Cut to the Chase
59E59 Theaters

It's 1898. Vaudeville is at it height, and the winners of the national contest are here, the best in the country. That's my impression of Cut to the Chase. The multi-talented writer/performer Joel Jeske has put together a troupe of real clowns, tap dancers (led by the zippiest tapper in town, Stan Kasprzak), comedians, jugglers, a beautiful singer (Juliet Jeske - who also did the madcap period costumes), drummers, all with meticulous timing.

It is all clean, precise, masterful as these zanies cavort.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2007
Santaland Diaries, The
Actors Theater of Louisville

It's surprising that The Santaland Diaries, the hilarious David Sedaris tale about his time spent playing an elf named Crumpet at Macy's during Christmas, is just now on stage at Actors Theater of Louisville for the first time. The wait has been worth it, and ATL has another major attraction to add to its two other popular seasonal offerings, A Tuna Christmas and A Christmas Carol.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
November 2007
Gypsy
City Center

Thank God Patti LuPone decided not to spend the summer at her South Carolina beach house. She's right here in New York City at City Center, and wow!, does she entertain.

Ellis Nassour
Date Reviewed:
July 2007
Gone Missing
Barrow Street Theater

I'm proud to say I came very well prepared to experience Gone Missing at the Barrow Street Theater. Two days before I saw the show, which deals with people misplacing and losing all sorts of items, I'd left a box of minidisks and a calendar book at a radio station. Plus, the week before, my wife accidentally left her keys (later returned) at a bed and breakfast in Philadelphia.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
July 2007
Cirkus Inferno
New Victory Theater

Cirkus Inferno, the loudest and quietest show in town, gives us Jonah Logan, a super physical comedian, as a dead-pan Buster Keaton in conflict with everything in his environment and Amy Gordon, the supplest rubberband on skates, who is a Chaplinesque mime and a dancer/acrobat with a bit of Imogene Coca and Lily Tomlin in her.

May 2007
Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

There's not much to cheer about regarding the new musical, Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life. Once you get past Rivera's relatively brief incarnations as her best characters from years past (such as Anita, the role she created in West Side Story, the original Velma in the musical Chicago, or the title role in Kiss of the Spider Woman) there's not much left to say. If those tidbits are enough to hold your attention for almost two hours, then by all means see Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
Evening of Intimate Magic, An (with Eric deCamps)
Rockefeller Center - Lincoln Room

I saw the performance of a charming Close-Up Magician, Eric DeCamps. He takes top-level magic pieces, and performs them perfectly: coins appear and disappear; his card work seems actual magic; he does cups and balls, the disappearing egg, uses a spirit box with ropes, and one I haven't seen before that is surely actual magic: bread chips and a cup.

DeCamps, an ingratiating persona, is a master of sleight-of-hand, and his show, one of the best you'll see of this kind of magic, is entertaining from start to finish.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
BE
Union Square Theater

BE [sic] now at the Union Square Theater, performed by Mayumana, is an amazing show. It's drumming and action, and is as tightly choreographed as a Busby Berkeley musical, with precise Mime exercises, precision drumming, planned wildness, and great contemporary/futuristic costumes by Neta Haker. It has a bit of Cirque, Stomp, Blue Man flavor, but it is its own thing and includes hamboning, black light, acrobatics, Flamenco and belly-dancing, all with great creativity, universality in movement and sound, order and chaos with order.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
Be
Union Square Theater

If you haven't seen Stomp, Blue Man Group, Blast!, Cirque du Soleil, Gumboots and/or Drumstruck, have I got a show for you! It's an Israeli import called Be, and it features a passel of young, awesomely agile and athletic performers mixing dance, physical slapstick, musical performance art and audience participation. It's got rhythmic trading of buckets, glow-in-the-dark flippy things, funky dancing, playful calisthenics, and pretty much anything to make an aspiring terpsichorean green with envy.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
April 2007
Desire in the Suburbs
Workshop Theater

Eugene O'Neill's powerful drama of love, jealousy, betrayal, passion, Desire Under the Elms, is looked at with a contemporary comedic sideways skew by Frederic Glover in his Desire in the Suburbs now at The Workshop Theater on West 36th Street.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Gutenberg! The Musical
Actors' Playhouse

Gutenberg! The Musical! by Scott Brown and Anthony King gives us two wonderful comedians, Jeremy Shamos and David Turner, in a hilarious, absurdist interpretation of the adventures of the inventor of the printing press in 1450. Turner is a comedy star who can sing and dance and has the clean movements of a mime. Shamos is a perfect foil for him.

The songs and patter are clever, and it's directed and choreographed with flair and great comic timing by Alex Timbers. Innovative costumes by Emily Rebholz expand the concept of the two men playing multiple characters.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 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
Adrift in Macao
59E59 Theater

Mystery! Adventure on dark streets! Beautiful bad women in slinky costumes! Suave good-looking men! Adrift in Macao, the new film noir musical with book and lyrics by Christopher Durang and music by Peter Melnick now at 59E59, gives us Durang at the top of his satirical creativity, with sparkling, imaginative innovation from director Sheryl Kaller and choreographer Christopher Gattelli. The music is as profoundly enjoyable as the lyrics, and it's a kick from start to finish.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Evil Dead: The Musical
New World Stages

Granted, George Reinblatt's merciless send-up of this Hollywood horror isn't wedded to a musical score of equal distinction. And yes, the late-night cult cachet that Evil Dead aspires to is frankly ripped off from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But outfitted with its undeniably original Splatter Zone, ED is s-o-o-o-o much fun, a happening with its own twisted identity.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Fever, The
Acorn Theater

Starting with wry observations on theatregoing, Wallace Shawn is a fine monologist, an observer/commentator whose tales draw us in, while his insights and humor hold us. In The Fever, there is a lot about the lot of the poor and visits to poor countries, some with revolutions, including Karl Marx's analysis of value and the relationship between product and people, and a ramble on terrorism. There are also comments on a nude beach and on Christmas present-wrapping.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
American Pilot, The
City Center

David Greig's The American Pilot, now at Manhattan Theater Club, pits a bunch of really stupid people -- villagers in an Eastern country where English is not spoken -- against an equally stupid American pilot whom they have discovered with a broken leg and brought to a hut in their village. Would people who don't speak each other's language keep screaming insistently at each other as if the noise alone would communicate the idea? It's not rational, not a survival tactic for villagers or soldier.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
December 2006
Bhutan
Cherry Lane Theater

Daisy Foote's Bhutan is a jigsaw puzzle with pieces from past and present jumbled together until, gradually, the picture of a Massachusetts working-class family and its dynamics, its conflicts with each other and with the world, becomes clear. It's a domestic drama with realism underlined by the stylized presentation.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Adi Braun
Iridium

I had a surreal experienced at the Sunday Jazz Brunch at Iridium on 51st and Broadway. Here's a fine singer, Adi Braun, with a wide and flexible range of voice and songs, doing a sophisticated performance for an audience of tourists and their kids having lunch. So this brave, talented singer had to stand up there doing her thing, paying no attention to the conversational murmur (with an occasional high-pitched "Daddy, can I have some more?" drifting thru the room). She's a trouper -- did it with a smile and the vocal subtleties of a top-notch jazz singer.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Clean House, The
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House is a bit of a mish mash; it has elements of farce, and it's also about dying of cancer. Early on, it seems an inane attempt to be amusing, with the maid (Vanessa Aspillaga) as psychotherapist. Jill Clayburgh gives a terrific performance as a quirky, insecure, repressed housewife obsessed with cleaning, and Blair Brown is fine as the odd MD; Act 2 has some nice stylized movement and dance, and it seems a totally different play.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Jose Feliciano
Iridium

In 1964, I was the MC of The Hootenanny at The Bitter End Cafe in Greenwich Village every Tuesday night. One night a young woman came in dragging a blind Puerto Rican kid with a guitar. She said to put him on the stage, that he was really good. I said, "Sure," and put him on at two in the morning. When he sang his first song, I told the woman, "Bring him in any time -- I'll put him on any time you say." It was Jose Feliciano. About ten years later, at a club in Huntington Beach, California, I was his opening act doing my mime/comedy act, and he used to heckle me.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Fantasticks, The
Snapple Theater Center

The Fantasticks, now playing at the Snapple Theater Center, is a sweet, old fashioned, silly, romantic comedy with terrific songs that stick in your mind. What a pleasure to walk out humming "Try to Remember" or "Soon It's Gonna Rain." With a fine cast including the beautiful, clear-voiced Sara Jean Ford as the girl, Burke Moses as El Gallo and the extraordinary physical comedian Robert R.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Confessions of an Irish Rebel
Irish Arts Center

Confessions of an Irish Rebel, now at the Irish Arts Center on West 51st Street, gives us the real flavor of Ireland in a show full of wit and wisdom in story and song. You're in a pub with a charming, smart, marvelous storyteller who sings the old tunes and becomes the many characters he talks about, each with a unique persona and voice. As Behan, Shay Duffin is the guy you'd actually love to meet in an Irish pub.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Hairy Ape, The
Irish Repertory

Eugene O'Neill is America's greatest playwright, and there is a powerful representation of his work at The Irish Rep on 22nd Street, directed by Ciaran O'Reilly: The Hairy Ape. It's a marvelous production on Eugene Lee's inspired, complex, brilliantly active set, with vivid lighting by Brian Nason and fine costuming by Linda Fisher.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Barbara's Blue Kitchen
Lamb's Theater

They don't make many actresses as good as Lori Fischer. They don't make many country singers as good as Lori Fischer. They don't make many writers who can write with the depth and insight into character of Lori Fischer, or create her range of melodies that can make you smile or make you feel pangs of emotion. This great talent is on view at the Lamb's Theater, where she stars in her musical, Barbara's Blue Kitchen. It's an amazing performance of an exposition of people in a little town in Tennessee.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Billy the Mime
Players Theater

Did you see "The Aristocrats"? The sequence by Billy the Mime was one of the funniest. Billy the Mime is now playing in the NY Fringe, and it's a "Don't Miss!" He's one of the best mimes in the country with clean clear technique, a great sense of humor and perfect timing.

Although influenced by Marcel Marceau, Billy has his own sensibility and his own contemporary view of the world. He keeps his audience entertained from start to finish with nary a dull moment.

This is solo mime at its very best by a highly skilled, totally engaging performer.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Fartiste, The
Harry De Jur Playhouse

In Paris in the 1890s there was a popular music-hall performer called "Le Petomaine" who played tunes by passing gas. He was a huge star for about a decade.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
French Defense, The
Abrons Arts Center at Henry Street Settlement

The French Defense by Dimitri Raitzin is a fascinating look at a chess contest by then World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik (Robert J. D'Amato) and challenger Mikhail Tal (Daniel Hendricks Simon) in 1960. I'm not a chess player, but I was completely drawn into the drama of the contest between a champ and an annoying, insulting gadfly, and by the depth of the characterization by the actors, particularly D'Amato.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Bush Is Bad
Triad Theater

Bush is Bad is a first-class political satire that goes far beyond the obvious. The three highly talented performers -- Janet Dickinson, Neal Mayer, and Michael McCoy -- are comedians with strong musical voices and actors who can fully realize the many characters each plays.  Janet as Condoleeza Rice is brilliant, including a riff on the piano.

Richmond Shephard
Date Reviewed:
July 2006
Field, The
Irish Repertory

In John B. Keane's The Field, strongly directed by Ciaran O'Reilly at the Irish Rep, an elemental battle in rural Ireland in 1964 pits a brutal cattle farmer, who needs the field for grazing and access to water, against and another man who needs the field so he can put in a quarry business (so that his sick wife can return to Ireland). It's the irresistible force meeting the immovable object; neither can compromise.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
June 2006
Cirque du Soleil: Corteo
Cirque du Soleil at Grand Chapiteau on Randall's Island

Through the years, Cirque De Soleil's shows have grown in sophistication as they explore new themes in entertainment in which the human body goes beyond ordinary circus skills into unbelievable, thrilling dimensions full of surprises.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
May 2006
Defiance
Manhattan Theater Club - Stage I

John Patrick Shanley is one of America's greatest playwrights. He is so sparkling bright with words, uses language with such inspiration as he digs deep into the souls of his characters, that he is hard to match in dramatic depth and ironic humor. Seemingly, his play Defiance, now at The Manhattan Theater Club, is a profound look at discrimination in the US Marines in 1971. Main characters are a white Marine Colonel, his wife, a black Captain and a white minister from Alabama.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Grey Gardens
Playwrights Horizons

Based on the brilliant documentary film about two decayed Bouvier cousins of Jackie Kennedy, Grey Gardens (book by Doug Wright) gives us a vocal glimpse into a South-Shore Long Island past in 1941 and the life of a wealthy mother (Christine Ebersole) and her daughter (Sara Gettlefinger) who is courted by Joe Kennedy. The voices are excellent, and the lyrics by Michael Korie and music by Scott Frankel give us the real flavor of the forties while being clever and pleasurable.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Barefoot in the Park
Cort Theater

For some good old theatrical fun, check out the current production of Neil Simon's early play,  Barefoot in the Park, now on Broadway. Directed with clever action, business, and timing by Scott Elliott, chock full of good jokes by Simon, the story of a newlywed couple's first New York apartment, the bride's mother and an adventurous neighbor, will hold you, tickle you, totally engage you.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Almost, Maine
Daryl Roth Theater

John Cariani, the quirky actor who played Motel in the recent Fiddler on the Roof, has written a quirky bunch of short plays taking place in snowy Almost, Maine. Much of it is gentle theater—a very sweet look at shy people in rural America as they mate and mismate. Jumping from the surreal to the sweetly sentimental, the first-class cast of four wonderfully versatile actors, Finnerty Steeves, Todd Cerveris, Justin Hagan and Miriam Shor, all in multiple roles, give us a pleasant, amusing evening of romance in rustic America.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
Apartment 3A
Arc Light Theater

Jeff Daniels's engrossing romantic comedy Apartment 3A has some of the best acting in town. Amy Landecker, as a betrayed woman who moves into a new shabby apartment, is a mesmerizing stage presence who plays pain, joy, sexuality, feistyness, and even complacence with a believability that is rare anywhere. As she encounters two suitors, a co-worker at a TV station (Arian Moayed) and a stranger who appears at her door Joseph Collins), both quite convincingly acted, her life turns and twists into a guessed solution that works fine.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
Abigail's Party
Acorn Theater

Jennifer Jason Leigh is a great actress. In Mike Leigh's 1977 play, Abigail's Party, now on Theater Row, she is amazing as she turns artifice into reality, broad caricature in movement, voice, accent, physicality, and attitude into a totally believable human character. She plays a narcissistic pretentious working class woman who believes she is some kind of princess, and Max Baker as her cringing husband brings a matching piece of work to the stage.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater

Chita Rivera, The Dancer's Life, written by Terrence McNally, is not only a survey of the great singer/dancer's life and adventures, it's a great story of fifty years of American Musical Theater, and a fabulous performance by one of the most talented, liveliest stars ever to appear on Broadway. Okay, at 73 her leg doesn't kick as high. So what? Her persona is here, her charm, her radiance, even most of her voice. It's a privilege to spend a couple of hours with a star of this magnitude as she shows and tells us her fascinating life.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2006
Ashley Montana Goes Ashore in the Caicos
Flea Theater

Ashley Montana Goes Ashore in the Caicos, or, What Am I Doing Here? is the name of a show by Roger Rosenblatt directed by Jim Simpson. By it's end, I, too, felt the way of the "or."

I went because that great star and Tony winner, Bebe Neuwirth, is in it. Essentially, Ashley Montana features a four-person sketch-comedy troupe with competent performers, some cute, lightly political bits, clever plays on words and fun non sequiturs, but only some jokes work, and lots of the material doesn't. When one hits, we keep wishing more would.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2005
Bach at Leipzig
New York Theater Workshop

Bach at Leipzig is an intriguing title. It stirs hopes of an Amadeus, perhaps a Souvenir or a Travesties. Alas and alack. Itamar Moses has a splendid idea -- let six musicians (the requisite number of voices in a fugue) in 1722 compete for the job of music master, let them discuss fugues and end with a verbal fugue. Unfortunately, director Pam MacKinnon, who is excellent at moving people around on the stage, doesn't control their hysterics and declamations when they speak.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2005
Captain Louie
Little Shubert Theater

Captain Louie is an inept kids show performed by kids who sing well but leave a lot to be desired in the acting department. But the play's the thing that sinks the project. Based on "The Trip" by Ezra Jack Keats, the book for the show, by Anthony Stein, is condescending, trite, saccharine, and basically at such a low level that my grandnephew, Mathew Sprague, who is nine, said, "It was kinda young for me." Scenes where Louis goes back to his old neighborhood are based on rejection without motivation and throw the whole mess further out of whack.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
November 2005

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