Lion King, The
New Amsterdam Theater (moved to Minskoff Theater)

Everything you've heard about the first five minutes of The Lion King is true. When a golden sun rises on Richard Hudson's orange set, when birds on poles flitter about the audience's heads, when lion-masked actors prowl and wooden antelopes lope across the stage, when giant papier-mache'-style elephants galumph down the aisle—all this to the unforgettable voice of Tsidii Le Loka, her face painted up as an African mask—the only rational response is to cry a little and wonder at the glories of life and art.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
November 1997
Lion King, The
New Amsterdam Theater (moved to Minskoff Theater)

 If there was a "Prize of the Century for Innovation, Imagination, and Costume Design," Julie Taymor, the director and designer of Disney's Broadway production, The Lion King, would win hands down. The extent of Taymor's contribution to The Lion King is so overwhelming, it eclipses almost all other aspects of this lively production. Where else can you find elephants, rhinos, a pride of lions, crocodiles, wildebeests, racing gazelle, antelopes sauntering down the aisles, giraffes onstage, and all types of colorfully-plumed birds flying about a theater?

Ellis Nassour
Date Reviewed:
1997
Lion King, The
New Amsterdam Theater (moved to Minskoff Theater)

 Although the play, in this case, is most definitely not the thing, The Lion King is a must-see event -- actually two must-see events. The first event, the one that immediately knocks your socks off, is the absolutely glorious restoration of the historic (1903) New Amsterdam Theater ("the jewel of 42nd Street"). This is the theater that Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. made famous with his Follies extravaganzas from 1913 to 1927.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
February 1998
Little Dog Laughed, The
Cort Theater

 The Little Dog Laughed has moved to Broadway, and now that it is $96 a seat, I have to re-evaluate my earlier review when it was Off-Broadway. Then, I started with: Douglas Carter Bean is a smart writer with a sharp sense of humor; he's able to throw in jokes, quips and references that ring so true or familiar we can't help laughing. Some of this shows in The Little Dog Laughed. It's about a killer female Hollywood agent, a confused guy who is a movie star, his new boyfriend who is a prostitute, and the prostitute's sort-of girlfriend.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Little Dog Laughed, The
Cort Theater

 No doubt about it, Julie White gives an exquisitely sharp portrait of Diane, a manipulative Hollywood agent who connives to keep her hottest client, Mitch, safely in the closet -- despite her own lesbian leanings. Otherwise, I found The Little Dog Laughed, a slick Tinseltown satire, to be overpraised.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2007
Little Shop of Horrors
Virginia Theater

Feed me, Seymour. Three little words that will bring a grin to anyone with a soft spot for Roger Corman's cheapie film classic about a nebbishy plant store employee and the behemoth he grows using nourishment of a special type -- specifically, Type O. Even those of us who missed the well-loved off-Broadway run of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's musicalization of Little Shop of Horrors have felt the work's indelible stamp, thanks mainly to Frank Oz's exceptional 1986 film. And hence lies the problem with the show's 2003 appearance on Broadway.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Little Shop of Horrors
Virginia Theater

 If you don't want to have a lot of fun, if you don't want to laugh and smile for two hours and walk out humming, don't go to Little Shop of Horrors. The clever old lyrics by Howard Ashman and lively tunes by Alan Menken tickle more that ever, and the sterling performances by the beautiful Kerry Butler, the always vulnerable Hunter Foster, Rob Bartlett (as close as you can get to Zero) and the amazing, dazzling Douglas Sills, all make this the best Little Shop ever.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2004
Little Women
Virginia Theater

 You'd have to be really jaded not to enjoy the new musical, Little Women (book by Allan Knee, music by Jason Howland, lyrics by Mindi Dickstein). The tall but elfin Sutton Foster as the leader of the sisters is lively, endearing, and a spunky 19th-Century example of a woman with a will, a way, and universal good looks and charm. She has great comic timing, intonation and physicality. All of the cast are really good singers (as is apropos on Broadway), and then there is Maureen McGovern as the mother.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Plymouth Theater

 If we were to gauge the opinion of the collective American theater as to our best play, the answer would almost certainly be Long Day's Journey into Night, Eugene O'Neill's overpowering portrait of his family -- parents, brother, and self -- on the day they were told he had tuberculosis. One of the few modern plays that can be classed with classical tragedy, it expresses oceanic pain with impossible honesty. O'Neill nearly dispensed with plot, and dramatized ananke (fate) in every moment of the play.

Steve Capra
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Plymouth Theater

 Too many recent stagings of Eugene O'Neill's greatest play - arguably the greatest of all American plays - have tried to rush the actors, cut the script, or take other desperate measures to shave the show's outsized running time. Granted, the current Broadway revival's 255-minute journey does make us wonder if a few of the repetitious arguments could be tightened here and there.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Plymouth Theater

 This American Masterpiece is the dark side of O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!. Long Day's Journey needs no commentary, but this new production - staged by Robert Falls - is Magisterial! Vanessa Redgrave is heart-breaking as the tragically addicted Mary Tyrone. [This did not prevent a Jewish critic sitting next to me from observing that "Redgrave supports the Arabs!"] Brian Dennehy is wonderfully self-pitying-Irish as the miserly husband & father - and ruined actor - James Tyrone, for whom drink is a Good Man's Failing.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Look of Love, The
Brooks Atkinson Theater

 More like the look of chintz and the sound of yawns. Just when off-Broadway's Hank Williams: Lost Highway came along to show how a musical revue could be smart, affecting and even sometimes thrilling, Broadway dredges up this reminder of just how dreary a pastiche can be. Oh sure, the first fifteen minutes are amiable enough, as good, personable singers like Liz Callaway, Janine LaManna and the capacious Capathia Jennings sing some hit tunes by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Look of Love, The
Brooks Atkinson Theater

 Subtitled, "The Songs of Burt Bacharach & Hal David," this show is definitely not a musical, nor yet quite a revue. The songs are not block-busters, or even that memorable, unless you came of age when they were hot. The cast is able, without being compelling - or especially attractive. The sets look like perambulating rabbit-cages and the costumes seem from Daffy's rather than H & M. Astonishing - and depressing - that the lackluster choreography is credited to Ann Reinking. Scott Ellis directed, but he has certainly had better nights than this one.

Glenn Loney
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Look of Love, The
Brooks Atkinson Theater

 The Look of Love: The Songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, is one of the most ill-conceived musicals I've ever seen. From an unimaginative start (how can you sing "Don't Ever Go" with an unending smile?) to choreography from some long ago book of moves with some physical actions at inappropriate moments, crude costumes, meaningless scenery of cages and chain link fences, it's all tedious, with no humor, and is basically tasteless. They have the rhythm but do not delve into the content of the songs.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
LoveMusik
Biltmore Theater

 In LoveMusik, book by Alfred Uhry, music by Kurt Weill, an examination of the life and music of Weill, Donna Murphy as the sprite Lotte Lenya gives us an amazing characterization unlike anything she has done before. This skinny little waif is sexy and sensuous, with impeccable comic timing and a unique, very musical voice with great range in sound and emotion. She's a delightful, mesmerizing presence.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
Happy Days
Galleria Toledo

(see Criticopia International review(s) under "Giorni felici")

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
December 1996
He That Has The Mirror
Sangelage Theater

 Among the cultural events commemorating Muslim leader Imam Ali this year was a brief theater festival in late October and early November 2000 of ten new works. The Fatemeh Zahra Company, an enterprising young women's theater group from Tehran's neighbor city Karaj, offered an allegorical portrait of the Shia religious figure. Narges Zareii cleverly incorporated images from Ali's writings into a piece about an acting troupe searching for a good subject for women.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
November 2000
Happy Days
Nikolai Masalitinov Dramatic Theater

The Plovdiv Theater Festival "Scena na Krystopyt," running September 12-23, 2002, includes this premiere from the Adriana Budevska Theater in Burgas on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast. While most performances are inside the Nikolai Masalitinov Dramatic Theater, this one of Happy Days is outdoors in the entrance courtyard.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
September 2002
Tuna Christmas, A
Actors Theater of Louisville

 For the farewell run of A Tuna Christmas winding up after its 13 years as a popular seasonal offering, Actors Theater of Louisville has mounted the handsomest production I've ever seen of this wildly funny two-hander.

Paul Owen's adaptable set appropriately mirrors an old-fashioned radio for the opening scene at the 225-watt station OKKK, where down home announcers Thurston Wheelis and Arles Struvie (Warren Kelley and Brad DePlanche, who play all 22 characters populating Tuna, the third-smallest town in Texas) are hyping coming Christmas activities.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
November 2008
Times They Are A-Changin', The
Brooks Atkinson Theater

How wise director-choreographer Twyla Tharp was to title her latest dancical, The Times They Are A-Changin', since that song warns writers and critics to "keep your eyes wide / the chance won't come again." Verily, this critic's eyes had to fight to stay open, and any chance this half-baked mess has of lasting past December is slimmer than sheet metal from cannery row.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Stuff Happens
Public Theater

America doesn't lack for pundit reactions to the Iraq War, be they "What a mess the government's lies got us into," or, conversely, "Better a messy war than an evil dictator holding sway in a post-9/11 Middle East." Nor do we lack citizens who call President Bush either an idiot beholden to special interests, oil companies and the religious right, or a plain-speaking, God-fearing Texan who cares more about maintaining a secure America than soft-soaping our allies.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Tarzan
Richard Rodgers Theater

 Could there be a more apt representation of the heights Tarzan reaches -- and the depths to which it swoops -- than the rope from which its titular teen swings? No sooner does Bob Crowley, the Disney musical's set designer, costume designer AND director, make a butterfly flutter through the air with the greatest of ease, than he nooses himself with poor blocking, hyper-stimulation and silly mistakes. For example, he creates an absolutely stunning waterfall effect just by having an Ailey-type dancer swirl a ribbon that's followed by other ribbons billowing downward to the stage floor.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 2006
High Fidelity
Imperial Theater

 Top five reasons why High Fidelity closed on Broadway after only 18 previews and 14 regular performances:

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
December 2006
Hamlet
New Ambassadors Theatre

 Straight from page to stage comes this authentic production with a young, dark, handsome Hamlet, vigorously interpreted by Ed Stoppard. A fine, sometimes curtained black box, with a centered trap, lets lighting or fog -- but mostly Shakespeare's poetry -- set the action. Traditional costumes set time and the wearers' social status. (Gertrude's fanciful red gown surely helps Anita Dobson act the scarlet woman.) Almost all the long speeches and soliloquies are played directly to the audience from downstage center, and they work! They are thoughts given breath or intimacies shared.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Hamlet on Trial
Theatre les Dechargeurs

 see Criticopia review(s) under French title: "Le Process d'Hamlet"

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2002
Heiress, The
Royal George Theater

 This handsome revival of The Heiress is impeccably acted by a typically adept Shaw Festival cast, except that, as in their Arms and the Man, I'm disappointed with the female lead. The physical production is wonderfully realistic, yet richly suggestive. But, at least in the first act, I don't believe most of Catherine's emotions and even find Tara Rosling's behavior in the title role to be anachronistic and inappropriately lower class. Rosling looks remarkably like Cherry Jones in this role, but it would be unkind to compare the two performances.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
May 2006
Henry IV, Part I
Tom Patterson Theater

 Of the many Henry IV Part 1s I've seen (including four of the previous five at Stratford), I think the finest was the 1965 Stratford production directed by Stuart Burge. I remember the stunning young Canadian actors, all new to me, and now justly famed: Douglas Rain as Prince Hal, Douglas Campbell as Hotspur, Martha Henry as Lady Percy, and the late Tony van Bridge, still my favorite Falstaff. Desmond Heeley's great designs included a long trailing cape for the "wizard" Glendower.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2006
Henry V
National Theater - Olivier

 For his first personally-directed production in his tenure as the National Theatre's new honcho, Nicholas Hytner chose that most famous of war plays, Henry V, which the institution had never mounted, probably in deference to the celebrated Oscar-winning 1944 film by Hytner's predecessor, Sir Laurence Olivier. This film, superb though it was, used less than a third of Shakespeare's text and turned the title character into a heroic paragon to boost British morale in World War II. Even Kenneth Branagh's grittier 1989 film sanitized the play.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Henry VIII
Festival Theatre Stage

 Finally, Shakespeare's Henry VIII, subtitled "All Is True," is not thought to be entirely written by Shakespeare and has a decidedly uneven script but is fairly accurate history, easily followed, and mostly believable. The excessive praise for the great age heralded by the newborn baby Elizabeth in the finale may sound like fawning flattery for Shakespeare's queen, but the play is thought to have been written a decade after Elizabeth's death. It does have much pageantry and scheming, so it requires a large, gifted cast and an elaborate production.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
High Society
Festival Theatre Stage

 I'd not seen this stage musical, though I'm very familiar with Philip Barry's sparkling play, The Philadelphia Story, that it's based on, and the dazzling movie of that play (which I think improved on Barry's script), and the delightful film musical for which Cole Porter wrote his last hit score. So I wondered why this stage musical, adapted from the movie musical, was never the big success that all its predecessors were. Now I know.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
May 2006
His Girl Friday
National Theatre - Olivier

 In 1928, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur penned a classic comedy about journalism titled The Front Page (both authors were ex-journalists). Based on this script, Charles Lederer wrote a screenplay that was filmed in 1939 by Howard Hawks under the title "His Girl Friday," in which ace reporter Hildy Johnson was changed from a man to the ex-wife of editor Walter Burns. American playwright John Guare was persuaded to conflate the two (though the original play needed no rewrite), and has done so with considerable, if not total, success.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
History Boys, The
National Theatre - Lyttelton

 Warning: If youre not British, don't expect to find this play as funny or like it as much as the Brits do. Past the references to Grammar School in the 1980s North (the setting), to the Education System, and to politics, there is, however, a clash of values that anyone can understand and find interesting. It occurs when Headmaster, keen as can be to get his grads into Oxford, hires bright, opportunistic Irwin to coach the boys for the entrance test.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Hitchcock Blonde
Lyric Theatre

 Playwright Terry Johnson, who turns 48 this year, has chosen to direct his latest play himself, so the result is clearly what he envisioned. His production of Hitchcock Blonde has turned out to be disappointing and confusing. Three time frames are involved, separated by four decades.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Holy Mothers
New Ambassadors Theatre

 The late Austrian playwright Werner Schwab (1958-94) is known for writing social dramas with blunt, even shocking language. Holy Mothers, as Meredith Oakes titles her 1997 translation of Die Praesidentinnen, is no exception. Not only is it blasphemous, obscene and scatological, but it becomes increasingly cloacal as it proceeds on its grotesquely funny way. A hideous kitchen is the arena for three aging Catholic women.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Honour
Wyndham's Theatre

 Chairs set row upon row, back and sides, unoccupied in shadows suggest the action of Honour is a trial. Still, famous writer George (Martin Jarvis, trying hard to be winning) never really makes anything but a selfish case for leaving his wife Honor for a younger woman. No matter how cunningly she (Natascha McElhone as Claudia, with claws) flirts when she comes to interview him, nor how beautiful and assertive she is. No way does his offer to give his wife half of most of their belongings appear generous.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Human Voice, The
Stratford Festival - Studio Theater

 This one-act evening begins with a jewel of a bonus: Jean Cocteau's The Human Voice. I was impressed to see Lally Cadeau in a virtual walk-on playing the Bastard's mother in the all-star King John, but Cocteau's mini-masterpiece monologue is more worthy of that exquisite actress. It's just a woman posing, pretending, pleading, and promising on the telephone with the lover who has broken up with her. She has no melodramatic action or excessive expression. She doesn't leave her bedroom. She just talks on the phone.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Madras House, The
Mint Theater

 Though the Mint Theater's revival of The Madras House is well played, beautifully costumed, often lively, occasionally provocative and, in rare spots, gripping, at the end of its three hours, really the only question that intrigued me was whether protagonist Philip Madras served as a prototype of sorts for Bobby in the musical Company. Although a constant presence in the four major scenes that constitute Harley Granville-Barker's comedy, Philip's a passive presence, serving as adjudicator and sounding board as he mulls life decisions that are crucial to him but not especially

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Howard Katz
Laura Pels Theater

In the gripping poker games of Dealer's Choice and the frayed relationships of Closer, Patrick Marber keenly mapped the emotional toll of compulsive behavior and casual cruelty. At his frequent best, he wedded the fluid, seriocomic dialogue of Donald Margulies to the crisp tension of David Mamet.

So why doesn't it work in Howard Katz? Certainly, Marber's created a larger-than-life protagonist and given him a clear trajectory to follow: hollow career success becomes across-the-board failure, all in an intermissionless 90 minutes.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Eureka!
The Living Theater

The Living Theater's production of Eureka is an extraordinary theatrical experience in action, movement, projections, text based on Edgar Allan Poe's prose poem, and music by Patrick Grant. They create the universe, from the periodic table to infinity and back again, and you are part of it. With a good looking cast of actor/dancers who can really move, director/co-writer (with the late Hanon Reznikov) Judith Malina gives us a performance-art experience that is rare and wonderful.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2008
Gazillion Bubble Show, The
New World Stages

The Gazillion Bubble Show, a solo extravaganza creating bubble magic at New World Stages, has a Las Vegas flavor as it starts with a commercial for itself. Then, Ana Yang, a charming bubblemeister, creates wonderful, imaginative images, fascinating shapes and mixes of color with bubbles, including bubbles in bubbles and smoke in bubbles. It's a rare display of technique, creativity and artistry.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2008

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