Odd Man Out
Sheen Center for Thought and Culture

A truly unique theatrical experience is hard to come by these days, even if the Drama Desk Awards do have a category for it. If you searching for an event that you wouldn’t get anywhere else, the best place is the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture in the East Village where Odd Man Out, a total immersive production in pitch darkness, is playing. Originally presented in Buenos Aires, Argentina, this 90-minute drama employs all the senses but sight and totally engages the audience.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2024
Once Upon a Mattress
Hudson Theater

Once Upon a Mattress, the delightful fairy-tale musical, has always been a thin affair. Basically a revue sketch stretched to a full evening, its success has depended on the talents of its leading lady and director. The book by Jay Thompson, Marshall Barer and Dean Fuller takes the story of “The Princess and the Pea,” gives it a slightly adult spin, and adds tangential material for supporting players. The songs by Mary Rodgers and Barer are catchy and sweet, some in the character-building manner of Rodgers’s fabled father Richard.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2024
For Colored Girls Who have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf
Marcus Performing Arts Center: Wilson Theater

The Milwaukee Black Theater Festival began three years ago as a community response to the killing of George Floyd. The quest for Black voices continues this year with a three-week festival that encompasses many events in and around Milwaukee. The best-known of these events is probably a full production of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2024
Four C Notes, The: Recreating The Music of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons
Florida Studio Theater - Goldstein Cabaret

The show’s subtitle tells exactly what The Four C Notes is and does.  At FST’s Goldstein Cabaret, audience appreciation on opening night erupted in clapping for every doo-wop hit of Frankie Valli and his group, even before the finale of any one of them.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2024
Pirates of Penzance, The
Alice Busch Opera Theater

Who says opera and operetta can’t be fun? The Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, NY, opened its 2024 season with two lighthearted productions, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance (1879) and Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto (1651), both featuring inventive staging, magnificent voices, and lots of frivolity.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2024
La Calisto
Alice Busch Opera Theater

Who says opera and operetta can’t be fun? The Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, NY, opened its 2024 season with two lighthearted productions, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance (1879) and Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto (1651), both featuring inventive staging, magnificent voices, and lots of frivolity.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2024
Job
Helen Hayes Theater

The play starts with a bang—well, not literally. After being bombarded with high-decibel rock music before the lights dim, the audience is confronted with two characters, one wielding a gun pointed at the cringing other. There follows a series of short false beginnings with the target responding in a number of different ways to the threat, separated by quick blackouts.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
August 2024
Outsider, The
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

In a disgraced governor’s office, his short-term appointee lieutenant governor must stand for a special election. Ned Newley would probably be best person in the job but he’s not (at least yet) a best candidate. He hasn’t outstanding personality or ability to speak publicly. Nor is he physically very attractive. He is definitely “The Outsider” in the office. The so-named play has Ned being groomed to win by experts in politics, but their teachings are self-centered and dramatically farcical.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2024
Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Perelmen Performing Arts Center

Cats was never among my favorite musicals. The appeal of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s whimsical doodle based on T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” has always escaped me. Two and a half hours of actors in feline costumes prancing around a junkyard and meowing to be chosen to ride a giant tire to the “heavy-side layer” is not my dish of cream. How it got to be one of the long-running shows in Broadway and West End history remains a mystery to me. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
July 2024
From Here
Pershing Square Signature Theater

A musical centering on the deadly 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida? Well, anything can serve as the basis of a tuner including such unusual examples as the travels of the mummified corpse of a minor train robber (Dead Outlaw), the women’s suffrage movement (Suffs) or the bloodthirsty killing spree of a certain demon barber and his cannibalistic accomplice (I shouldn’t have to give the title, but here goes, Sweeney Todd). It’s a matter of presenting the material in a new and exciting manner as the three named examples did.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
July 2024
Ain't Done Bad
Pershing Square Signature Center

Country Western music is not what you might expect for the score of a dance-theater piece exploring the coming out process of a young gay man and the reaction of his family. But, Jakob Karr’s dynamic dance piece Ain’t Done Bad, now at Signature Theater Center after a run in Orlando, Florida, is an explosive and passionate declaration of the love that now speaks its name loudly and the music feels just right. That might be because the tunes playing on the soundtrack are those of Orville Peck, the openly gay C&W singer-songwriter.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
July 2024
Dear Jack, Dear Louise
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

The many seniors in Florida audiences know all about actual letters, but theatergoers of all ages should also appreciate those that reveal life in America during WWII. Author Ken Ludwig’s family’s experience inspired his comedy of letters. Dear Jack, Dear Louise presents a soldier and a dancer-actress in a practice of the time: correspondence to boost a military man’s morale via consent by a woman to mutually writing.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2024
N/A
Lincoln Center - Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

If you were discouraged by the recent disastrous presidential debate performances by both main party candidates, you might seek hope and inspiration from another, sharper example of political theater. Mario Correa’s slim and powerful new play N/A dramatizes the conflict between Nancy Pelosi, the first woman Speaker of the House, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
June 2024
Agitators, The
St. Christopher's Episcopal Church - Norvill Commons

Two important figures from America’s past form an unlikely but enduring friendship in The Agitators, the current production by Acacia Theatre Company.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
June 2024
Music of Laurel Canyon, The
Florida Studio Theater - Court Cabaret

I must admit I didn’t know much about Laurel Canyon until Florida Studio Theater “informed” by staging music created there. It seems this music and its creators produced admirers (and present performers like BuffaloRome) in a Los Angeles L.C. area above Sunset Strip. Now Michael Visconti and his band bring back the songs and spirit of L.C. in the 1960-’70s.  If you liked them then, you’ll like them at FST’s Court Cabaret. Or maybe value discovery.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2024
What Became of Us
Atlantic Theater - Stage 2

In Atlantic Theater Company’s What Became of Us (at their Stage 2), as in the current Broadway revival of Home, the protagonists serve double duty as narrators. Both plays deal with returning to your roots after journeys of alienation. The plays’ structure could put audiences at a distance since we are being told what happens instead of being shown directly. Such plays usually work better as novels, but thanks to polished performances and insightful direction, the action is immediate and relatable, as borth works are heart-warming and full of home truths. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
June 2024
Home
Todd Haimes Theater

In Home (on Broadway at Roundabout Theater Company’s Todd Haimes Theater) and the Atlantic Theater’s What Became of Us off-Broadway, the protagonists serve double duty as narrators. Both plays deal with returning to your roots after journeys of alienation. These plays’ structure could put audiences at a distance since we are being told what happens instead of being shown directly. Such plays usually work better as novels, but thanks to polished performances and insightful direction, the action is immediate and relatable. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
June 2024
Welkin, The
Atlantic Theater - Linda Gross Theater

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, The Welkin is “the vault of the sky or firmament, the celestial abode of God or gods.” But the characters in Lucy Kirkwood’s ironically-titled play now at the Atlantic Theater Company after a run in London, are more concerned with matters on the Earth.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
June 2024
World Goes `Round, The
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

The World Goes ’Round—devoted to the music and lyrics of Kinder and Ebb—is matched in devotion to their performance by the stars and band at Florida Studio Theater to begin its summer season. New FST Associate Artist Ben Liebert pays tribute to the show’s famous directors and choreographers marked by impressive stamps of his own in both positions.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2024
Here There are Blueberries
New York Theater Workshop

The audience at the New York Theater Workshop is greeted with a camera on a stand positioned before a backdrop with a giant logo for Leica Cameras. Pleasant upbeat music from the 1930s and 40s plays in the background. After the lights have lowered, there is a drumroll, reminiscent of the one heard in the beginning of Cabaret (ominous foreshadowing) and two smiling actors enter to describe the revolution by Leica’s portable, affordable product.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Rhinestone Cowgirls: Legendary Ladies of Country Music
Florida Studio Theater - Goldstein Cabaret

Rhinestone Cowgirls is a lively revue of American Country Music and celebration of women artists who developed it. At Florida Studio Theater, three songstresses unite for a second summer, this time to both solo and harmonize major country music songs from the last century to today. There’s little scripted speech but many projections that explain or attribute progress in genre and major singers’ styles.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Br!nk! Br!efs!
Brink! Briefs!
Baumgartner Center for Dance

For the past 10 years, the end of each season at Milwaukee’s Renaissance Theaterworks has meant another edition of the Br!NK! New Play Festival. Renaissance, the city’s only women-led theater company, sponsors the festival each year. The theater company administrators invite Midwestern women playwrights to submit their work for consideration. Two playwrights are selected each season to receive the Br!NK! Residency Award — the opportunity to develop and advance their scripts during a week-long workshop with a director, cast and dramaturg.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Hell's Kitchen
Shubert Theater

Before anything else is said about Hell's Kitchen, praise must be heaped on this amazing cast. Maleah Joi Moon is simply spectacular as Ali, the seventeen year old girl who struggles with her mother, falls in love with the boy who seems all wrong for her, and discovers her love for music with an elder virtuoso. The combination of love and tension is perfect between Ali and her mom, Jersey (Shoshana Bean). Bean is basically in the background until she rocks out to surprise and thrill the audience- yes, standing ovation!

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Moulin Rouge
Marcus Performing Arts Center: Uihlein Hall

The Johnson Financial Group Broadway Series at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts concludes its 2023-24 season with a bang. No, this is not a reference to the confetti-spewing walking stick owned by the impresario in Moulin Rouge! The Musical now playing in Milwaukee for a two-week run. It is a reference to the most sumptuous, over-the-top musical to visit here this season – and the only show in the current season that is staying beyond its typical, one-week run.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Escape from Peligro Island
Milwaukee Youth Arts Center - Goodman Hall

Live theater takes an immersive twist with, Escape from Peligro Island, the final production in First Stage’s current season. This play is as vast as one’s imagination, as theatergoers are allowed to vote (more on this later) on various aspects of the play’s presentation. In a brief talkback after the play, a cast member noted that there are some 1,200 variations on what direction the play will follow.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Cabaret
August Wilson Theater

When Cabaret, the musical based on Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories” and I Am a Camera, John Van Druten’s straight-play adaptation, opened on Broadway in 1966, it was considered shocking but would probably be seen as tame today. Harold Prince’s original staging of the nightclub numbers was sleazy but charming, letting the audience feel loose, relaxed, and entertained. Then the introduction of swatiskas and the growing menace of Nazism in the second act came as a brutal shock.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Cabaret
August Wilson Theater

Cabaret is a difficult show, especially considering what's going on in the world, and our country in particular. It takes place in a carnival atmosphere, at first silly and jolly; the audience gets some real laughs, and the extreme vulgarity just helps to convince us that this has nothing to do with us, not really. But the cabaret turns into a nightmare, and we're all stuck in it.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Uncle Vanya
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

Bitch, bitch, bitch. Get ready for some first-class moaning and complaining from the characters in Uncle Vanya. Fortunately, the actors involved are so uniformly excellent, talent wins out over the gloom.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Suffs
Music Box Theater

If there's any doubt as to how much an appreciative audience can lift up a show, go see Suffs. Not only was there applause in the theater, but also whooping for joy, and long, sustained clapping, rarely heard in an adult presentation.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Enemy of the People, An
Milwaukee Youth Arts Center

Although it has been more than 130 years since Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote his indictment of democracy, An Enemy of the People, it remains as timeless as ever. A troupe of advanced high school actors at Milwaukee’s First Stage recently staged a highly competent rendering of this play (as adapted by Arthur Miller).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Patriots
Ethel Barrymore Theater

Peter Morgan’s Patriots at the Ethel Barrymore, is Russian to its core and offers an insightful and chilling depiction of the current state of that country. In plays like Frost/Nixon and The Audience, and the Netflix series “The Crown,” Morgan has skillfully laid out complex political and social currents in America and Great Britain.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Uncle Vanya
Lincoln Center - Vivian Beaumont Theater

Lila Neugebauer’s laugh-filled, all-star revival of Anton Chekhov’s classic Uncle Vanya, at Lincoln Center’s cavernous Vivian Beaumont Theater, removes the play from its original setting of the pre-Revolutionary Russian countryside and places it in a non-specific, presumably American 2024. (Mimi Lein’s set appears to be somewhere in the rural heartland. The characters play jazz on a turntable. Costume designer Kaye Voyce has clothed them in casual modern dress.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Mary Jane
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

Amy Herzog provides us with a shattering and heartfelt portrayal of motherhood in Manhattan Theater Club’s revival of her 2017 play Mary Jane, now at the Samuel J. Friedman. Mary Jane, played Rachel McAdams in an impressive Broadway debut, faces a seemingly insurmountable challenge. She has been left by her spouse, but she does not dwell on her misfortune. Her only child Alex suffers from a laundry list of illnesses, rendering him unable to talk, breath or sit up on his own at age two.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Mother Play
Hayes Theater

At the start of Paula Vogel’s Mother Play, presented by Second Stage at the Hayes Theater, I thought, “Oh no, not another monster mother drama!” The opening of this semi-autobiographical memory work seems similar to classics such as The Glass Menagerie and Long Day’s Journey Into Night, both of which Mother Play star Jessica Lange has headlined on Broadway.

David Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
May 2024
Great Gatsby, The
Broadway Theater

I don't remember Jeremy Jordan's voice being this rich, but in The Great Gatsby, he totally nails every number, and that's what keeps this show together. Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel, everything revolves around a gang of people who really just aren't very nice. Their lives are filled with drinking, partying, and focusing on how much money they have. Jay Gatsby's saving grace is that he really does love his old flame, Daisy Buchanan (Eva Noblezada), and he'll do anything to get her back. But on closer viewing, is this really love, or is it obsession?

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Treasurer, The
Next Act Theater

A strained mother-son relationship forms the core of this engaging play by Max Posner, which is the final offering in the current season at Next Act Theatre. In a particularly strong season of offerings at Next Act, The Treasurer is among the best productions it has offered in 2023-24.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Heart of Rock and Roll, The
James Earl Jones Theater

“Oh my God! It’s cardboard,” exclaims one of the characters in The Heart of Rock and Roll, the latest jukebox musical to hit Broadway, now at the James Earl Jones after a run at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego. He’s describing the packaging business the main character wants to succeed in, but he could be giving a summation of the plot and the show itself. Employing songs recorded by Huey Lewis and the News and a sitcom-level book by Jonathan A.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Sally & Tom
Public Theater

After examining the reverberations of the Lincoln assassination in The America Play and Topdog/Underdog, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks returns to American history to focus on its impact across racial and generational lines. In Sally & Tom, her clever play-within-a-play now at the Public Theater, Parks takes on the enigmatic relationship between Sally Hemmings and the man who enslaved and perhaps loved her, Thomas Jefferson. Hemmings became the future third President’s mistress when she was only 14 and he was 40.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2024
Water for Elephants
Imperial Theater

Unlike Broadway’s new take on The Great Gatsby, which turns a great book into a disappointing musical, Water for Elephants takes a lesser-known novel by Sara Gruen (which served as the basis for the 2011 film) and turns it into a magnificent tuner. This fun, energetic and moving show at the Imperial is not as ambitious as Fitzgerald’s source material, but it stays true to its intent.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
April 2024

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