Hoot Owl Hootenanny
Rosewood Center for Family Arts: Robyn Flatt Studio Theater

 Halloween theater fare has never been better than the Kathy Burks Theater of Puppetry Arts' presentation of Hoot Owl Hootenanny, created in 1992 by troupe members Ted Kincaid, Sally Fiorello, Patricia Long, Kathy Burks, and B. Wolf.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Hot Flashes
National Black Theater Festival

 Hot Flashes was the first half of an evening called "Divas of Performance," brought to the National Black Theater Festival by San Francisco-based Cultural Odyssey. A mainstay of that company, Rhodessa Jones uses her 50th birthday as a pretext for celebrating the mixed blessing -- and the scorching curse -- of menopause. Clad in flaming red vinyl, Jones has exuberance to burn.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Hotel Cassiopeia
Actors Theater of Louisville

 The late Joseph Cornell, a strangely shy textile worker (though from a comfortably middle-class family until his father died) who collected bric-a-brac, cut-outs of birds, movie images, doll heads, small wrapped packages, and star maps along with other ephemera and preserved them in artfully arranged wooden boxes he made in his basement, is on display himself now at Actors Theater of Louisville.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Hotel on Marvin Gardens, A
Cabot Theater - Broadway Theater Center

 The official opening of Milwaukee's fall theater season now opens in August, a month when many Milwaukeeans are still distracted by a nice day at the lake, or perhaps are planning to attend one of the superlative summer festivals that enliven the city at this time of year. In mid-August, there's also a very popular food and music festival at the local zoo, which packs in thousands of visitors and probably makes the animals wonder what in the world is going on.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2002
House And Garden
Goodman Theater

 Alan Ayckbourn must be as fond of puzzles as Anthony Shaffer was reputed to have been. Having demonstrated his expertise at writing comedies that leap through time, he now presents us with two plays that leap through space. The plot of House and of Garden concerns itself with crises affecting participants in a spring fair on the country estate of a British bigwig. House shows us the events unfolding indoors, and Garden, those occurring outdoors at the same time.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2001
House Of Blue Leaves, The
Bunbury Theater

 The House of Blue Leaves, John Guare's sad/funny, tragically hilarious farce, garnered some impressive awards, including best American play of the season, in its 1971 off-Broadway debut. Bunbury Theater's splendid revival of this now-classic work doesn't miss a beat while propelling the audience through a roller-coaster ride that could go off the track at any moment. Guare's plot, he has said, stemmed from a real-life visit by Pope Paul VI to New York in 1965 when the Pontiff's motorcade passed along Queens Boulevard on the way to the United Nations.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
June 2000
House of Yes, The
Poway Performing Arts Company

 Dysfunctional (def.): Malfunctioning, behavior patterns that undermine the stability of a social system.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
House of Yes, The
Off Tryon Theater

 To see outstanding talents struggling with a flawed script, head up to Off-Tryon Theater in NoDa and you'll find a powerfully acted production of a dubious comedy, Wendy MacLeod's The House of Yes. Meghan Lowther stars as Jackie-O, prime nutball in a radically dysfunctional household. MacLeod's weird walpurgisnacht on the 25th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination is lashed by incest, infidelity and a hurricane. Glenn Griffin directs grimly, so the eccentrics onstage never strike us as witty or goofy.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
How I Learned To Drive
Florida Studio Theater

 Within an environment of autos, their parts, and everything `60s that can be associated with them, in pastels scratched out from beneath an inky surface, we witness Li'l Bit's ride down her life's highway. Born to a family that assigned nicknames on the basis of genitalia, Bit boasts an outstanding bosom, whose most ardent admirer is Uncle Peck, a pedophile who'll co-map her journey.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
How I Learned To Drive
Summerfun Theater

 Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, which has won a slew of prestigious drama awards including a l998 Pulitzer, explores the causes and effects of an incestuous relationship on the lives of a young girl (Li'l Bit) and her Uncle (Peck). Narrated by the l8-year-old Li'l Bit, the play presents multiple perspectives through a series of flashbacks spanning the 60s and 70s, which allow the viewer to construct their own understanding of what occurred.

Kathryn Wylie-Marques
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
How I Learned To Drive
Booth Playhouse

 Long before her bra cup size reaches full flower, the well-endowed Li'l Bit is persistently pursued by her Uncle Peck, and moderately -- but not brutally -- violated. Peck pounces during the climactic driving lesson while Li'l Bit's hands are holding on tight to the steering wheel of a moving car. It's a strange, eerie little scene, queasily staged by director Steve Umberger. The lasting effect of this backroad groping is memorably articulated by Li'l Bit in her narration: "That was the last day I lived in my own body." But Vogel short circuits a fierce visceral response.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
May 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
How I Learned To Drive
OnStage Playhouse

 Paula Vogel's difficult-to-watch, Pulitzer–winning How I Learned to Drive, is the current offering of On Stage Playhouse. The piece is not recommended for the under-17 crowd for good reason; Vogel explores pedophilia in depth.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
How The Other Half Loves
Poway Performing Arts Company

 In comedy, timing is everything. Of course, it also helps to have a brilliantly written script, crisp, properly-paced direction and a cast totally into their roles. PowPAC's production of Alan Ayckbourn's How the Other Half Loves meets all of this criteria. The script calls for the living areas of two families with action in both areas at the same time. Both areas occupy the same space -- the breadth and depth of PowPAC's stage. James Caputo's set accomplishes absolute separation of living spaces, as realized by Rosemary King's excellent crafting of the walls.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2002
How The Other Half Loves
Sunshine Brooks Theater

 I visited an old friend last night, born 36 years ago, sired by Alan Ayckbourn. This friend, currently at the Sunshine Brooks Theater in Oceanside, is How the Other Half Loves. I usually fret over shows repeated ad nauseam, year after year. This show, last seen six years ago at PowPAC, is a welcome, if belated, repeat.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
How The Other Half Loves
Venice Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 Despite the tackiness of their respective yellow and purple living areas, wealthy Frank and Fiona are upscale, while recent parents Bob and Teresa are on the way up in the same business. On the sly, Fiona and Bob have been up to some monkey business. To excuse their dalliance, they tell their respective spouses that they've been out late with a different couple in marital difficulties. As farcical luck would have it, the latter get drawn into the former couples' duplicities when invited to their homes for dinner.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Scripps Ranch - Legler Benbough Theater

$ucce$$!

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2002
How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 Golden Apple takes a period musical with book and score as fresh as today and demonstrates How to Succeed in (Show) Business -- with an exclamation point! Seldom have a cast been so uniformly right for their "jobs," led by appealing comer Finch (Larry Raben, like his role, a star at whatever he does). You agree as he sings to himself, "I Believe in You." What fun to watch Finch climb the corporate ladder, while nepotistic nemesis Bud Frump keeps sawing away at the rungs.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2001
Hurlyburly
Le Chat Noir

 In the canon of Hollywood-is-full-of-greedheads plays, David Rabe's 1984 excoriation of tinseltown decadence ranks as one of the most potentially tedious, its boys-will-be-pigs antics nowadays almost as quaint as those of Sinatra and his frat buddies.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
June 2002
Hysteria
Florida Studio Theater

 Having been asked by Florida Studio Theater not to reveal the identity of the character who gets the action going in Hysteria, as well as not to talk about the play's surreal elements, what's a critic to do? Well, I can tell you that it imagines how, in Sigmund Freud's last days living in London, while suffering from cancer of the jaw, he deals with visits from his doctor, a mysterious woman, and Salvador Dali.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Hysteria
Steppenwolf Theater

 You are in my study, not some boulevard farce! protests the Father Of Modern Psychology, but nowadays, the mere mention of Sigmund Freud's name constitutes a joke, and so a certain vaudeville atmosphere is unavoidable.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
I Am My Own Wife
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz Theater

 This story within a story in I Am My Own Wife is of the playwright discovering Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, whose story he dramatizes both directly and through an intermediary. As a boy named Lothar, Charlotte donned his lesbian aunt's clothes and felt, with her encouragement, the woman he really was and would be. Eventually as Charlotte, he spent a life in drag. And what a life!

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
I Am My Own Wife
Actors Theater of Louisville

 Lothar Berfelde, the German boy who reinvented himself as transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, managed the astounding feat of living openly as a cross-dresser through two of the world's most repressive regimes -- the Nazis and the Communists. "It seems to me you're an impossibility. You shouldn't even exist," playwright Doug Wright wrote her in seeking her cooperation for doing a play about her. That now-famous play, I Am My Own Wife, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the 2004 Tony Award, is receiving an arresting production at Actors Theater of Louisville.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
I Am My Own Wife
Dallas Theater Center

 I Am My Own Wife is a one-man tour-de-force covering the life of East German transvestite, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (nee Luther Berfelde.) It is superbly enacted by up-and-coming Canadian actor, Damien Atkins, who plays 35 different roles. Atkins is an incredible mimic and turns in a highly nuanced performance.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
I Did! I Did!
Theatrx

 First there was The Fourposter, then along came I Do! I Do!, and now it's I Did! I Did! In the last year the singing/acting couple, Cheryl and Sam Warner, have performed the last two shows -- earlier, the always-popular I Do! I Do! at Patio Playhouse and currently, I Did! I Did! at Theatrx.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2002
I Do! I Do!
Patio Playhouse

 I Do! I Do! is, like Love Letters, a very personal experience. Each production takes on much of the personality, and interpretation, of the players and director. Patio Playhouse's current production is under the directorial leadership of Jay Mower and stars recent newlyweds Cheryl and Sam Warner. Add choreographer Kathleen "Kat" Perhach, music director Marianne Kripps, and the talents of accompanist Dylan Snodgrass, and Patio has a winner.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
I Got Merman
Majestic Theater

 Thanksgiving came early to the Dallas Summer Musicals on October 28, 2003 in the form of a turkey called "I Got Merman". The loosely-woven framework masquerading as a book is one of the worse attempts at a book musical I have ever encountered. A more apt title for this show would be "Four Very Talented Singers in Search of a Musical." The premise is three female singers (Becca Ayers, Cindy Marchionda, and Carol Swarbrick) channeling Ethel Merman during a rehearsal for a show about her career. Mr. Fisk (Jeffrey Biering) is their accompanist.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
I Hate Hamlet
Royal George Theater

 Since closing in New York amid extracurricular scandal, I Hate Hamlet has played all over the country, even in theaters that haven't yet done Lend Me A Tenor. And why not? Paul Rudnick's satire-and-sentiment play pokes fun at crass Hollywood commercialism and pretentious New York artsiness. It promises fulfilling sex to the young and old, the chaste and unchaste, the living and the dead.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
December 1995
I Hate Hamlet
Royal George Theater

 I Hate Hamlet is a sitcom with a gimmick: the ghost of great American actor John Barrymore. As long as Barrymore's on stage, flamboyantly declaiming, the show has some entertainment value. Otherwise, Paul Rudnick's sometimes funny and literate comedy, is safe, routine stuff. The new occupant of an apartment once owned by the Great Profile is Andrew, a young TV star. Andrew is now fearfully preparing to play Hamlet in a theatre-in-the-park revival. During a seance conducted by Andrew's real estate agent, Barrymore emerges from his full-length portrait over the fireplace.

Richard Allen Eisenhardt
Date Reviewed:
December 1995
I Love New York
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 What could have turned into a logistical nightmare - culling just the right songs out of 1500 devoted to or mentioning New York City - has become a dream for those who love that "Wonderful Town." Of course that song's included in this revue centered on the area extolled in another hit tune: "Manhattan." Two vibrant couples trip the light fantastic not only on the "Sidewalks of New York" but also in "The Bowery," on "42nd Street," right on through "East Side, West Side."

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2005
I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change
Florida Studio Theater Mainstage

 Reportedly, this pleasant but innocuous compilation of skits and musical numbers is tops among nonprofit shows nationwide this season. A company of four portray twosomes, with the unifying theme being heterosexual(!) relationships from dating through marriage to geriatric widowhood.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2000
I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change
Theater Three

 At Friday's opening of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change at Theater Three, when musical director Terry Dobson asked the capacity audience in T3s 90-seat downstairs theatre, how many people had never seen this play, only about 20 raised their hands. This attests to the popularity of this humorous musical revue about the relationships between the sexes. First produced at Theater Three in 2000, it ran continuously for three years. Each year, T3 artistic director Jac Alder reprises it for a limited run.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change
Mary G. Steiner Egyptian Theater

 Last summer the Egyptian Theater Company got a great idea: Why not stage a couple of musicals in repertory throughout the summer? That way, short-term visitors would get to enjoy one show, and residents or those who were around longer could see a couple of them. They called the program Summer TheatreFest, and the idea was so popular, this season it returns with two new, quite diverse musicals.

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
I Ought To Be In Pictures
Scripps Ranch - Legler Benbough Theater

 Neil Simon usually reveals our foibles, while making us laugh. I Ought To Be In Pictures explores the relationship between a father and his daughter, whom he hadn't seen in 16 years. Herb (David Gallagher) left his family in Brooklyn for the fast lane of motion pictures in Hollywood. Unannounced daughter Libby (Michelle DeFrancesco) enters his life. Herb, a writer with massive writer's block, is facing problems in his relationship with Steffy (Connie Terwilliger).

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2002
Ideal Husband, An
Paper Mill Playhouse

 After you see (and you should) School for Scandal, Sheridan's delicious expose of gossip and malicious behavior in 18th century London, at the McCarter, it would be remiss of you if you did not venture up to the Paper Mill Playhouse to see An Ideal Husband, Oscar Wilde's equally nasty comedy of blackmail and scandal in 19th century London. It is rare to see these two perfectly suited sex and schemes-driven gems performed at the same time and so smartly.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
February 2001
If the Shoe Fits
Coronado Playhouse

 I can see it now. Dana Vermette, Matt Chiorini and Matt Thompson are sitting over a few brews. "Hey, let's write a comedy murder-mystery about a shoe salesman." As the beers are consumed, the ideas flow, and If the Shoe Fits is born. It opened on April 2, 2004 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. 

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
If The Shrew Fits Wear It
Stagehouse Theater

 If the Shrew Fits Wear It parodies Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew done in mime and set to an excellent selection of music. Alas, nary a word of Shakespeare, that master of playful English, is heard. However, every emotion, every action is properly staged, with never a question as to what's going on. Though every element seems well choreographed, it's obvious the players are adding their own flourishes from time-to-time.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
If You Give a Pig a Party
Dallas Children's Theater

 The Dallas Children's Theater production of If You Give a Pig a Party is a sure-fire hit for the three-to-eight year-old crowd. Based on Laura Numeroff's book and adapted for the stage by DCTs Nancy Schaeffer, it relates the story of an impish Pig (Beth Albright) dressed in a pink sweatsuit and pink sneakers and sporting a curly white tail and early Sally Struthers hair-do. Then a Girl (Rebecca Paige) decides to throw a party for the Pig for no special reason, but alas, nobody is home when Pig calls her friends to invite them. What to do?

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
I'll Leave It To You
Theater Three

 Theater Three opened a rarely produced Noel Coward play, I'll Leave It To You, on October 17, 2005. Coward's first play, penned when he was 20, it was produced on July 21, 1920 at the New Theatre in London. Bobbie, the aspiring writer/musician, was played by Coward in a part he wrote for himself.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
November 2005
Illusion, The
F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theater

 Although Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) is credited with writing the first important French tragedy (The Cid), the poet-playwright was destined to be replaced as the premiere French dramatist by Racine and virtually eclipsed a few years later by Moliere. It is a shame we don't see more of his work being produced, but comfort may be taken in that at least one of Corneille's plays, out of a considerable canon of comedies and tragedies, has been deemed worthy of resurrection.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
August 2002

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