I Am My Own Wife
Lyceum Theater

 If I Am My Own Wife were merely a fascinating story, compellingly told, it would be worth attending and strongly applauding. But this tale of a man, living as a woman and curating a veritable museum of Weimar era-history, not only during the Nazi period but throughout the Communist years in East Berlin, has a second-act twist that keeps us guessing long after the show's over. Think of it as the equivalent of Golda's Balcony, only here we're not sure if Golda might really be Yasser Arafat.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
If You Ever Leave Me, I'm Going With You
Cort Theater

Critics have tried time and again to kill old-fashioned, punchline-laden boulevard comedy, but audiences end up having the last laugh—literally. Even the most familiar jokes and situations, if handled snappily, can make for a pleasing night of relaxed entertainment.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
I'm Not Rappaport
Booth Theater

Pundits have sniped at the number of 1980s re-runs taking up prime Broadway real estate lately—Into the Woods, Morning's at Seven, Noises Off—but the truth is that all these revivals have proved worthy and highly entertaining. The hot streak continues with I'm not Rappaport, Herb Gardner's 1985 Tony winner about two old men fending off muggers, senescence and obsolescence in Central Park.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
August 2002
I'm Not Rappaport
Booth Theater

 Herb Gardner's I'm Not Rappaport, now revived on Broadway, is a joyful experience. Two alter kockers, one of them an old Red, sit on a park bench in New York and cope with the contemporary world and the frustrations of being old. Performed by the sensational Judd Hirsch in a turn that can only be accomplished by many years of understanding the character (he won a Tony for the same role years ago) and with fine support by Ben Vereen and a very good Anthony Arkin, the delights multiply as the brilliantly written play unfolds.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2002
Imaginary Friends
Ethel Barrymore Theater

 As snappy, smart and entertaining as much of Imaginary Friends is, Nora Ephron's ficto-biography of feuding literary lionesses Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy can't overcome a basic stasis in its premise: both writers are dead from the outset and quarreling in retrospect. Director Jack O'Brien can trick this up with video and vaudeville turns (with generally ephemeral, period-style songs by Craig Carnelia and Marvin Hamlisch), but that just makes the piece feel like a Dirty Blonde wannabe.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Imaginary Friends
Ethel Barrymore Theater

 Imaginary Friends by Nora Ephron is an odd, experimental play -- two famous writers, Lillian Hellman (Swoosie Kurtz) and Mary McCarthy (Cherry Jones), in a fantasy that works theatrically. The women are great foils for each other as they literarily and theatrically jab enmity back and forth. There is great style in the play's inventiveness, although the verbal encounters are a tad over-written.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Imaginary Friends
Ethel Barrymore Theater

When Lillian Hellman reached the pinnacle of her second career, switching from the stage to personal memoirs, the esteemed novelist/essayist/critic Mary McCarthy had the temerity to attack the grand dame. "Every word she writes is a lie," she smiled, guesting on The Dick Cavett Show, "including 'and' and "the.'" Hellman, catching the nationwide telecast, responded swiftly, slapping McCarthy with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit calculated to financially crush her detractor.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
In My Life
Music Box Theater

 Let's hear it for Tourettes Syndrome and for sweet sentimentality. Joe Brooks' new musical, In My Life (he wrote the book, the music, the lyrics and directed it) is about the romance of a guitarist/singer who suffers from the malady. It's like a circus of non sequiturs, but its cast of marvelous singers make it very entertaining nonsense. Lovely song after lovely song, mostly ballads, almost held together by an almost plot.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2005
Into the Woods
Broadhurst Theater

 Any Sondheim musical with as much to offer as Into the Woods must be approached with a certain degree of gratitude and reverence, even when the full experience falls short of our high expectations. In Woods, Sondheim and librettist James Lapine are working on a level, musically and intellectually, higher than most of us can grasp, and when they hit the mark - either thematically with the piece's meditations on loss and the bonds between two people, or musically with such songs as "No One is Alone" and the delightful "Agony" -- the results are transporting.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 2002
Into The Woods
Broadhurst Theater

 Stephen Sondheim's deconstruction of fairy tales in Into the Woods is both an intellectual and a theatrical experience. He's a unique wordsmith, and a quirky, zany, subtle, tunesmith. The fun in Act One is his cleverness in retelling the familiar tales. The fun in Act Two is his dark but theatrical take of the aftermath of "Lived happily ever after." With the flawless casting of John McMartin, Laura Benanti, Kerry O'Malley, Molly Ephraim, Gregg Edelman, and the entire rest of the ensemble, playing in Douglas W.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2002
Invention of Love, The
Lyceum Theater

 All the graceful staging in the world can't compensate for a play with no dramatic thrust and a tongue where its heart ought to be. Yawn.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Invention of Love, The
Lyceum Theater

 Although Tom Stoppard is arguably the most brilliant playwright writing today, The Invention of Love is more an intellectual exercise that a play, a polemic about translation of the classics, sprinkled with clever witty lines and conclusions. I loved the magical flowing set by Bob Crowley and the lighting by Brian MacDevitt. Robert Sean Leonard, Richard Easton and especially Daniel Davis are fine. However, director Jack O'Brien doesn't seem to think that professors can speak conversationally; they stay in professorial-declamatory mode.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
It Ain't Nothin' But The Blues
Vivian Beaumont Theater

[Reviewed at Lincoln Center] Actually, it's quite a lot besides the blues, which is the problem with this great idea / so-so execution of a revue, whose Tony nomination and good word of mouth have assured it a move out of Lincoln Center and into the Ambassador for the autumn.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Jackie Mason: Laughing Room Only
Brooks Atkinson Theater

 One can't blame Jackie Mason for trying something different after six one-man shows since his 1986, career-resuscitating classic, The World According to Me. His schtick was getting a little too familiar, his new material sounding too much like the old material.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Jackie Mason: Laughing Room Only
Brooks Atkinson Theater

 Jackie Mason's Laughing Room Only is two shows: one is Jackie doing his usual conversational schtick with the audience, in his subdued tone with physical absurdities sprinkled in; the second is bright, entertaining musical numbers by the sparkling Doug Katsaros, performed by a first-rate Broadway quintet of singer-dancers. Only one number integrates the two, and that is the high point of the show: "Tea Time," wherein Jackie plays a waiter overhearing and misunderstanding a conversation between two women in a tea room. That's the show.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Jackie Mason: Prune Danish
Royale Theater

To say there's nothing new here isn't exactly fair. Yes, there's stuff about Jews-versus-Gentiles in restaurants, but there's no Starbucks, no Ed Sullivan, and a just a little less Bill Clinton. About 50 percent of the material this time around deals with post-9/11 airport security, low-fat foods, and George Bush and Ariel Sharon.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2002
Jay Johnson
Helen Hayes Theater

 Jay Johnson is a master of his art on a level with a Vladimir Horowitz or Arthur Rubenstein on the piano, Picasso or Rembrandt as painters, Najinsky as a dancer, Caruso as a singer. The art here is Ventriloquism, and in his show, Jay Johnson: The Two and Only, Johnson's complete unification with his art and his wit and humor are there to enthrall an audience in a performance that is rare, delightful, and at times, quite moving.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Jekyll And Hyde
Plymouth Theater

 Throughout its seven-year trip to Broadway, Jekyll & Hyde has become the musical critics love to hate. They bash the Frank Wildhorn-Leslie Bricusse show for its rudimentary lyrics, pop-music sensationalism and episodic structure. Valid as the gripes may be, these complainers end up focusing on a few gawky trees and missing the dark, inviting forest. There really is no need for a new version of Robert Louis Stevenson's story of good battling evil -- except to give an actor a juicy role and an audience a thrilling ride.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 1997
Jersey Boys
August Wilson Theater

 Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons are alive and well at the August Wilson Theater on 52nd Street in Jersey Boys -- book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, with music by Bob Gaudio, lyrics by Bob Crew (except for the Golden Oldies the boys sing before Gaudio).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2005
Jesus Christ Superstar
Ford Center for the Performing Arts

 To be completely fair, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar was always something of a silly idea. People singing and dancing to rock-operatic tunes, all while trying to convey the gravity of The Book. Pretty silly stuff. But what made Superstar such a kick was its unbridled bravado; the musical seemed to know what it was getting into, and provided patrons with what is probably Webber's most effective score to date, filled with exciting numbers that the Broadway of today seems to forego.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2000
Journey's End
Belasco Theater

 Journey's End, R.C. Sheriff's vivid, 1928 anti-war slice of World War I trench life slams home the stupidity and brutality of war, and the basic innocence of the soldiers sent to the front to fight in a hopeless situation. It is beautifully performed by a first rate English-accented cast, well directed by David Grindley, and underlighted by Jason Taylor. I know, I know- they want us to experience the half-light of a real trench, but it's a very long play with little respite from the gloom, and there were some nod-outs sitting near me.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Judgment At Nuremberg
Longacre Theater

 It is always a gamble to stage a very popular classic film on Broadway, especially when the source material is so time specific. But director John Tillinger and his large cast have made the gamble pay off in this unexciting but refreshingly tasteful and understated adaptation of Abby Mann's Oscar-winning 1961 screenplay. If the production isn't exactly the last word in drama (as reflected by its very poor attendance), it is still an honorable one and nowhere as defeatist or dated as one might assume.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Judgment At Nuremberg
Longacre Theater

 From the portentious narration that accompanies the opening film clips to everyone's tendency to speechify, this is nothing if not earnest stuff. Thank heaven for George Grizzard's humor and restraint as a homespun judge. Maximilian Schell's just fine until he starts gobbling the scenery. Michael Mastro's mentally-challenged witness will likely cause debate, but it's a strong and fascinating acting choice. Nice work, too, from Robert Foxworth, Peter Francis James and a charming Marthe Keller.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Julius Caesar
Belasco Theater

 So Denzel Washington is playing Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and he's just fine. His charisma fills the theater, his acting is mostly good, and hey - that's Denzel up there lookin' good. It's okay if he speechifies in a couple of soliloquies, he's really good in conversation, and his star presence transcends his faults.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Jumpers
Brooks Atkinson Theater

 Tom Stoppard is one of the greatest wordsmiths ever, and his 1972 play, Jumpers, now on Broadway, is an early expression of his agility. It's a little razz-ma-tazz, a lot of philosophical fol-de-rol, and a speculation on God, Man, moral philosophy and logic. Stoppard shows his glittering mind as it explores conundrums of reality and contradictions in perception. The ideas are splashed fast and furious, but often so fast that if we dwell for a moment to appreciate, the actor, Simon Russell Beale, as directed David Leveaux, has raced on to the next two dazzlers, and we miss much.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2004
Kat And The Kings
Cort Theater

 I wonder which is more disappointing, a musical that stays blah from beginning to end, or one that catches fire early on but later finks out on its promise of glory. In the latter instance, certainly we're grateful for the sequences that ignite; after all, even legendary musicals have their moments of time killing and less-than-inspired music making. On the other hand, knowing what could have been and then watching the authors settle for an easy pander can be particularly grating.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
September 1999
King Hedley II
Virginia Theater

 This guy has written the same play five times now, said the disgruntled theater patron at a recent performance of August Wilson's newest Broadway offering King Hedley II, and while I mostly disregard such generalities as a reviewer, this one stuck with me the whole evening. Such cases have been made for people like filmmaker Woody Allen, who in his thirty-plus movies has generally gone to the same well several times in his effort to portray neurotic New Yorkers, usually played by himself.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
King Hedley II
Virginia Theater

 That King Hedley II has moments of soap-opera melodrama, confusing backstory, a few blatant metaphors and some time-biding patches in no way camouflages the fact that author August Wilson stands high among the world's greatest living playwrights. His facility with dialogue astonishes, as does his ability to offset lyrical scenes with nail-biting drama in an old-fashioned but rarely corny way.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 2001
Kiss Me, Kate
Martin Beck Theater

 Yes, it's another op'nin of another show, but the new revival of Cole Porter's splendid tuner, Kiss Me, Kate, is anything but ordinary. Staged with nothing less than pure extravagance and cast to perfection, it is a reminder that Broadway was once big and bold, and it steadfastly tries to inject that in every inch of its boundaries. Far too many years have passed since this delightful musical has been staged, and Sam and Bella Spewack's book is still fresh and funny, proving that old tricks sometimes are the best remedy for a sluggish season of musicals.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Kiss Me, Kate
Martin Beck Theater

 With the end-of-the-year closing of this Tony-winning revival just announced, a look in on the Cole Porter classic showed the tuner to be in generally fine shape. As Lili, Carolee Carmello, heretofore not known for goofy turns, has hilarious facial expressions to go with her lovely, trilling vibrato.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Kiss Me, Kate
Martin Beck Theater

 New York, don't bite your nails worrying if they botched up Kiss Me Kate like they did Annie Get Your Gun. Kate is (as in the title of the show's deliciously nostalgic waltz) "Wunderbar." Although un-billed playwright John Guare has done a little tweaking of the original book that Bella and Sam Spewack ingeniously fused with William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, there is no radical revisionism at work here.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
Love Child
59E59 Theaters

Playing in rep with Lee Blessing's A Body of Water at off-Broadway's 59E59 is Love Child, written and performed by Daniel Jenkins and Robert Stanton, a two-hander about show business that takes place backstage, on stage and in the audience. The two versatile actors play about twenty characters between them - actors, agents, audience members, relatives, male and female.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2008
Frost/Nixon
Geva Theater - Mainstage

 "I am not a crook," Richard Nixon famously declared, and he lied. But he was not a fool. In this production of Frost/Nixon, a play originally made for England's Donmar Warehouse in London, Keith Jochim achieves a brilliantly layered portrait of Nixon, a man far more complicated than most accounts even suggest.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
October 2008
Equus
Broadhurst Theater

 Equus by Peter Shaffer is a fascinating exploration of a psychiatric aberration: the treatment by a psychiatrist of a boy who has blinded horses. It's a stunning production - a brilliantly done work of theatrical art with perfect, specific lighting by David Hersey on a great arena set, with the greatest costumes in town, all by John Napier, whose horse's heads and hooves are frighteningly dazzling.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2008
Still the River Runs
Nova Southeastern University - Black Box Theater

 Things seem just a little off before the lights go down in Davie for the start of Still the River Runs. The dark-mud colored backdrop seems to be more Old-West desert than Central Florida ranchland-turning-suburbia, and the recorded-live-with-audience gospel music seems too loud for the tiny Black Box Theater at Nova Southeastern University. But then The Promethean Theater production of the Barton Bishop play begins, and under the direction of Margaret M.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
October 2008
November
GableStage at Biltmore Hotel

 In the Oval Office of David Mamet's November, it's a few days before an election that seems likely to defeat the widely unpopular incumbent. There's no cash to buy television time, and the party committee isn't helping. But perhaps worse for this prez is that he's likely to leave office without enough money to set up a proper presidential library -- and his wife has designs on a White House sofa.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
October 2008
Ghosts
Century Center Ballroom Theater

 As part of the ongoing series of Henrik Ibsen plays at the Century Center for the Performing Arts, Ghosts is the fourth to be revived in this space, though it is actually the third of Ibsen's plays in chronological order, written in 1881 right after A Doll's House, perhaps his most revered work. Ghosts is an even darker look at the ultimate dysfunctional family headed by Mrs. Alving (Kathleen Garrett), a somber matriarch who tells her detailed past to the rigid Pastor Manders (Mark Elliot Wilson).

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Glass Menagerie, The
Cap 21

 Set in St. Louis on the eve of World War II, The Glass Menagerie is a family tale of hope, despair and deception. Mississippi transplant Amanda lives with her two adult children in a modest apartment with shabby furnishings -- a far cry from how she hoped to end up. Her husband abandoned them years before to turn Amanda into a single mother, a status that commanded none of the respect but all of the drawbacks that we have with us sixty years later. Son Tom, who doubles as narrator in the play, works in a warehouse for a piddling salary.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
June 2000
Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine
City Center - Stage I

 I can't wait for the movie version of Warren Leight's Side Man. Many plays make for very awkward, stagy films, but Leight's wonderful ode to jazz musicians and their tumultuous offstage lives, I think, will translate beautifully. It seems that way because Leight writes his characters not unlike the 1950s heyday of the motion picture, where actors were given great dialogue that seemed a little larger than life but true to their natures, not to mention that it was great to listen to from an audience perspective.

Jason Clark
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Gloria
Theater For The New City

 Glory be to "Gloria" (Carrie Brewer), a beautiful sword-wielding princess who, thanks to her now deceased father, is well schooled in the art of dueling and sundry martial arts. It's lucky for Gloria that she has maintained her form and technique in daily workouts with Carmella (Judi Lewis), her close friend since childhood and soon to become a nun. Also keeping close watch over Gloria is her trusted nurse (Barbara J. Spence), who promised the dying king that she would keep the secret of Gloria's birth and the true identity of her mother.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
October 2000

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