Far And Wide
Mint Theater

In his best-known work, La Ronde, Arthur Schnitzler explored how the dominant person in one sexual relationship can be, simultaneously, the lackey in another. Far and Wide takes a broader social view, showing how a wife's infidelity (or even the hint of it) can be so much more of a scandal than her husband's habitual bits on the side. Appropriately for the social set depicted, it's all played as high comedy, sobering up just long enough for seemingly inconsequential events to become tragic.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Ain't Misbehavin'
Paper Mill Playhouse

Either by association or direct composition, the legendary composer/pianist/entertainer Fats Waller (1904-1943) was famed for "Spreadin' Rhythm Around." 25 years ago, a sizzling, if small-scaled, revue called "Ain't Misbehavin'" proved a winning homage to the great Waller.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Aida
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

The theme of romance in a time of war is hardly new, but this sparkling production of Aida nonetheless captures our interest with its soulful tale of an enslaved African princess and her Egyptian lover. As the show opens, the two neighboring territories, Egypt and Nubia, are at war. This brings together the victorious Egyptian captain, Radames, and one of the captured Nubians, Aida. Her outspoken manner piques Radames' curiosity, and soon this interest turns to forbidden passion.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Alpha
SouthEnd Performing Arts Center

Seeking to apply his fight choreography skills to a female combat drama, Tony Wright quickly discovered there were no existing scripts to suit his needs. So the actor/playwright, who directed last year's slumber party version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, cooked up his own futuristic sci-fi potboiler, Alpha, now playing at the SouthEnd Performing Arts Center.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Cafe a Go Go
Cafe a Go Go

The musical, Cafe a Go Go, which takes us to a working-class London nightclub in the 60s, is a fun take on the Grease generation: teenage romance with verve, spirit, life, youthful enthusiasm and vigor. Written and directed by The Heather Brothers, the songs are bouncy and clever and the action is more contemporary than Grease, and reaches levels of comedy more entertaining for today.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Capitol Steps: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Houseman Theater

There is a large audience hungry for good political satire, and Capitol Steps, playing again at the John Houseman Theater on West 42nd Street, give us the best in town, this time titled "Between Iraq and a Hard Place." As I said in my 2002 review of them, this is a troupe of grownups whose insights and satires show mature writing with depth and intelligence as well as humor, and they are all Broadway-level singers.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
American Airlines Theater

There's no denying Roger Miller had a unique and tuneful talent, and that, pushed by producer Rocco Landesman, he rose to the challenge of writing a Broadway musical score to fit the story of Huckleberry Finn. The catchy songs feel right and flavorful, but Landesman should have pushed the tunemeister a notch more. Just when a song seems about to get going, Miller simply repeats the best lyrics - two or three times - instead of coming up with something new or clever to say.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Dream A Little Dream
Village Gate

For me, the Mamas-and-Papas musical, Dream a Little Dream, is a flash to my past. I performed in the coffee houses and night clubs of Greenwich Village and, after 1965, in Los Angeles, and knew the people the Denny Doherty character (played in the performance I saw by the very engaging Eric Michael Gillett) talks about on the stage of the old Village Gate, now called the Village Theater, on Bleecker Street. So for me, the show may have more resonance than for other, younger, people.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Bat Boy: The Musical
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

Who knew that the hit of Milwaukee's summer theater season would be a rock 'n roll musical about a half-bat, half-boy? Despite the show's odd premise (drawn from a tabloid story, we're told), Bat Boy: The Musical is flapping its wings all over the country. From San Francisco to Minneapolis, St. Louis to Los Angeles, watch for upcoming announcements of Bat Boy coming to a town near you.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
June 2003
Broadway By The Year: The Broadway Musicals of 1960
Town Hall

Not only has the "Broadway By The Year" series continued to attract the attention and admiration of musical theater lovers, but the recent edition, The Broadway Musicals of 1960, proves to be the best so far. You might be tempted to say 1960 wasn't that brilliant a season for musicals to be considered classics, and that many of the most tuneful shows were actually flops. But show for show and song for song, 1960 is the year that probably best defines what has become known as the last years of the golden age of original American musicals.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 2003
Dream'in New York
Producers Club

A foreigner coming to New York to start a new life -- sounds like you've heard that story before. But this one has new twists. And the cast is unusually good.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 2003
Cafe A Go Go
Cafe a Go Go

It’s loud, it’s fast, it gets the job done, and it’s watchable all the way through—and it’s also a show I could have left at any moment without feeling I missed much.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
June 2003
Bat Boy: The Musical
Theater Three

Theater Three opened Bat Boy: The Musical, the off-Broadway horror musical, on April 24, 2003. A spoof based loosely on a newspaper account of a half-boy, half-bat creature discovered in a West Virginia cave and dubbed Bat Boy, the story depicts how he longs desperately to be accepted by 'normal' people. Patrons in Dallas' theatrt loop know that director Kyle McClaran will take this musical over-the-top. Those expecting a traditional musical are quickly disavowed of their expectations.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
American Magic
Altered Stages

The only magic seen at Altered Stages in this very peculiar political protest play was that it made half the audience vanish at intermission! Gil Kofman's fevered fantasy of Ashcroftian Investigative Techniques - dealing with presumed Muslim Terrorists - proved a thoroughly gratuitous exploration of S & M scenes. The energetic cast struggled valiantly with the materials, but this script should have died in Workshop. For Protest Theater: Bring back Bertolt Brecht! Or even Eric Bentley!

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
As You Like It
Public Theater

Director Erica Schmidt has brilliantly managed to recreate As You Like It inside, with an ensemble of only six actors. She also did Debbie Does Dallas with a very small cast -- but that's another story. This ingeniously-edited adaptation was originally staged in a natural environment, but it survives quite well on a bare stage. Cross-dressing & cross-casting make cast reductions possible, but they also remarkably speed up the pace of playing.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Ain't Misbehavin'
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

When the onstage band strikes up the first notes to Ain't Misbehavin', all one can do is echo the words of the press materials: "this joint is jumpin.'" A polished and well-cast production is drawing full houses to Milwaukee's Cabot Theater, as well it should. This is the second time that Skylight Opera Theatre's has staged Ain't Misbehavin'. If the1994 show was anything like the current production, no wonder it busted the box office. This time, the show has a musical pedigree in the form of Neal Tate, whose work goes back to the days of Cab Calloway.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Broad Channel
Phil Bosakowski Theater

One of my CUNY PhD students lived in a tiny clapboard house in Broad Channel, Queens. Just under the flight-pattern into Idlewild Airport - now JFK. When I first drove there in my old VW, I thought I was driving into a wetlands area. Everyone seemed to have at least a rowboat tethered on canals back of their houses. Most of the good folks I met there were shanty Irish, with scant aspirations of earning midtown Doctorates in Theater.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Cirque du Soleil: Varekai
Cirque du Soleil at Blue & Yellow Grand Chapiteau

Attending a performance of Cirque du Soleil is a transcendent, fantastic adventure as we experience the beauty of the human body going so far beyond what we might imagine possible that we are transported to another world -- a surreal world peopled with fairy creatures, lovers who fly (and we fly with them) music that lifts the audience onto another dimension and costuming that floats colors and shapes newly arrived on this planet.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Bill Maher: Victory Begins at Home
Virginia Theater

Freed from the constraints of network television, bolstered by a crowd of left-leaning New York theatergoers, comedian Bill Maher should have all the reason in the world to come out with both guns blazing, shooting satirical bullets through Democrats and Republicans with equal gusto. He should score as many "boos" as "yays" by being politically (and scabrously) incorrect yet truthful and gut-funny. Certainly, Victory Begins at Home has its zingers and its "Did he really say that?"s.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Bill Maher: Victory Begins at Home
Virginia Theater

He is compact, tough, definitely cocky and only likeable after you've gotten to appreciate the intelligence behind the loopy logic with which he attacks our knee-jerk responses to the propaganda fed us daily. Defying classification, Bill Maher is equally critical of both political parties. Such is his perspicacity that in one sentence, he lumps them all together.

Jeannie Lieberman
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Bill Maher: Victory Begins at Home
Virginia Theater

Bill Maher has the distinction of being the First American To Be Threatened By The Bush Administration! The President's censorious Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, responded to one of Maher's Politically Incorrect quips about the current White House Reign of Terror - to combat Global Terrorism - with a warning that people had better be careful about what they say. This show will do nothing to reassure John Ashcroft that Maher has mended his ways.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Bill Maher: Victory Begins at Home
Virginia Theater

Bill Maher is the Mort Sahl of today: a political commentator/comedian who tickles our anti-establishment sensibilities. His Victory Begins at Home at the Virginia Theater is a wonderfully entertaining slanted view of the contemporary world, full of laughs. Like Sahl, he's not vicious -- he's incisive, insightful, may offend the far right, and it's a pleasure to be in the presence of an actual mind that works as he analyzes and skewers the outlandish world we live in, finding humor in events of the day. If political satire is your cup of rhetoric, don't miss Maher.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Bat Boy: The Musical
Adrienne Theater

A small Philadelphia company has produced a rendition of Bat Boy that surpasses the excellent New York version. Where the earlier production stressed the melodrama, director Jennifer Child's concept is surreal comedy. Her cast carries it off superbly. No one can equal Deven May's wistful interpretation of the title role in New York and Los Angeles, made inimitable by May's small-boyish physique, but the tall Ben Dibble gives us an endearingly goofy protagonist that fits right into the comic tone here.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Bartenders
John Houseman Theater

There are 1,259,874 bartenders working in the United States today. This is a show about six of them. That's the official-line on Lou Mustillo's Bartenders. I have no idea who did the counting: Can this million-plus number have been derived from Bartenders Union records? Living a simple and abstemious life, I have no familiarity with sitting at bars and chatting with bartenders.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
De La Guarda: Villa Villa
Daryl Roth Theater

The magnificent Blue Man Group notwithstanding, experimental theater just isn't my thing, with De La Guarda a case in point. I finally caught up with this audience favorite a few weeks before its final flight and tolerated its not-brief-enough 70 minutes with a mix of bemusement, annoyance and, too rarely, pleasure. The opening sequence, which involves "painting" the white-sheet ceiling with fluorescent colors, water and pennies, has charm and a sense of wonder.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
Don Juan
La MaMa ETC

Subtitled "Wages of Debauchery," this Czech-American Marionette Theater production of the legend of Don Juan as a kind of Central European Folk-Tale, was finally agony to sit through. But as there was a scanty audience in the tiny LaMaMa Theater and no intermission, it was impossible to make a graceful escape. Some of the puppets and scenic-concepts were clever-to-impressive, but the production as a whole was leaden, determined, and somewhat amateurish. Pieces even fell off the set, to the consternation of the puppeteers.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
Don Juan
Lucille Lortel Theater

Byron Jennings was a terminally effete Don Juan in Christopher Hampton's adaptation of Moliere's version of Tirso de Molina's tale. Because this was a Theater-for-a-New-Audience production, the staging and character-interpretations were also resolutely new and trendy. John Simon condemned it roundly, but the show was not without insight or interest. In addition to Jennings, Nicholas Kepros was admirable as the Don's furious father. Best of all, however, was John Christopher Jones as Sganarelle, or Leporello to opera-lovers. Bartlett Sher staged.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
Golda's Balcony
Manhattan Ensemble Theater

Perhaps my strong pro-Israel, pro-Zionist bias predisposes me to like William Gibson's drama on the life of Israel's most beloved Prime Minister. But political leanings aside, Gibson has crafted one of the more tautly constructed and dramatic solos in recent memory.

Yes, like most monologues about famous people, the elderly Golda Meir (played by the estimable Tovah Feldshuh) looks back and speaks in retrospect.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
Hank Williams: Lost Highway
Little Shubert Theater

One of the best bio-musical revues to come down the road in years, Hank Williams: Lost Highway captures not only the bounciness of the singer-songwriter's jaunty ditties (including the genius-touched "Lovesick Blues") but the heartbreak underlying classics like, "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." Jason Petty, as Hank, invests the latter tune with so much ache, and Randal Myler's play-with-music contextualizes it so well, "Cry" actually has more emotional pull than Williams' own classic version. We're also treated to -- rarity of rarities!

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
Bartenders
John Houseman Theater

Generally captivating solo for author/star Louis Mustillo, who put years experience tending bar to the service of six character vignettes. Not surprisingly, the barkeeps he portrays - all affectionately -- go from savvy wits to on-the-outs losers, from proud defenders of the profession to "just a job" hard-timers. Mustillo, well-directed by Janis Powell, has energy to spare and can tell a good anecdote, even if the pieces sometimes lack shape or reach a true dramatic arc. He does conjure memories of New York's recent past that are vivid, nostalgic, and toast-worthy.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
All My Sons
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

Although playwright Arthur Miller is known for his masterpiece, Death of a Salesman, it is curious to note why his earlier work, All My Sons, isn't revived more often. To this reviewer's mind, it has all the elements that elevate Salesman to a higher artistic level. In its own way, it seems like a more difficult play to do well. However, one needn't have worried about the production that recently opened at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. From start to finish, the show is mesmerizing. That's to the credit of the talented cast and director Paul Barnes.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Dirty Story
Harold Clurman Theater

S & M is becoming an alluring metaphor for plays dealing with Terror, Chaos and International Crisis. American Magic uses it - plus B & D - to evoke US interrogation of Muslim Terrorist suspects. Shanley deploys it to present the confrontations of Palestinian Arabs with Israelis, in the persons of an Israeli with a video camera and an Arab with no defenses. A briefly-seen chess-player represents the departing British Mandate over Palestine. A wild American cowboy-type represents guess what? Shanley directed.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Dirty Story
Harold Clurman Theater

Dirty Story, written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, is brilliant, funny, scintillating, engrossing, enchanting. Shanley's a unique dramatist who pours out ideas of real intellectual import, with a touch (almost) of Thomas Harris and a bit of Hellzapoppin thrown in. It's a study of narcissism in a writer, partly Absurd Theater, full of theatrical surprises, with a superb cast, each with a vividly unforgettable character: David Deblinger, Florenzia Lozand, Chris McGarry, Michael Puzzo, all playing archetypes: Artist, Worker, Cowboy, Bartender.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune
Belasco Theater

Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune treads some fairly well-worn terrain as it takes us to the precarious beginnings of a romantic interlude. We see instantly that the couple is sexually compatible; Frankie and Johnny are introduced to us while they are resting after a bout of vigorous sex. They are casual about their nudity -- writer Terrence McNally makes the point that it is not their bodies but their souls they tend to hide. Fearful of getting hurt, Frankie (Rosie Perez) is particularly suspicious of the overly communicative Johnny (Joe Pantoliano).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Far And Wide
Mint Theater

The award-winning Mint Theater Company has another first class show, Far And Wide, Jonathan Bank's adaptation and direction of Arthur Schnitzler's Das Weite Land. While the entire cast is quite good, leads Hans Tester and Lisa Bostnar are Broadway- level performers, and the show, which is about fidelity, infidelity, and moofky-foofky among the married and unmarried eighty years ago, sparkles with energy and life during all of their encounters. Ms. Bostnar is an actress capable of leads in Ibsen, Shakespeare, Miller, Williams and Albee.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Golda's Balcony
Manhattan Ensemble Theater

The dynamic Tovah Feldshuh - who certainly can do glamour - avoids it in her recreation of an aging Golda Meier. But she wonderfully evokes the courage and revolutionary career of this powerful and earthy woman who fought for the creation of the State of Israel and, as Prime Minister, guided it through very dark times.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
A...My Name is Alice
Producers Club II

If a musical revue is first rate, it can last and be fully entertaining years later, assuming it's done well by a top-notch cast of Broadway-level singers. The current revival of A...My Name is Alice, as directed by Adam M. Muller, is as entertaining today as it ever was. It has energy, verve, lively sparkle and real voices, most of them directly from Broadway. Soara-Joye Ross is outstanding, but the rest -- Ellie Dvorkin, the comic lead, who did the zippy choreography, Jennifer Allen, Avery Sommers and Donna Vivino are all up there with the best on Broadway.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Debbie Does Dallas
Jane Street Theater

Although the stage version of Debbie Does Dallas is in no way pornographic (and has only one brief moment of -- alas, male -- nudity), we know from the get-go this will be no sanitized satire. One cheerleader palms her crotch as automatically as the others chew gum, while the others end up mimicking pretty much every sexual combination ever conceived.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Jackie Wilson Story, The
New Regal Theater

Anyone still undecided on whether to see this musical biodrama, whether in Memphis or when it winds up its tour at New York's Apollo Theater April 4-13, 2003 should know that:
1) the premiere production ran for nearly two years,
2) Melba Moore has joined the cast, and two new songs written just for her have been added to the score,
3) Chester Gregory II, who created the title role and has played it with nary a day off since, is the most exciting and charismatic new artist since Jackie Wilson himself,

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Burn This
Union Square Theater

All four roles in Lanford Wilson's taut chamber piece have fascinating contours. For me, there's a fine spontaneity elevating this drama above the playwright's other fare. But for Burn This to work overwhelmingly, the chemistry between Anna and Pale—radical opposites who attract—must convincingly combust. She's a dancer mourning the death of her gay roommate. He's the roommate's vulgar lookalike brother, repulsed by his brother's lifestyle—and wracked with guilt as a result.

Elisabeth Shue brought all her screen magic to Union Square Theatre intact as Anna.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003

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