For Reasons That Remain Unclear
6th at Penn Theater

 Patrick (Jeffrey Jones) is an extremely well-paid film actor just having finished filming a project for 20th Century Fox in Rome. Conrad (Jerry Phalen) is a Catholic priest in Rome for a convention and a look at the mother church. Patrick met Conrad on the street and invited him to his luxury hotel suite for a drink and some conversation, their only apparent connection being that they both live and work in Los Angeles.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2005
Forbidden Broadway
Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

As one who has seen Forbidden Broadway numerous times in New York over the years, this "classic" touring version is a bit like seeing an old friend. The "classic" version cherry-picks the best bits from various versions of the show. Since Forbidden Broadway has been around 22 years, there's no lack of great material. A recently updated version of the show is now playing in New York.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Foreigner, The
OnStage Playhouse

 The lovely Catherine Simms (Allison MacDonald), a benefactor of a substantial inheritance, is living in the lodge with her dim-witted younger brother, Ellard Simms (Michael Oravec). We soon find out she is pregnant by her fiance, the Reverend David Lee (Wilson Adam Schooley). Catherine reveals much to Baker, including her second thoughts about her pending nuptials. Ellard is not near as intellectually fragile as we are first led to believe (Oravec has given his character a strange, charming physicality that works perfectly). Schooley's religious zealot Rev.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2006
Foreigner, The
Drury Lane - Oakbrook

 The Foreigner is a silly, improbable play that comes across as a small comic masterpiece, thanks to a superb production at the Drury Lane Theater in Oakbrook Terrace. Larry Shue, who wrote the play, had the makings of a very talented playwright before his untimely death in a 1985 plane crash at the age of 39. Prior to the tragedy, Shue was an actor with three full-length plays to his credit, including The Nerd and Wenceslas Square. The Foreigner begins with a promising comic premise.

Richard Allen Eisenhardt
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Foreigner, The
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

 Twenty years ago, Milwaukee Repertory Theater introduced The Foreigner to the world. The play's background material notes that without the constant urging of the Rep's former artistic director, The Foreigner and its comedic cousin, The Nerd, never would have been written. Larry Shue, an actor, didn't exactly leap for the typewriter, it seems. But audiences should be glad that he did. The current revival of the Milwaukee Rep's most-requested play is a humdinger.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
December 2003
Forever Plaid
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 Enjoy the show or your money back, Golden Apple is offering. The confidence is not misplaced. With its mostly heavenly reenactment of the corny but cute singing guy groups of the 1950s-early 1960s, Forever Plaid is almost a guaranteed hit wherever it goes. It appeals naturally to nostalgic audiences and pleasantly shows younger ones a glimpse of kinder, gentler, if sillier pop entertainments. A bit of astro mumbo jumbo explains why the "held up" Plaids, who died in an accident en route to their first pro show in 1964, will finally give that performance.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
September 2000
Forever Plaid
Royal George Cabaret Theater

 Is there an audience on earth that won't be delighted by Forever Plaid? I don't think so. This irresistible, miniature musical revue is the ultimate nostalgia trip and feel-good show. On the surface, all is innocence, but Plaid's a savvy little vehicle, ninety uninterrupted minutes of wide-eyed humor and golden-oldie songs that would bring smiles to the heads of Mount Rushmore.

Richard Allen Eisenhardt
Date Reviewed:
October 1994
Forever Plaid
Vogel Hall at Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

 Few theater lovers have gotten this far into the 1990s without coming across Forever Plaid, a send-up of 1950s male vocal groups. The Plaids, as most everyone knows by now, are four geeky guys who met in their high school audio-visual club and formed a band. Just as their career was starting to take off, the guys were killed in a car accident. Somehow, they have been returned to earth just long enough to complete the concert they would have played that night. An outlandish premise? Of course.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Forty-Five Seconds From Broadway
Lamplighters Community Theater

45 Seconds from Broadway opened to mixed reviews on Broadway, November 11, 2001 and ran a paltry 73 performances. Was it the time, just after 9/11? Was it Neil Simon's lack of last-minute polish? This, Simon's least-accepted play, was saved at Lamplighters Community theater. Why? Brilliant casting! And, for the most part, adept direction.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2005
Fosse
Eihlein Hall at Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

 Milwaukee gave a polite welcome to Fosse, the razzle-dazzle musical featuring Bob Fosse's choreography. This isn't surprising, given the fact that the current tour is only a pale imitation of the musical that played at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. The edginess and sexuality that makes temperatures rise among Broadway audiences is in short supply here; there's energy in the touring show, but not the polished talent that could take Fosse to its heights. Part of the reason is that the touring company employs a younger, less experienced cast.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2002
Four
Fault Line Theater

One never knows just what to expect when spending an evening watching the Fault Line Players. We do know that we'll see new one-act plays, many written by co-proprietor Ted Falagan. Some may be penned by his partner Debbie Fabiano, as well as outside writers. We do know that we will see new and rising talent. This selection of plays and talent is no exception.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Four Dogs and a Bone
Actors Theater of San Francisco

 At the Actors Theatre of San Francisco, John Patrick Shanley's viper-tongued, dramatic indictment of Hollywood, Four Dogs And A Bone, receives an expert mounting from director Louis Parnell. This cautionary tale about the stratagems and mayhem of making feature films shows serious artistes from the East trying to make it in L.A. Not only has the producer gone over budget, he's under-insured the production. Curvaceous Brenda puts the moves on him to increase her part, while aging, libidinous Colette puts the moves on the writer.

Larry Myers
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
Fourth Wall, The
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

 The life of a comfortable suburban couple becomes unraveled in A. R. Gurney's The Fourth Wall, the season opener for Milwaukee Chamber Theater. This company, in its quest to find something to please everyone, has staged productions ranging from avant-garde Off-Broadway fare to time-honored plays. The Fourth Wall seems ideally suited to this theater's mission, as it contains everything in one show: surrealism, naturalism, sentimentality and side-splitting comedy.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Frank Lloyd Wright
Cook Theater at Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts

 With a poetic word-setting of a cold winter morning in Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright, represented by Will Stutts, gives a lecture about his life and work being perpetuated at Taliesin. We are to fancy ourselves prospective students or, fulfilling his theory of education, apprentices before the master architect. It is said that in his later years "at home," Wright often spoke thus, giving center stage to his ego and his theories of organic architecture, for his following, his neighbors, and visitors.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Frankenstein
Dallas Children's Theater

 Dallas Children's Theater opened Thomas Olson's spine-tingling adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein on October 24, 2003. And everything about this production is first-rate except the script. With its numerous flashbacks and chronological time shifts -- constantly going back and forth between present and past -- the action is difficult for all but the tutored children to comprehend. (Speaking as someone who followed it, I simply don't think the play is all that good.) But the technical aspects are superb.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
October 2003
Frank's Home
Goodman Theater

 I need to strip down to essentials, Frank Lloyd Wright declares as he watches the schoolhouse near his Hollyhock House being finished. Back from Tokyo with his Imperial House threatened by storms and without further work, he's in Hollywood's Olive Hill, contemplating a life change. He'll re-establish family connections with daughter Catherine and son Lloyd, while divorcing their mother and ridding himself (though she doesn't yet know it) of his alcohol and drug- addicted mistress Miriam.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2006
Free And Clear
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

 Old-fashioned in the best sense, Free and Clear typifies the major theme of realistic American drama in the middle of the 20th century. It centers on family relationships. Those between father and sons dominate here, followed closely by mothers with sons. Inter-generational problems stem from the relations between the parents, particularly due to their differing backgrounds and their aspirations for themselves and their boys.
Sounds abstract? Not as embodied by the 1940 Westchester, New York family recreated by Robert Anderson.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2004
Fridays With Maureen
Actor's Asylum

 Pam Benjamin and Beacon Theater should be commended for bringing a new work to the San Diego Theater scene. Very few theaters are willing to take the risk. That said, the playwright should have done a vast number of rewrites and have the play presented in a couple of reader's theaters. Even with extensive pre-production work, the stage action usually calls for additional rewriting.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Friends And Enemies
Bitter Truth Playhouse

 David Silverstein (Andrew Harrison Leeds) is a Jewish kid from Cleveland. Mahmoud Rasmi (Amir Salehi) is a Palestinian kid from Jordan. Both become roommates at George Washington University in Washington DC, as part of an international summer study course. They are each thirteen when the play opens and reach the age of eighteen by play's end. It's almost a too-neat conflict that Heidi Joyce sets up, with the kids standing for symbols of the inability of Arabs and Jews to get along.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Fritz Blitz 2004 - Week 1
Lyceum Space

 Fritz Blitz 2004, featuring California playwrights, is the August festival at the Lyceum Space in Horton Plaza, beginning just four days after the close of the Actors Alliance Fest's two-week run. Week One includes four short plays, Week Two one full-length play, Week Three has a duet of plays, and Week Four ends the Blitz with four short plays.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Fritz Blitz 2004 - Week 3
Lyceum Space

 One of the best parts of a short play or film festival, such as Fritz Blitz and Actors Alliance Fest, which usually features short plays, is if you don't like one offering, there will be another in a few minutes that you may love. Week three of Fritz Blitz has two short plays. Last week was a single play and both opening and closing weeks have four plays each.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Fritz Blitz 2004 - Week 4
Lyceum Space

 Messed-up marriages, death and near death and executions comprise the themes for Fritz Blitz's fourth week. Funny, sexy, poignant, startling, satirical and compassionate are just a few of moods you will see. This is a good week to go to the Blitz.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2004
Fritz Blitz 2006 - Week 1
Lyceum Space

 The 14th Annual Fritz Blitz is in town Thursday to Sunday, thru September 17th, 2006. This week there is a single play. Next week three, the third week four, and the final week plays by the successful Los Angeles playwright Mary Steelsmith. Steelsmith's full-length, Isaac, I Am just won the prestigious Helford Prize. We are looking forward to her short plays.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Musical of Musicals, The
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

With its emphasis on presenting Broadway musicals on the Suncoast, Golden Apple is just the right home for The Musical of Musicals (The Musical). Spoofing the scores, scripts, and styles of musical greats makes a little plot go a long way. Five long ways, to be exact, via as many short plays.

Using the theme of Rent, the story finds a heroine who can't pay hers to her landlord villain unless she weds or beds him. Or she may be out of danger if, mostly owing to advice from a sage older woman, heroine gets together with a hero who'll pay the rent for her.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2008
Shivaree
OnStage Playhouse

A very frustrated Chandler Kimbrough (Brandon Alexander) lives a solitary life as a hemophiliac in William Mastrosimone's charming Shivaree. OnStage Playhouse has once again brought their audiences a play not seen in the San Diego area. This production opens their challenging 2008-2009 season.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2008
After the Dance
Shaw Festival - Royal George Theater

Occasionally there's a renewed effort to move Terrence Rattigan up to the level of his contemporary pre-"Angry Young Men" playwrights like Noel Coward and the poetic Christopher Fry, if only because his very literate, traditional plays were enormously popular, leading to his knighthood. But only a few still seem to work: The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version, Separate Tables, and maybe The Deep Blue Sea.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
July 2008
All's Well That Ends Well
Stratford Festival - Festival Theater

I have to confess that although it has many virtues – most notably poetic effusions and almost constant verbal wit – I've never liked Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well. The heroine, Helena, is an unlikely combination of Patient Griselda, Florence Nightingale, and Cinderella, who chases after a younger, more noble, better looking, young lord, cures an incurable king, is awarded the hand of any male she desires, manipulates the young man into a marriage that he then flees from, and goes through even more unbelievable maneuvers to bed him and get pregnant by him and actually win

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
July 2008
Of Equal Measure
Kirk Douglas Theater

Set in the White House circa 1914-1917, Of Equal Measure has two protagonists (a dramaturgical flaw which ultimately causes grievous problems for the playwright): President Woodrow Wilson (Lawrence Pressman) and Jade Kingston (Michole Briana White). Kingston is a woman of color -- the only one of her kind in the White House -- who works as a stenographer to one of Wilson's advisors, Robert Lansing (Dennis Cockrum), and is thus privy to the life-and-death political battles taking place in the Oval Office.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2008
True West
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

Like the play itself, the title of "True West" has layers of meaning. True West refers to a mythic place where might be sought the American Dream of a new, successful life. A place, too, where rugged individualism could be parlayed into an idealistic future. A reference to many a movie that has pictured the "True West" as site of elemental struggles to subdue nature and human nature, where good guys struggle against bad leading to a fortuitous showdown. "True West" has the power to create archetypes to inspire artists.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2008
tick, tick...BOOM!
10th Avenue Theater

Energy, Energy, Energy! That describes Stone Soup's production of tick, tick.BOOM! Just what does the enterprising artist do when he is about to turn thirty, and he doesn't have a grand success yet? The question could easily be: how many artists get a major success before age thirty? That doesn't matter, for when you are in your twenties, you want everything and expect you can get it. That's exactly what Jonathan Larson expected when he wrote Superbia. Alas, it didn't happen.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2008
Streetcar Named Desire, A
Ion Theater

 It's hot. It's humid. It's New Orleans in the summer. In 1940, in the Kowalski's apartment there is no air conditioning. Blanche DuBois has come to visit her sister, Stella Kowalski, and brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, whom she has never met. It is an understatement to say these three are flawed, a gross understatement.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2008
Fritz Blitz 2006 - Week 2
Lyceum Space

 Here we are in Week Two of the four-week Fritz Blitz. This week we have three plays, two from San Diego and one from a San Francisco playwright. These productions are running through September 3rd, 2006. One of the joys of short plays is that they have to be written tightly. No lingering about. The payoff and the precursors have to be quick.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Fritz Blitz 2006 - Week 3
Lyceum Space

There are two weeks left on the annual cycle of new plays being held at the Lyceum Space, Thursdays through Sundays. The third week of the Fritz Blitz runs through September 10th, 2006.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
Fritz Blitz 2007 - Week 3
Lyceum Space

 Mr. Very Straight, Sammy (Duane Daniels) is talking with his long–time friend, Dean (John Garcia), who is not. They are having a serious conversation when the waiter (Jamie Effros) makes a couple of attempts to get an order. The two finally order some wine and continue their completely guy-type discussion. Challenges are tossed about, and finally the gauntlet is laid down and a bet is placed.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
Fritz Blitz 2007 - Week 4
Lyceum Space

 Nine actors, 48 characters, one cross–dresser, seven segments (I think), one deranged playwright, and one brave director. These are the elements necessary to produce an extremely amusing, totally wacky experience titled, A Fish without His Flippers. Dane Stauffer did what any good director would do with Bill Robens insanely funny script: he simply brought together a fabulous cast.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
From Bed To Worse
Patio Playhouse

 Patio Playhouse premieres local playwright Peggy Dougherty's From Bed To Worse under Jim Clevenger's direction. Set in contemporary New York, the play places a psychologist, two of her patients, and her husband in a series of vignettes. Mary Canon (Sharon Lawson) is treating a patient, Cynthia Wells (Karen Spafford), who is having an affair with a married man. There is a great deal of similarity between her lover and Mary's husband, Dentist Richard Breyer (George Blum).

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2005
From My Hometown
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stackner Cabaret

 It has been almost three years since the musical revue From My Hometown left Milwaukee for its hometown, New York. Time has seasoned this show in several important ways, and Hometown now makes a welcome reappearance. Although some minor tinkering with the script is evident, the story remains the same: a talented trio of R & B singers arrive in New York.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Front Page, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 What a drag as reporters wait around the 1920s Chicago City Hall news room for an anarchist and (accidental) cop killer to be hanged. The corrupt sheriff and mayor both want his quick demise (as a Red, which he's not) to assure their ascendance in an impending election. Hildy Johnson won't be there as the ace reporter, though. After a final drink and farewell to the guys, off he'll train to NYC and a lucrative advertising job. Fiance Peggy and her mother are waiting to go with him. He's already late - and he's going to be much later.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Front Page, The
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

 The Milwaukee Repertory Theater opened its 2001-2002 season with a solid production of the chestnut The Front Page, offering a look back at life in the 1920s. The play is set in the press room of a Chicago criminal courts building. It's late at night, and a cluster of "newspapermen" (women reporters were rare or nonexistent) await a hanging scheduled for the following morning. There's virtually no action in the sleepy first act, so characters have plenty of time to loaf, play cards and muse about life.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2001
Yank
Diversionary Theater

Today, the military's policy is "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." 65 years ago, at the height of WWII, the official policy was a Dishonorable Discharge and the vindictiveness of some homophobes. Diversionary Theater is presenting the West Coast premiere of David and Joseph Zellnik's Yank, the story of gays in the army in WWII.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2008

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