Ghost-Writer
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

The setting is New York City in the early 1900s. The conceit is that we have come to the study of the late Franklin Woolsey, a famous novelist, at the instigation of his widow. We are investigating his secretary Myra Babbage. She claims that, after he died while dictating, she's continued to receive his words. Vivian Woolsey suspects Myra's relationship to her husband and his novels.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2011
Kind Kind Man, A
Under St. Marks Theater

A Kind Kind Man by Catherine Weingarten, directed by Zach Stasz, gives us an odd encounter between a fourteen-year-old girl (Tali Custer) selling toothpaste door to door (for $50 a tube - an immediate reality-bender) and a middle-aged neurotic man (Jeffrey Coyne) which segues into a surreal bondage event ultimately involving his wife (Victoria Guthrie). he acting is all quite good, and Weingarten is a very creative, imaginative young writer with signs of wit and originality poking through.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2011
Before God was Invented
Theater for the New City

Before God was Invented, written and directed by Lissa Moira, with music by Richard West and lyrics by Moira, is a far-out, ritualistic piece in action and sound. It's also often incomprehensible due to assumed accents and invented language -- words like, "omma tamma alla tomma" and phrases like, "We all time make with ears him to hear." I felt I was watching a spectacle in a foreign country.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2011
Baby It's You!
Broadhurst Theater

Baby It's You! is a cheery, happy rock-and-roll musical about the creation of the four-woman singing group, the Shirelles, by a New Jersey housewife, Florence Greenberg (powerfully acted and beautiful sung by Beth Leavel) in 1958. We follow their subsequent musical adventures and Florence's romantic one with her partner played by strong, handsome Allan Louis.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2011
Great American Trailer Park Musical, The
Venice Theater - Pinkerton

This mini-musical seemed to me as good a second time around. Audiences must think so, too, because the show has had several added performances and yet is sold out as I write.

Though The Great American Trailer Park Musical isn't free of raunchiness, director Kelly Woodland has been mindful of Venice's mostly conservative crowds. She keeps the show's satire pointed but not dependent on being risque with either dialogue or lyrics.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2011
Best of Jim Caruso's Cast Party, The
Town Hall

It was aces wild at Jim Caruso's one-night-only cast party at The Town Hall benefiting Broadway Cares - Equity Fights AIDS. Who did not appear? Who cares? It was a night of sequined minis and sparkling talents.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
February 2011
Dracula
Little Shubert Theater

If not for Dana Kenn's versatile and mobile sets, Chris DelVecchio's dramatic sound design, and special effects by Greg Meeh, the current off-Broadway version of Dracula would be fatally anemic. As it is, Bram Stoker's Gothic thriller, adapted by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, while offering some technical panache and occasional laughs, is a dusty, old-fashioned melodrama with few drops of lifeblood still oozing out.

Elizabeth Ahfors
Date Reviewed:
January 2011
Jackie Five-Oh!
Joe's Pub

For a number of occasions, Jackie Hoffman's home-away-from-home has been Joe's Pub. Only to be slightly outdone by Sondheim 80th celebrations, The Hoff's back there again January 10th and 17th, 2011 with Jackie Five-Oh! her blisteringly funny, often F-word-filled non-family hollercast celebrating her 50th birthday.

Ellis Nassour
Date Reviewed:
January 2011
Christine Ebersole
Cafe Carlyle

It was a fiery intro of bop jazz drum rhythms in the '30's classic, "Big Noise From Winnetka" that accompanied charismatic Christine Ebersole, who happens to be a big talent from Winnetka. She blazed into a vigorous follow-up of, "Ding, Dong The Witch is Dead," starting a tour de force performance for Ebersole's third year at the Café Carlyle.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
January 2011
Freud's Last Session
Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater

Freud's Last Session, by Mark St. Germain, directed by Tyler Marchant, takes a fine, meticulously staged look at an encounter between an 83 year old, irascible, dying Sigmund Freud and a younger C.S. Lewis. The contrapuntal arguments about the existence of God, sprinkled with real humor, give us a fascinating interchange as these brilliant minds clash.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2011
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Baby Universe
Baruch Performing Arts Center

Baby Universe: A Puppet Odyssey, by the group Wakka Wakka & Nordland Visual Theater, written and directed by Kir Jan Waage and Gwendolyn Warnock, with puppets by Waage and costumes and masks by Warnock, is an amazing picturization of the creation of a universe (after our Sun has died) by rod and hand puppets from tiny to larger than life size.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2010
Baby Jane Dexter: The Real Thing
Metropolitan Room

For "The Real Thing" in both a cabaret show and just delivering a song, always count on the magnetic Baby Jane Dexter. With her robust alto, her songs come from the soul and aim for the heart, touching and life-affirming, sometimes humorous, often heartbreaking, always honest. Her songs mean something to her and to you.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Date Reviewed:
November 2010
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
Bernard B. Jacobs Theater

On the same day I endured the first act of the poorly performed A Free Man of Color, I saw another historical deconstruction: the Broadway transfer of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. The exaggerations, a mixture of character and caricature, in this one work.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2010
Fyvush Finkel Live!
Baruch Performing Arts Center

Fyvush Finkel Live presented by Folksbiene, at The Baruch Performing Arts Center, a look back at the life and long career of this ancient comedic warrior, is a variety show -- an evening of Yiddish nostalgia with song, dance, jokes, sketches, and a sprinkling of Finkel's performing history from age fourteen to eighty-eight.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2010
Awesome Dance, The
The Cherry Pit

Nick Starr's The Awesome Dance is an intriguing, smartly-written New Age-ish play in several rather disjointed sections: the first is about three actresses waiting to see a powerful guru, and a distraught young man comes in. It ends in an orgy of violence. Part two is a non-sequitur with new characters and costumes, where a young man confronts a woman - something about his father dying, his sister, a traffic accident, a nurse. Part three has two lesbian women whose surrogate baby is being born in the other room, and a pot-smoking shamanic midwife.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
September 2010
Grand Manner, The
Lincoln Center - Mitzi Newhouse Theater

A.R.Gurney's autobiographical The Grand Manner, based on a visit he made as a young man to the Green Room of mega-actress Katherine Cornell when she is playing Cleopatra in 1948, is a lovely evening of theater, especially for those of us who remember the many actual theatrical personalities referred to in the play. Kate Burton is Cornell, and I believe it is the best work I have seen her do.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2010
4Play
Minetta Lane Theater

The new work by The Flying Karamazov Brothers, 4 Play, is the most exciting combo of juggling, sound, sight gags, and, yes, even dance, you'll ever see. It's a brilliant comedy show, and includes an almost classical, almost ballet comedic dance and a Polish coal miner's dance. The juggling is the best you'll see anywhere, and this show has more truly comedic (both high and low) non-juggling pieces than I've seen the group do through the years.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2010
Interfaith Understanding with the Rev. Bill & Betty
Robert Moss Theater

Interfaith Understanding with the Rev. Bill & Betty, by Martin D. Hill, deftly directed by Leonard Jacobs, is high-level political satire performed by Jen Ryan and Rik Sansone playing fanatical Southern evangelical Christian preachers. He is relaxed and sincere, she is hilarious - with the clean, clear facial expressions and timing of a Lucille Ball. They attack liberals, Gore, deny Global Warming, advocate guns and the bible. It's full of malapropisms, concept reversals and boundary pushing from profound to tasteless.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2010
Ensemble Studio Theater 2010 Marathon: Series B
Ensemble Studio Theater

The acting at Ensemble Studio Theater is always top level, and their Marathon 2010 Series B is one of the most consistently well-written and engaging group of five plays they have presented. In they Float Up by Jacqueline Reingold, directed by Michael Barakiva, choreographed by Mimi Quillin, a young man meets an older topless dancer in a bar, and there is an exploration of trauma in New Orleans after the storm. It is well performed by William Jackson Harper and Kellie Overbey.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
June 2010
Doesn't Everybody Do it in Paris?
IRT

Doesn't Everybody Do it in Paris?, directed and choreographed by Liz Vacco is a fascinating piece of truly abstract theater slightly related to Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." Elements of that novel (and its translator) flit through the piece.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
June 2010
Banana Shpeel
Beacon Theater

Cirque du Soleil tried a tangent - Banana Shpeel written and directed by David Shiner -- a clown show mixed with the super-gymnastics of Cirque's usual spectacles, and achieved partial success. It is basically a vaudeville show, circus act after circus act, like the amazing twirler Vanessa Alvarez spinning umbrella-like cloths contrapuntally on all four limbs, with clowns in between. However, the show has an unfunny opening, then good dancing to irritating music, and most of the jokes as we progress are not funny.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
June 2010
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
Public Theater

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, written and directed by Alex Timbers, with music and lyrics by Michael Friedman, is 18th-Century history done in rock and roll played in 19th-Century melodrama style with Brechtian influences. It's full of creative physical activity and jokes and songs in a psychedelic, anachronistic view of events. It's full of comic shtick and surprises and stands on the shoulders of Monty Python.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2010
Backward in High Heels
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

Against the bare brick walls are a huge screen for projections, flats, costumes on a rack, groups of lights. All are movable, as are insets from the sides. A stagehand mops. Surely, this is a backstage show. The professional is interspersed with the personal story of theater and film star Ginger Rogers.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2010
Glass House, The
Clurman Theater

In The Glass House, June Finfer explores ideas and concepts in architecture and in morality, giving us the most interesting work on the subject since Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead." Fictionalizing the work of actual innovative architects Mies van der Rohe, (played by Harris Yulin, an actor with great presence and total immersion into the character - every moment is real and believable) and Philip Johnson (played by David Bishins, whose gravelly voice makes George C.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2010
Ensemble Studio Theater 2010 Marathon: Series A
Ensemble Studio Theater

My notes on the five one-act plays in Series A of this year's Marathon at Ensemble Studio Theater. The first two plays are about discomfort:

Safe by Ben Rosenthal, directed by Carolyn Cantor, is a crude play about crude, quirky people: a young insecure man and his gruff stepfather, crudely acted (by Gio Perez and Danny Mastrogiorgio) with a bright phrase here and there. Each actor stays on one basic note, with one shift.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2010
Glass Menagerie, The
Laura Pels Theater

Roundabout Theater has an Off-Broadway winner in Gordon Edelstein's acclaimed production from New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre of Tennessee Williams' groundbreaking and haunting memory play, The Glass Menagerie, which has received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination as Outstanding Revival of a Play.

Ellis Nassour
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Cirque du Soleil: Ovo
Grande Chapiteau

Ovo, Cirque Du Soleil's new show now running on Randall's Island, is a mixture of its theme, insects, and the gymnastic, acrobatic and circus extravaganza that makes it the most popular live entertainment in the world. It didn't engage me until the super skills started to appear: marvelous synchronized foot-juggling, a lovely rope dance, the best El Diablo (two sticks, a cord between them, and spinning tops that fly) that I have ever seen, and then a couple of first-rate clowns as bugs. There's also a bag dancer you'll have to see to believe.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Cocktail Party, The
Beckett Theater

T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party is given a crackling-good presentation by The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) at the Beckett Theater on Theatre Row. How can this intellectual play, concerning commonplace domestic situations, written as poetry, crackle? With the fine cast, even the shallow banter at the beginning is intriguing and engaging as discussions become more complex in an ironic marital situation. There is a mystery, an exploration of psychiatric interpretation, descriptions and analysis of complex goals in life.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Good Ol' Girls
Harold & Miriam Steinberg Center

Randal Myler gives good country, and the new show he directed, Good Ol' Girls, starts as a lively, jumpin' Country-Western romp with five dynamic women singers: Lauren Kennedy, Teri Ralston, Gina Stewart, Liza Vann, the sparkling Sally Mayes, and a zippy, four-member backup band. They're all full of spirit, and the clever, flavorful songs by Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman are an entertaining glance at Southern life. It's a feel-good show performed by a terrific ensemble of professionals.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2010
Duet for Solo Voice
Theater for the New City

David Scott Milton's Duet for Solo Voice gives us a splash of 1970s-style absurdist theater. A schizophrenic night manager of a hotel deals with imaginary dangers while the hotel residents moan, howl and screw in the background, as he dances to their rhythms.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2010
Cold Snaps 2009: Winter One-Act Festival
Jewel Box Theater

Cold Snaps, the One-Act presentation of WorkShop Theater Company, was my introduction to this high-level company. The nine plays, all written and directed by company members, and the performances by the very professional cast were up there with the work of the best New York has to offer. Produced with style and taste, filled with humor and dramatic depth, the plays engaged, entertained, moved the audience. It's a pleasure for a reviewer to attend work of this caliber. Long may they wave!

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2009
Is Life Worth Living?
Mint Theater

Director Jonathan Bank has done it again: his Mint Theater presentation of the 1933 Irish play, Is Life Worth Living?, by Lennox Robinson takes an antique from its obscure shelf and gives us a delightfully entertaining drama peopled by high-level actors, all of whom bring a depth of character and a reality to their roles, on a fine expansive set by Susan Zeeman Rogers with perfect period costumes by Martha Hally, an impressive soundscape by Jane Shaw, and excellent lighting by Jeff Nellis.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
September 2009
After Luke / When I Was God
Irish Repertory Theater

Part of the 1st Irish Play Festival, After Luke and When I Was God, two colorful working-class dramas by Conal Creedon directed by Tim Ruddy, full of elemental conflict between brothers and between fathers and sons, is performed by three strong actors: Gary Gregg, Colin Lane and Michael Mellamphy. In the first, it's a Cain-and-Abel-style, powerful dynamic conflict, and in the second, it's sturm and drang between father and son revolving around sports. Basically, both are about miscommunication and the hope of parental love.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
September 2009
En
Theater for the New City

En, a 90 minute show by the all female drum and tapdance troupe COBU, created by Yaka Miyamoto, features hot, perfectly coordinated.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
September 2009
Joan Rivers
Laurie Beechman Theater

She's filthy as all get-out and drop-dead hilarious. I mean, really hilarious! She's dishing the type of shock and awe hilarity that has her packed-in-like-sardines audiences either howling, screaming or so shocked they're in somber silence.

Who can that be? The one, the only, the foul-mouthed, the funny comedienne Joan Rivers.

In her current stand at the Laurie Beechman Theater at the West Bank Cafe, the stand-up pro offends just about everyone – but but no one really gets too offended because they're rolling on the floor in laughter.

Ellis Nassour
Date Reviewed:
August 2009
Don't Leave it All to Your Children
Actors Temple Theater

Don't Leave it All to Your Children is a comedy-and-song revue about old people and aging, performed by four old pros: Steve Rossi, Barbara Minkus, Marcia Rodd, and James Dybas. There are loads of geriatric jokes and songs, and most of the audience, being antique, can easily identify with the material.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
July 2009
Lion King, The
Mandalay Bay

The opening scene of The Lion King at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas is so breathtaking that it brought tears to my eyes. Director Julie Taymor's amazing visual images of animals and vistas, the stylized masks and costumes she brilliantly designed, played on Richard Hudson's scenic design, with Garth Fagan's exciting choreography, augmented by thrilling rhythmical music and songs by Elton John and Tim Rice, all performed by an exceptionally strong cast, gives us a theatrical masterpiece.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
July 2009
JokeLand on Broadway
Iridium Jazz Club

Jackie the Jokeman (aka Jackie Martling) performs every Wednesday at 9PM at the Iridium Jazz Club at Broadway and 51st St. He opens with a funny dirty song then plays guitar with a really good trio. And that sets the tone for the evening; there are a succession of very old, mostly bad, jokes, a great impression of Rodney Dangerfield, and some funny stories.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
July 2009
Humor Abuse
City Center

Humor Abuse, Lorenzo Pisoni's theatrical memoir of growing up as a member of a circus troupe founded and run by his father, is thoroughly entertaining -- though I have to say that I found some of the stunts in this one-man-show very scary in their potential for serious injury. (After one intentional fall, Pisoni notes that his father broke his back doing the same stunt. Yikes!)

Michael Portantiere
Date Reviewed:
April 2009

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