Firebugs, The
Viaduct

In studies of post-WWII European dramatists, scholars tend to prefer the more accessible satires of Friedrich Durrenmatt to those of Max Frisch -- or could it be that the protagonist of The Firebugs is a humble citizen, disturbingly similar to ourselves? Certainly, Gottlieb Biedermann (whose name translates "God-Love Everyman") is not a monster: his transgressions are petty, his intentions benevolent, his concerns private -- all adding up to a vision so myopic as to make him a perfect pigeon for the arsonists to whom he extends his hospitality.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
No Sex Please, We're British
PowPAC

We've all done it!

That is, we've all purchased something through the mails. More than once we've gotten the wrong item. Few of us, though, purchased stemware and receive pornography. Alas, Francis and Peter Hunter (Carolyn E. Wheat and Frank Remiatte) did just that in Anthony Marriott and Alistair Foot's hilarious farce, No Sex Please, We're British, the current offering at PowPAC.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2008
Fireside Christmas, A
The Fireside

 The Fireside, one of the most amazingly successful regional dinner theaters in the country, produces a handful of musicals and dramas each year. Although each attracts a sizeable audience, no production sells more tickets than the annual edition of A Fireside Christmas . (That's why performances begin in mid-October.) This is the 13th annual edition of a show that warms the hearts of literally thousands of viewers each year. To paraphrase some well-known lyrics, the show is a little bit country, a little bit rock 'n' roll, and a whole lotta holiday cheer.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2005
First Picture Show, The
Mark Taper Forum

 If the Gordons were painters, they'd be splatter-artists, the kind who hurl paint at a canvas and pray that it makes pictorial sense. In The First Picture Show, they not only deal with a big time-span -- the years 1893-1995 in the USA -- but attack a slew of subjects and themes: the making of silent films, the role of women and Jews in that era, history, racism, old age, sibling rivalry, censorship and religious fundamentalism.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Fit To Be Tied
Diversionary Theater

 Nicky Silver's Fit To Be Tied begins with Arloc (Joey Landwehr) explaining his situation during the holiday season -- his situation being somewhat unhappy, unloved, and frustrated. An unopened, much-feared letter rests on a table. Alas, 'tis the holiday season when there is good cheer, so Arloc picks up boy-toy Boyd (Brennan Taylor) for a romantic interlude that includes just a touch of S and M. Alack, best-laid plans go askew as his strange mom, Nessa (Jill Drexler), thrusts herself upon him, having packed her unmentionables and left her second husband.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Five Guys Named Moe
Geva Theater Mainstage

 Ten years ago this sure-fire crowd-pleaser was a huge hit at Geva Theater directed by Pamela Hunt with musical direction by Corinne Aquilina. Now with the addition of choreography by Mercedes Ellington, it promises to be an even bigger success. The music, mostly R&B and mostly by Louis Jordan, is mostly iresistible, and six gifted and charismatic artists perform the hell out of it.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2006
Five Hundred Clown Macbeth
Lookingglass Theater

 500 Clown Macbeth distills the theme of deadly ambition from the Shakespeare classic into three clowns atop an unstable scaffold. They reach fruitlessly for a crown hanging from the theater's ceiling and challenge the audience to be more than passive spectators. Director Leslie Buxbaum Danzig works well at building suspense as the clowns, while making precarious additions to their scaffold, come closer and ever more riskily closer to the desired crown, which is always just out of reach.

Kevin Henely
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Fixin' To Die
Cygnet Theater

Lee Atwater stated that he did not create the dirty tricks of politics. No, he wasn't the father, but he was the S. O. B. that honed dirty tricks into a fine science and then taught others, such as star student Karl Rove. Robert Myers' Atwater: Fixin' to Die, currently at Cygnet Theater, traces his short history from his first forays into politics to Chairman of the Republican National Committee and his untimely death from brain cancer shortly after his 40th birthday.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2006
Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage
Actors Theater of Louisville

 Jane Martin's peculiar, outlandish title for her/his latest foray into the American Zeitgeist makes perfect sense when you realize this comedic assault is inspired by cross-breeding the schtick of those lame old "Code of the West" B-movies with the platitudes and conventions of horror flicks.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Flaming Idiots
Lamplighters Community Theater

 In Flaming Idiots, playwright Tom Rooney spreads his farcical humor across the stage with a spatula, adding dollops of slapstick, shtick, satire and pure theater humor. Director David Kievit's cast doesn't miss a chance to milk a line 'til the last laugh echoes through the house.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Flanagan's Wake
Royal George Theater

 Set in the mythical town of Grapplin in County Sligo, Flanagan's Wake is an improvised show; think of Tony n' Tina's Wedding with an Irish bent. Celebrating its fifth production year, Flanagan's been very popular with audiences in Chicago, as well as other cities. Zeitgeist theater actors take audience suggestions and volunteers to wave an entertaining plot. Yes, there are lots of laughs in the play, despite its setting at the wake of town favorite Flanagan and his 20-year fiance). Songs and other ephemeral bits pop up, as does a happy ending.

Effie Mihopoulos
Date Reviewed:
March 1998
Flea In Her Ear, A
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 Farce is a matter of tastelessness -- jealous if not errant spouses and lovers, as well as outrageous characters giving weight only to trivialities.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Flesh and Blood
Adams Avenue of the Arts

 As the lights come up in Karen Paull's Flesh and Blood, we are faced with a street woman attempting to bake a cake for her five-year-old daughter. She is wacked out, displaying all the symptoms of a manic-depressive. We question her reality - and ours - in this short play with music. Most of the songs were sung a capella.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2005
Flip Side, The
Florida Studio Theater - Goldstein Cabaret

 The Flip Side title has two meanings. Songs making up this revue are either "flip" in nature, or they come from the second or "other" side of recordings (usually vinyl or tape) of hit numbers. Developers explain the collection as "seriously funny." Songs are "sardonic, ironic and, at times, histrionic," often combining "witty tunes..with sophisticated lyrics," but often concerning "moronic characters." True.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Flower Drum Song
Music Hall - Fair Park

 David Henry Hwang's updated version of Flower Drum Song inaugurated its national tour on September 2, 2003 at the Music Hall at Fair Park as the closing production of the Dallas Summer Musicals. In a pre-show conversation with Hwang, who attended the first Sunday matinee, he said, "I saw the potential for this show that had been on the shelf for 45 years. I approached Ted Chapin, president of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, and said I wanted to make a musical I hoped would reflect the values of the original creators but be more relevant to a modern audience.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Floyd Collins
Cabot Theater - Broadway Theater Center

 One of Milwaukee's most respected theater companies has aimed high with a knock-out production of Floyd Collins. This extraordinarily challenging musical is based on the true story of Floyd Collins, a 38-year-old cave explorer who became trapped underground while searching for "gold" -- a cavern that could be turned into a popular tourist attraction. Ironically, little did Floyd realize that he would become the attraction, as the entire nation turned its attention to his rescue. Newspaper and radio reports detailed the successive attempts to free Floyd.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2000
Helen
Swedenborgian Church

 The war is finally over. Helen (Robin Christ) yearns to be reunited with her husband, Menelaus (Douglas Lay) upon his return from Troy. No, she never went to Troy but stayed at the tomb of Proteus, the late king of Egypt who had protected her. Yes, Helen is the most beautiful woman in the world. No, she did not commit adultery with Paris. That was all a phantom created by that nasty Hera.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Fog Of War, The
Ventura Court Theater

 This rare political drama is a throwback to the issue plays of the 40s and 50s. At times melodramatic and overwrought, it still works effectively if only because it takes a hard, politically incorrect look at the relations between the races.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Follies
Irving Arts Center

 Lyric Stage, the Southwest's only professional musical theater, produced a concert version of the seldom-done Follies, February 20-22, 2004 at the Irving Arts Center in Irving, Texas. Though boasting a book by James Goldman and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, there are reasons Follies rarely receives a full production. The cast is large, making it an expensive show to produce. In addition, it has not aged well. Except for three memorable songs, Follies doesn't have much to recommend it.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Food Chain, The
Poway Performing Arts Company

 The Food Chain is PowPAC's latest audience challenge -- and those familiar with playwright Nicky Silver are used to his challenges. He assaults you with language. He tests your feelings about sexuality. He investigates human frailty and defies you to object to his statements. While the The Food Chain is a comedy, it quickly dissects the human condition with deep and dark undertones. Amanda's (Annmarie Houghtailing) husband of three weeks, Ford (James M. McCullock) has been gone for two of those weeks. She calls a crisis hot line manned by Bea (Eileen Ivey).

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Fool For Love
McCarter Theater

 To open her tenth season as artistic director of McCarter Theater, Emily Mann is directing Fool for Love by Sam Shepard, one of America's most forceful and intensely motivated writers. Whether or not it is Mann's wish to help us search out the metaphors, discover the symbolism, or consider the social implications in this vicious, yet no longer shocking, 16-year-old play, we may also choose to simply sit back and wallow in the mind-bending / body-battering material.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
September 1999
Fool Me Once
American Folklore Theater

 Fool Me Once is like an evening spent around the campfire, telling tall tales. But my camp mates were never the caliber of storytellers as the cast and creators at American Folklore Theater. And that makes Fool Me Once -- which premiered in June at Peninsula State Park -- an intoxicating night under the stars, listening to stories. American Folklore Theater is a perfect setting for campfire tales. The theater, a decades old institution in Wisconsin's north woods, performs under the stars in Peninsula State Park.

Ed Huyck
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Footloose
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 Engaging youngsters leap onto and around the stage so enthusiastically that they involve you much more than would the MTV videos they seem to emulate. They're in a story largely an excuse to hang 1980s songs onto: Ren, left by his father, moves from Chicago with his mom to live with his uncle in small Bomont, dominated by a pastor who's lost his son in a car accident. Town council, school principal, and coach back him to outlaw liquor, drugs, and even dancing.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2005
Footloose
Central Piedmont Community College - Pease Auditorium

Miracles continue as CP Summer Theater's 30th season reaches a raucous climax. Two weeks ago, an audience returned from intermission and applauded the scenery change, when prosperity succumbed to heaven's wrath in God's Favorite. Old Testament prophets would surely be inspired by the current goings on at the panoramic Pease Auditorium, when the cast members of Footloose take their bows. Even that celebrated lion-lamb accord is eclipsed. And the bluehairs shall scream like teenyboppers.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Footloose
Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

 While Footloose is still kicking up its heels on Broadway, a touring version visited Milwaukee for a one-week run. It's easy to see why the show has taken a critical drubbing in New York; it has so many flaws it's almost cruel to name them all. A top-flight cast could have erased many of the show's weaker moments but, alas, this is a lopsided group. The "adults," mostly mothers and fathers of the high school kids who populate most of the show's cast, are polished professionals.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 1999
For Reasons That Remain Unclear
6th at Penn Theater

 Patrick (Jeffrey Jones) is an extremely well-paid film actor just having finished filming a project for 20th Century Fox in Rome. Conrad (Jerry Phalen) is a Catholic priest in Rome for a convention and a look at the mother church. Patrick met Conrad on the street and invited him to his luxury hotel suite for a drink and some conversation, their only apparent connection being that they both live and work in Los Angeles.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2005
Forbidden Broadway
Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

As one who has seen Forbidden Broadway numerous times in New York over the years, this "classic" touring version is a bit like seeing an old friend. The "classic" version cherry-picks the best bits from various versions of the show. Since Forbidden Broadway has been around 22 years, there's no lack of great material. A recently updated version of the show is now playing in New York.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Foreigner, The
OnStage Playhouse

 The lovely Catherine Simms (Allison MacDonald), a benefactor of a substantial inheritance, is living in the lodge with her dim-witted younger brother, Ellard Simms (Michael Oravec). We soon find out she is pregnant by her fiance, the Reverend David Lee (Wilson Adam Schooley). Catherine reveals much to Baker, including her second thoughts about her pending nuptials. Ellard is not near as intellectually fragile as we are first led to believe (Oravec has given his character a strange, charming physicality that works perfectly). Schooley's religious zealot Rev.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2006
Foreigner, The
Drury Lane - Oakbrook

 The Foreigner is a silly, improbable play that comes across as a small comic masterpiece, thanks to a superb production at the Drury Lane Theater in Oakbrook Terrace. Larry Shue, who wrote the play, had the makings of a very talented playwright before his untimely death in a 1985 plane crash at the age of 39. Prior to the tragedy, Shue was an actor with three full-length plays to his credit, including The Nerd and Wenceslas Square. The Foreigner begins with a promising comic premise.

Richard Allen Eisenhardt
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Foreigner, The
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

 Twenty years ago, Milwaukee Repertory Theater introduced The Foreigner to the world. The play's background material notes that without the constant urging of the Rep's former artistic director, The Foreigner and its comedic cousin, The Nerd, never would have been written. Larry Shue, an actor, didn't exactly leap for the typewriter, it seems. But audiences should be glad that he did. The current revival of the Milwaukee Rep's most-requested play is a humdinger.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Forever Plaid
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 Enjoy the show or your money back, Golden Apple is offering. The confidence is not misplaced. With its mostly heavenly reenactment of the corny but cute singing guy groups of the 1950s-early 1960s, Forever Plaid is almost a guaranteed hit wherever it goes. It appeals naturally to nostalgic audiences and pleasantly shows younger ones a glimpse of kinder, gentler, if sillier pop entertainments. A bit of astro mumbo jumbo explains why the "held up" Plaids, who died in an accident en route to their first pro show in 1964, will finally give that performance.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
September 2000
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
Forever Plaid
Vogel Hall at Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

 Few theater lovers have gotten this far into the 1990s without coming across Forever Plaid, a send-up of 1950s male vocal groups. The Plaids, as most everyone knows by now, are four geeky guys who met in their high school audio-visual club and formed a band. Just as their career was starting to take off, the guys were killed in a car accident. Somehow, they have been returned to earth just long enough to complete the concert they would have played that night. An outlandish premise? Of course.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Forty-Five Seconds From Broadway
Lamplighters Community Theater

45 Seconds from Broadway opened to mixed reviews on Broadway, November 11, 2001 and ran a paltry 73 performances. Was it the time, just after 9/11? Was it Neil Simon's lack of last-minute polish? This, Simon's least-accepted play, was saved at Lamplighters Community theater. Why? Brilliant casting! And, for the most part, adept direction.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2005
Fosse
Eihlein Hall at Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

 Milwaukee gave a polite welcome to Fosse, the razzle-dazzle musical featuring Bob Fosse's choreography. This isn't surprising, given the fact that the current tour is only a pale imitation of the musical that played at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. The edginess and sexuality that makes temperatures rise among Broadway audiences is in short supply here; there's energy in the touring show, but not the polished talent that could take Fosse to its heights. Part of the reason is that the touring company employs a younger, less experienced cast.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2002
Four
Fault Line Theater

One never knows just what to expect when spending an evening watching the Fault Line Players. We do know that we'll see new one-act plays, many written by co-proprietor Ted Falagan. Some may be penned by his partner Debbie Fabiano, as well as outside writers. We do know that we will see new and rising talent. This selection of plays and talent is no exception.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
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
Fourth Wall, The
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

 The life of a comfortable suburban couple becomes unraveled in A. R. Gurney's The Fourth Wall, the season opener for Milwaukee Chamber Theater. This company, in its quest to find something to please everyone, has staged productions ranging from avant-garde Off-Broadway fare to time-honored plays. The Fourth Wall seems ideally suited to this theater's mission, as it contains everything in one show: surrealism, naturalism, sentimentality and side-splitting comedy.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Frank Lloyd Wright
Cook Theater at Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts

 With a poetic word-setting of a cold winter morning in Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright, represented by Will Stutts, gives a lecture about his life and work being perpetuated at Taliesin. We are to fancy ourselves prospective students or, fulfilling his theory of education, apprentices before the master architect. It is said that in his later years "at home," Wright often spoke thus, giving center stage to his ego and his theories of organic architecture, for his following, his neighbors, and visitors.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Frankenstein
Dallas Children's Theater

 Dallas Children's Theater opened Thomas Olson's spine-tingling adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein on October 24, 2003. And everything about this production is first-rate except the script. With its numerous flashbacks and chronological time shifts -- constantly going back and forth between present and past -- the action is difficult for all but the tutored children to comprehend. (Speaking as someone who followed it, I simply don't think the play is all that good.) But the technical aspects are superb.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003

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