hear on the news and read about in “the failing New York Times.”

Most of the production belongs to the talented Gabriel Grilli as Howard W. Campbell, Jr. He’s an ordinary guy with an ordinary name.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Arendt-Heidegger: A Love Story
Theater for the New City

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e. the reality of experience) and the distinction between the true and the false (i.e. the standards of thought) no longer exist.” – Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

Thinking is not merely l’engagement dans l’action [engagement in the action] for and by beings, in the sense of the actuality of the present situation. Thinking is l’engagement by and for the truth of Being.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Nap, The
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

If you are up for the "fast-paced, comedy-thriller," promised by this production, you may find yourself snookered by Richard Bean's latest play, The Nap. Previously, Bean succeeded in solidly potting the cue balls (so to speak) in One Man, Two Guvnors, his British farce that had nothing to do with snooker and earned a 2012 Tony Award for its star, James Corden. Unfortunately, The Nap is not as solid, not as thrilling, and nowhere as hilarious.

A Manhattan Theater Club Production at the Samuel J.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
September 2018
Raisin
WBTT Theater

Two things affected my viewing of Raisin, the Musical. I love and don’t think any version or adaptation can beat the ur play, A Raisin in the Sun. Like its author, Lorraine Hansberry, I was a born and bred Chicagoan, though a few years younger than she in 1951 and we lived apart in predominantly Black and White areas of the city.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Oppenheimer
Rogue Machine at the Electric Lodge

Rogue Machine has celebrated its move to a new home in Venice by mounting an impressive production of Oppenheimer, starring James Liebman as the brilliant, tormented physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, popularly known as the father of the atom bomb.

Written by the British playwright Tom Morton-Smith and first produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2015, the play tackles Oppenheimer’s life in a bold, full-frontal way: sweeping story, huge cast, video projection, dance numbers, complicated sound and lighting effects. L.A.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
October 2018
Bernhardt/Hamlet
American Airlines Theater

You can't take your eyes off her, Janet McTeer playing Sarah Bernhardt ("La Divine Sarah"), the charismatic French actress of the late 19th century. In playwright Theresa Rebeck's fact-based Bernhardt/Hamlet, McTeer, commanding in high black boots and tights, brings out the intense fierceness and sensuality of one of the primary divas in theater history. At the same time, McTeer reveals the undercurrent of bittersweet as Bernhardt is forced to face hard-set traditions, biases and the dark years of aging before her.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
September 2018

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