Few Good Men, A
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 Probably because military demeanor is in the forefront of today's news, A Few Good Men is likely to attract even audiences who have already seen the movie. Set and sound go far in making Asolo Rep's presentation a different experience. Sharp, curt military drumbeats between scenes urge us to snap to attention. The American flag filling the backdrop casts a reflection that seems to go beyond the proscenium. Action taking place on four horizontally staggered levels and forestage also makes the whole house appear an extension of stage.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Few Good Men, A
Theater At The Center

 It's a big step from the musical comedies that are Theater At The Center's usual fare to a gripping, tightly-written courtroom drama -- especially one set in so hyper-masculine an environment: A Few Good Men takes place at a court-martial hearing in response to a marine's death on the likewise tension-riddled site of Guantanamo Naval Base.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
September 2002
Fiction
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

 Perhaps a subtitle for Fiction should be "Or Fact?" Like playwright Steven Dietz, characters Linda and Michael Waterman are authors who keep us wondering what's true. Having met in a Paris cafe where their stimulating conversation (at least as remembered by Michael) led to a marriage of 20 years, both have successful careers. After early "dry" attempts at creating literature and a month at Drake Writers Colony, he became a best-selling novelist with annual movie adaptations.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2006
Fiddler On The Roof
Derby Dinner Playhouse

 Could I sit through yet another performance of the oft-seen Fiddler on the Roof, I wondered? Indeed I could at the sterling presentation by Derby Dinner Playhouse that won my admiration from the outset and held my undivided attention throughout. One of the great works of the American musical theater, Fiddlerwon the Tony Award for best musical of 1964. Tonys also went to nearly all the major theater names who brought it to life, including Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, composer and lyricist; Joseph Stein, librettist; and Jerome Robbins, director and choreographer.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Fifth of July
Diversionary Theater

 Playwright Lanford Wilson delightfully manipulates the American variant of English, turning drama into comedy and comedy into drama. He writes, "Somewhere there is a portrait of him that is going through hell," when describing a man who refuses to age in the last fifteen years. The Fifth of July brings 60s Berkeley radicals together on July 4th, 1977. They have changed from the days of free love, protest marches, and getting and staying high. The current events take place at the Talley summer place in Lebanon, Missouri.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
June 2002
Filumena
Florida Studio Theater

 Torrid lighting! A thin gushing of water from the mouth of a lion's head fountain. A soprano's thick operatic intro, soon to be matched by the ravings of Domenico Soriano, master of the Neopolitan house. Or is he?

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2002
Filumena
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 Of three Filumena translations I've seen, Timberlake Wertenbaker's gets quickest to the heart of the matter and stays there. It's a struggle between ex-prostitute Filumena Marturano and her arrogant, straying lover Domenico Soriano for the acknowledgment of their relationship. It's a Big Fat Italian Family thing. For a family, there needs be husband, wife, children -- all with one name and preferably under one roof (that is, entitled to the property).

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Finding Mother
Theatrx

 What if an adoptee, in search of her birth-mother, finds a complete family of eccentrics? Even an embarrassment? Even more? Playwright Stephen Storc asked himself that question and answered it with Finding Mother. Start with Mr. and Mrs. Average American, Jacky and Richard Chandler (Courtney McMillon and Nick Kennedy) and their two average kids, a teenage daughter (Liz Lansing) and preteen son (Steffen Calac). Add Jacky's desire to find her mother.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Finer Noble Gases
Actors Theater of Louisville

 Adam Rapp's Finer Noble Gases is a devastating portrayal of privileged young males who slide into the drug culture and lose all ambition and sense of reality while pursuing rock- band fame in New York's East Village. That may sound like a hackneyed film plot cobbled by Hollywood recyclers or a Rent ripoff minus music. But Rapp has transcended the genre with his cold-eyed scrutiny of pathetic slackers and his disgust at their wasted lives.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Finer Noble Gases
Avenue Playhouse

 Since heading off to Kentucky for an apprenticeship with the famed Actors Theater of Louisville, Robert Simmons has peeped back on the Charlotte scene a couple of times. Now after a powerful lead last month in Victory Pictures' Kiss of the Spider Woman, he's back as production manager of Finer Noble Gases. Better still, he's rejoined his dad, Michael, as VP of development at Vic Pix. The significance of that comes clear from the moment you enter the Central Avenue Playhouse.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Finger Painting in a Murphy Bed
OnStage Playhouse

 You get off the subway in Astoria, Queens, and you enter a world of middle-class, well-kept row-houses as well as lower-middle-class, multi-story walk-ups. There are many tales behind those doors. Playwright David L. Patterson weaves a delightfully humorous yet warm and, occasionally, passionate story with Finger Painting in a Murphy Bed.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Finishing the Picture
Goodman Theater

 Once upon a time, there was a beautiful doll who wanted to be a real girl. Or maybe the foundation of this newest play by Arthur Miller is the myth of the sleeping princess. Whatever its metaphors, the Doll is a film goddess reduced to infantile incoherence -- running naked through the halls, squalling when confronted by scary grownups, crying for her nurturing acting-coach - in the middle of a location shoot, surrounded by a flock of worshippers all looking out for their own interests as they struggle to revive her.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Finishing the Picture
Goodman Theater

 Dealt with in 1964's After the Fall, Marilyn Monroe reappears, center of attention, in Arthur Miller's roman a clef, Finishing The Picture. Now 89, Miller returns with Monroe, here as a brunette and called Kitty, in a nervous-breakdown, halting production of the 1961 John Huston western, "The Misfits," which Miller wrote and turned out to be Monroe's and her co-star, Clark Gable's, last picture. Lampooning acting gurus Lee and Paula Strasberg, known here as Jerome and Flora Fassinger, Miller settles old scores.

Kevin Henely
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Fiorello
Theater Works

 All of New York City circa 1915-33 is on Theatre Works' intimate stage, but it doesn't seem crowded - except with talent. Fiorello! capsulizes the career of Manhattan Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. The lively musical shows him "On the Side of the Angels" from his days as a lawyer for "the little people."

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2001
Fire on the Mountain
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

 Taken from field interviews with Appalachian coal miners and their families, Fire on the Mountain offers stories of their lives and their relationships with each other. Punctuated by authentic music of the area, played on familiar instruments but just as often rendered a capella or to feet stomping rhythmically, themes emerge: Both lands and laborers have been exploited, yet the people love their land and each other. Vivid slides on both sides of a bright blue backdrop picture miners' sooty faces or legs deep in mud or bodies tensed as arms swing axes.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Firebugs, The
Viaduct

In studies of post-WWII European dramatists, scholars tend to prefer the more accessible satires of Friedrich Durrenmatt to those of Max Frisch -- or could it be that the protagonist of The Firebugs is a humble citizen, disturbingly similar to ourselves? Certainly, Gottlieb Biedermann (whose name translates "God-Love Everyman") is not a monster: his transgressions are petty, his intentions benevolent, his concerns private -- all adding up to a vision so myopic as to make him a perfect pigeon for the arsonists to whom he extends his hospitality.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
No Sex Please, We're British
PowPAC

We've all done it!

That is, we've all purchased something through the mails. More than once we've gotten the wrong item. Few of us, though, purchased stemware and receive pornography. Alas, Francis and Peter Hunter (Carolyn E. Wheat and Frank Remiatte) did just that in Anthony Marriott and Alistair Foot's hilarious farce, No Sex Please, We're British, the current offering at PowPAC.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2008
Fireside Christmas, A
The Fireside

 The Fireside, one of the most amazingly successful regional dinner theaters in the country, produces a handful of musicals and dramas each year. Although each attracts a sizeable audience, no production sells more tickets than the annual edition of A Fireside Christmas . (That's why performances begin in mid-October.) This is the 13th annual edition of a show that warms the hearts of literally thousands of viewers each year. To paraphrase some well-known lyrics, the show is a little bit country, a little bit rock 'n' roll, and a whole lotta holiday cheer.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 2005
First Picture Show, The
Mark Taper Forum

 If the Gordons were painters, they'd be splatter-artists, the kind who hurl paint at a canvas and pray that it makes pictorial sense. In The First Picture Show, they not only deal with a big time-span -- the years 1893-1995 in the USA -- but attack a slew of subjects and themes: the making of silent films, the role of women and Jews in that era, history, racism, old age, sibling rivalry, censorship and religious fundamentalism.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Fit To Be Tied
Diversionary Theater

 Nicky Silver's Fit To Be Tied begins with Arloc (Joey Landwehr) explaining his situation during the holiday season -- his situation being somewhat unhappy, unloved, and frustrated. An unopened, much-feared letter rests on a table. Alas, 'tis the holiday season when there is good cheer, so Arloc picks up boy-toy Boyd (Brennan Taylor) for a romantic interlude that includes just a touch of S and M. Alack, best-laid plans go askew as his strange mom, Nessa (Jill Drexler), thrusts herself upon him, having packed her unmentionables and left her second husband.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
Five Guys Named Moe
Geva Theater Mainstage

 Ten years ago this sure-fire crowd-pleaser was a huge hit at Geva Theater directed by Pamela Hunt with musical direction by Corinne Aquilina. Now with the addition of choreography by Mercedes Ellington, it promises to be an even bigger success. The music, mostly R&B and mostly by Louis Jordan, is mostly iresistible, and six gifted and charismatic artists perform the hell out of it.

Herbert Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2006
Five Hundred Clown Macbeth
Lookingglass Theater

 500 Clown Macbeth distills the theme of deadly ambition from the Shakespeare classic into three clowns atop an unstable scaffold. They reach fruitlessly for a crown hanging from the theater's ceiling and challenge the audience to be more than passive spectators. Director Leslie Buxbaum Danzig works well at building suspense as the clowns, while making precarious additions to their scaffold, come closer and ever more riskily closer to the desired crown, which is always just out of reach.

Kevin Henely
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Fixin' To Die
Cygnet Theater

Lee Atwater stated that he did not create the dirty tricks of politics. No, he wasn't the father, but he was the S. O. B. that honed dirty tricks into a fine science and then taught others, such as star student Karl Rove. Robert Myers' Atwater: Fixin' to Die, currently at Cygnet Theater, traces his short history from his first forays into politics to Chairman of the Republican National Committee and his untimely death from brain cancer shortly after his 40th birthday.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2006
Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage
Actors Theater of Louisville

 Jane Martin's peculiar, outlandish title for her/his latest foray into the American Zeitgeist makes perfect sense when you realize this comedic assault is inspired by cross-breeding the schtick of those lame old "Code of the West" B-movies with the platitudes and conventions of horror flicks.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Flaming Idiots
Lamplighters Community Theater

 In Flaming Idiots, playwright Tom Rooney spreads his farcical humor across the stage with a spatula, adding dollops of slapstick, shtick, satire and pure theater humor. Director David Kievit's cast doesn't miss a chance to milk a line 'til the last laugh echoes through the house.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
Flanagan's Wake
Royal George Theater

 Set in the mythical town of Grapplin in County Sligo, Flanagan's Wake is an improvised show; think of Tony n' Tina's Wedding with an Irish bent. Celebrating its fifth production year, Flanagan's been very popular with audiences in Chicago, as well as other cities. Zeitgeist theater actors take audience suggestions and volunteers to wave an entertaining plot. Yes, there are lots of laughs in the play, despite its setting at the wake of town favorite Flanagan and his 20-year fiance). Songs and other ephemeral bits pop up, as does a happy ending.

Effie Mihopoulos
Date Reviewed:
March 1998
Flea In Her Ear, A
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 Farce is a matter of tastelessness -- jealous if not errant spouses and lovers, as well as outrageous characters giving weight only to trivialities.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Flesh and Blood
Adams Avenue of the Arts

 As the lights come up in Karen Paull's Flesh and Blood, we are faced with a street woman attempting to bake a cake for her five-year-old daughter. She is wacked out, displaying all the symptoms of a manic-depressive. We question her reality - and ours - in this short play with music. Most of the songs were sung a capella.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2005
Flip Side, The
Florida Studio Theater - Goldstein Cabaret

 The Flip Side title has two meanings. Songs making up this revue are either "flip" in nature, or they come from the second or "other" side of recordings (usually vinyl or tape) of hit numbers. Developers explain the collection as "seriously funny." Songs are "sardonic, ironic and, at times, histrionic," often combining "witty tunes..with sophisticated lyrics," but often concerning "moronic characters." True.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Flower Drum Song
Music Hall - Fair Park

 David Henry Hwang's updated version of Flower Drum Song inaugurated its national tour on September 2, 2003 at the Music Hall at Fair Park as the closing production of the Dallas Summer Musicals. In a pre-show conversation with Hwang, who attended the first Sunday matinee, he said, "I saw the potential for this show that had been on the shelf for 45 years. I approached Ted Chapin, president of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, and said I wanted to make a musical I hoped would reflect the values of the original creators but be more relevant to a modern audience.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Floyd Collins
Cabot Theater - Broadway Theater Center

 One of Milwaukee's most respected theater companies has aimed high with a knock-out production of Floyd Collins. This extraordinarily challenging musical is based on the true story of Floyd Collins, a 38-year-old cave explorer who became trapped underground while searching for "gold" -- a cavern that could be turned into a popular tourist attraction. Ironically, little did Floyd realize that he would become the attraction, as the entire nation turned its attention to his rescue. Newspaper and radio reports detailed the successive attempts to free Floyd.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2000
Helen
Swedenborgian Church

 The war is finally over. Helen (Robin Christ) yearns to be reunited with her husband, Menelaus (Douglas Lay) upon his return from Troy. No, she never went to Troy but stayed at the tomb of Proteus, the late king of Egypt who had protected her. Yes, Helen is the most beautiful woman in the world. No, she did not commit adultery with Paris. That was all a phantom created by that nasty Hera.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Fog Of War, The
Ventura Court Theater

 This rare political drama is a throwback to the issue plays of the 40s and 50s. At times melodramatic and overwrought, it still works effectively if only because it takes a hard, politically incorrect look at the relations between the races.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Follies
Irving Arts Center

 Lyric Stage, the Southwest's only professional musical theater, produced a concert version of the seldom-done Follies, February 20-22, 2004 at the Irving Arts Center in Irving, Texas. Though boasting a book by James Goldman and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, there are reasons Follies rarely receives a full production. The cast is large, making it an expensive show to produce. In addition, it has not aged well. Except for three memorable songs, Follies doesn't have much to recommend it.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Food Chain, The
Poway Performing Arts Company

 The Food Chain is PowPAC's latest audience challenge -- and those familiar with playwright Nicky Silver are used to his challenges. He assaults you with language. He tests your feelings about sexuality. He investigates human frailty and defies you to object to his statements. While the The Food Chain is a comedy, it quickly dissects the human condition with deep and dark undertones. Amanda's (Annmarie Houghtailing) husband of three weeks, Ford (James M. McCullock) has been gone for two of those weeks. She calls a crisis hot line manned by Bea (Eileen Ivey).

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Fool For Love
McCarter Theater

 To open her tenth season as artistic director of McCarter Theater, Emily Mann is directing Fool for Love by Sam Shepard, one of America's most forceful and intensely motivated writers. Whether or not it is Mann's wish to help us search out the metaphors, discover the symbolism, or consider the social implications in this vicious, yet no longer shocking, 16-year-old play, we may also choose to simply sit back and wallow in the mind-bending / body-battering material.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
September 1999
Fool Me Once
American Folklore Theater

 Fool Me Once is like an evening spent around the campfire, telling tall tales. But my camp mates were never the caliber of storytellers as the cast and creators at American Folklore Theater. And that makes Fool Me Once -- which premiered in June at Peninsula State Park -- an intoxicating night under the stars, listening to stories. American Folklore Theater is a perfect setting for campfire tales. The theater, a decades old institution in Wisconsin's north woods, performs under the stars in Peninsula State Park.

Ed Huyck
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Footloose
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 Engaging youngsters leap onto and around the stage so enthusiastically that they involve you much more than would the MTV videos they seem to emulate. They're in a story largely an excuse to hang 1980s songs onto: Ren, left by his father, moves from Chicago with his mom to live with his uncle in small Bomont, dominated by a pastor who's lost his son in a car accident. Town council, school principal, and coach back him to outlaw liquor, drugs, and even dancing.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2005
Footloose
Central Piedmont Community College - Pease Auditorium

Miracles continue as CP Summer Theater's 30th season reaches a raucous climax. Two weeks ago, an audience returned from intermission and applauded the scenery change, when prosperity succumbed to heaven's wrath in God's Favorite. Old Testament prophets would surely be inspired by the current goings on at the panoramic Pease Auditorium, when the cast members of Footloose take their bows. Even that celebrated lion-lamb accord is eclipsed. And the bluehairs shall scream like teenyboppers.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Footloose
Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

 While Footloose is still kicking up its heels on Broadway, a touring version visited Milwaukee for a one-week run. It's easy to see why the show has taken a critical drubbing in New York; it has so many flaws it's almost cruel to name them all. A top-flight cast could have erased many of the show's weaker moments but, alas, this is a lopsided group. The "adults," mostly mothers and fathers of the high school kids who populate most of the show's cast, are polished professionals.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 1999

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