Jitney
Milwaukee Repertory Theater: Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

 Milwaukee is somewhat foreign to the concept of gypsy cabs. These unlicensed cabs, sometimes called "jitneys," transport residents in neighborhoods where more established cab companies refuse to go. Such cabs were found in Pittsburgh's Hill District in the 1970s, and that is where we find the characters who populate Jitney, August Wilson's early masterpiece.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Joleta
4305 Village Theater

 Towne Street Theater, which moved this year into a brand-new, spiffy location in Leimert Park, is offering the world premiere of Harriet A. Dickey's Joleta. A fascinating study of a contemporary black family's struggle to come to grips with its complex and flawed history, the play looks at the way thwarted love, skin-color consciousness and power struggles have affected each member of the Lyles household.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Jolson
Ordway Music Theater

 This biography of a performer still beloved by those of a certain age was, inexplicably, a winner of London's Olivier Award as best musical. It must have been a really poor season for musicals, because Jolson is a shallow, grating formula show. It asks audiences to believe in a performer's greatness without providing evidence to back up its claims, and then tries to convince us that a character who has demonstrated nothing but bullying and manipulation all evening long is actually a benevolent softy underneath the tough exterior.

Michael Sander
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Downtown Cabaret Theater

 Having kept its dreams alive through hard work and amazing persistence, Downtown Cabaret is rightly celebrating its 25th anniversary at its present location (it began at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield several years before). The festivities get underway with a spectacular production of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, whose theme is interpreting and believing in dreams.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
November 2000
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 No matter how many times it's been staged, when Joseph is done with such verve as at the Golden Apple, it seems shiny, new. A fun version of the Biblical story, it has a lively woman(!) narrator, here winsome Angela Bond, of wonderful voice. Same praise applies to handsome Apple newcomer Steven Scarpetti, so right down center assuming "Joseph's Coat" as well as explaining dreams in song. Treats from his brothers include their moseying like cowboys to lie to their dad about Joseph being dead when they've sent him to be a slave.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
July 2003
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Royal George Theater

 It's not as intimate as the Chicago Shakespeare studio, or even the in-the-round Marriott, but the move away from the stadium-sized Chicago Theater and into the Royal George mainstage was definitely a wise one for the troupe. This earliest of the Webber and Rice collaborations is steeped in the playfulness of youth -- and nothing stifles play faster than too much money and too much planning.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Historic State Theater

 Joseph started life as a show to be performed by kids for other kids, telling the Biblical tale of Joseph and his brothers in simple, tuneful, contemporary terms they could all understand. Through all the years of revision, expansion, and increasingly lavish productions, it remains what it always was: a simple, tuneful, contemporary retelling of a Biblical tale, and a true crowd-pleaser, impervious to critical assessment.

Michael Sander
Date Reviewed:
September 1999
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Paper Mill Playhouse

 There is a distinct bus-and-truck look to the final production of this season at the Paper Mill Playhouse. This Joseph, produced in association with the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, is about to embark on a year on the road. The costumes and scenery already appear as though it's the end of the road. The cast is more than adequate, featuring such pop personalities as two Cassidys and four Osmonds.

Donald Collester
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
State of the Union
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

 With the presidential election only weeks away, it's not difficult to guess why the Milwaukee Repertory Theater chose to stage State of the Union as its 2008-09 season opener. The play, written by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, takes place in 1946. The original production won a Pulitzer Prize and had a decent Broadway run. It also was made into a film with Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn. The Rep maintains the show's original time (1946), and also retains it in its original form – three acts with two intermissions.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Radio Golf
American Heritage Center for the Arts

Radio Golf, with which August Wilson ended his 10-play cycle about life among blacks in 20th century America, is rife with beautiful and metaphoric prose and riddled with the warring tugs of history, known and unknown. This was Wilson's last play. He died Oct. 2, 2005, just after its second pre-Broadway production that summer and during the rewriting process. So the play isn't Wilson at his best, but it's very good and gets a fine staging as the eighth-season opener at Mosaic Theater, which is assaying Wilson for the first time.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Rooms
Geva Theater - Mainstage

 This small musical show seems primarily created to showcase the talents of Paul Scott Goodman, an obviously gifted composer/lyricist. There have been earlier developmental productions, but this co-production with MetroStage of Alexandria, Virginia, is listed by Geva Theater Center as its world premiere.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Paper Mill Playhouse

Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was evidently a good Sunday-school listener. Back in 1967, when he was only 19 years old, he and then-23-year-old Tim Rice collaborated on a 15-minute "pop cantata" for St. Paul's Junior School in London. Over the years, the work that became known as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat has grown in length and breadth and become a true theatrical staple.

Simon Saltzman
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

 Milwaukee kicks off its fall theater season with a brand-new national tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Although much of the staging is new, the leading man, Patrick Cassidy, is not. He has quite a few performances of Joseph under his belt, since he also headlined the 1999 Joseph tour as well.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2005
Joy of Gay Sex, The
Bayfront Theater at Fort Mason Center

In The Joy Of Gay Sex, the same Berkeley/San Francisco troupe who created the riotous Medea conjure up a pithy, sparkling comedy about swinging singles in the Bay Area. One performer, Jane (Jane Paik) typifies what's funny about the production: her character is a caricature of the Hollywood brat who indulged in too much cocaine, yet her smart-mouthed, nasty, cool quality copes with the 90's. Eventually Jane bonds with the pretentious, stuffed-shirt Berkeley professor, who turns out to be Jeff's (Jeff Fierson) dissertation advisor.

Larry Myers
Date Reviewed:
January 1996
Judy Garland, Live!
Theater Works

 What is a cabaret or club concert doing in a place like Theater Works? Stage draped in black, decked out with potted plants? Tommy Femia's non dramatic imitation of a middle-aged Judy Garland seems somehow out of place, as do her satirical remarks. Though he mimics her phrasing and often sounds like her, he's mostly in a different register, missing that famous catch in her voice.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Julius Caesar
Parkman Bandstand

In its fourth outdoor summer Shakespeare season, the enterprising Commonwealth Shakespeare Company presented Julius Caesar. Eric Levenson's set neatly co-opted the classical architecture of Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common and provided enough scaffolding for Kate Clarke to entwine herself about while overseeing the worth of her predictions as Soothsayer.

David Lipfert
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Julius Caesar
Utah Shakespearean Festival - Adams Shakespearean Theater

 Julius Caesar is one of the most disappointing productions to appear at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in recent years. The problems begin with the casting; both Jeff Swarthout (Cassius) and Donald Sage Mackay (Brutus) are poor matches for their roles physically, and Mackay compounds the problem by fashioning such a cold, cerebral Brutus that it's difficult to become involved with him at all. Even his relationship with Portia (Carrie Baker) is so distant and passionless, it's hard to believe they are husband and wife.

Barbara Bannon
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Julius Caesar
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee - Mainstage Theater

 It has been almost two years since this critic checked in on Milwaukee Shakespeare, a relatively young troupe that stages several plays a year within the local university's mainstage theater. What a difference time has made! The company, under a new artistic director and with a slate of more experienced directors, designers and cast members, has surged forward with the speed of Shakespeare's Ariel. Currently, they have tackled Julius Caesar, a not-uncommon choice in an election year (no matter that the presidential election was in 2004).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2005
Keely And Du
Poway Performing Arts Company

 Jane Martin is believed to be a pseudonym for a team of writers. Others believe that the real identity is former artistic director of the Actors Theater in Louisville, Kentucky, Jon Jory. Other plays attributed to Martin are Vital Signs and Talking With. Keely And Du, the most controversial, explores the ongoing battle over the rights of a woman and the rights of the unborn. Keely, excellently interpreted by Christine Bain, has been raped by her violent, alcoholic ex-husband.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2000
Kentucky Cycle, The - Part 2
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 If Kentucky Cycle II hadn't opened with another song by full cast staring out in epic manner, the second half of the story of the fates of the land and the Rowans, Talberts, and Biggeses would be, well, epically better than Part I. There's still a lot of trying to do others in, but in general the descendants are an improvement on their ancestors. One really feels sorry for those who get screwed by the coal companies that in turn screw the entire environment. Not that the folks weren't warned by smoothie J. T.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Kentucky Cycle, The - Part 1
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 "Going Over Jordan" the cast sings, against an abstract background of soon-to-be-varying colored sky over barren trees and earth. So opens a tale of intertwining families, beginning with the ruthless Michael Rowen (Patrick J. Clarke, in his fittest Asolo performance to date). He kills an Indian trader and, after trickery, the Indians themselves, sparing only Morning Star, whom he rapes and cripples into subjugation so he'll have a son. (Tessie Hogan gives great intensity to both her hatred of Rowen and her ever-doting love of his child.)

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Kid-Simple
Actors Theater of Louisville

 What on earth (or any other planet) could Actors Theater of Louisville have been thinking to lead off its prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays this year with Jordan Harrison's Kid-Simple, a radio play in the flesh? Someone must have thought its derivative pop- culture plot would qualify as a cutting-edge attraction for an MTV-type crowd. But its blade, alas, is decidedly dull and encrusted with juvenile pretension. This frenetic, much-ado-about-nada play is pastiche without panache, a feverish adolescent concoction that one longs to flee after the first 20 minutes.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Killer And The Comic, The
Angel Island

 Paul Zegler as the comic and Andrew Rothenberg as the killer turn in very fine performances in this late-nite show that accompanies the mainstage Mary-Arrchie production of Petrified Forest.

Effie Mihopoulos
Date Reviewed:
November 1995
Killer Joe
Second Stage at the Adrienne

 Other journalists describe Killer Joe as a story of stupid trailer trash, violence and sex . That does this interesting play a disservice. Rather, the drama shows a dysfunctional and uneducated family -- something we all can relate to -- and the story is 99 percent about plotting a crime, rather than showing violence. There is full frontal nudity, male and female, but it is not erotic.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
June 2006
Killing of Sister George, The
Diversionary Theater

 Unpleasant is, perhaps, the kindest comment about June Buckridge (Priscilla Allen), who plays Sister George on a BBC radio drama. She drinks excessively, speaks in angry tones and hasn't a kind word for anyone, including her lover Alice "Childie" McNaught (Laura Bozanich). The domineering, combative and arrogant June is, nonetheless, worried about her job on the sitcom, worried about her relationship, and worried about her life. She's a not-nice person surrounded by much nicer people.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
August 2002
Killjoy
Legler Benbough Theater at USIU

 Killjoy is about the potential joy of killing a miserable scoundrel of a spouse. Thus, a comedy is born and guaranteed to keep you laughing at Scripps Ranch Theater. Jill Drexler is Carol, the former wife of Victor, played by Allan Salkin. She has direct ethereal communication with a priest advisor. She's a Jew but seeks counseling wherever she can find it. After 24 years, her totally rotten husband dropped her for a trophy-wife in her mid-twenties.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Kilt
Visual Studies Workshop Auditorium

 A Canadian play that should have been a hit Off-Broadway, Jonathan Wilson's Kilt moves from a Scottish unit in Tobruk in 1942 to a gay bar in Toronto in the 1990s, and finally Glascow for a funeral. The title item ties this unlikely progression together as we observe a young soldier on duty in North Africa and clad in a traditional kilt into his lookalike grandson dancing on a tabletop in the same kilt to entice male customers.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
November 2005
Kindertransport
Bath House Cultural Center

 Echo Theater's production of Kindertransport by Diane Samuels opened at the Bath House Cultural Center November 6, 2003. Six talented actors did a fine job with a convoluted, obtuse script that leaves much to be desired.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
November 2003
King And I, The
New Jersey Performing Arts Center - Prudential Hall

 When the curtain goes up on this touring production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I to reveal the teeming port of Bangkok against a twinkling backdrop of stars, one is simultaneously transported back almost fifty years to its legendary Broadway opening and to the l850s when a young English school teacher, Anna Leonowens, arrived to teach the 67 children of the King of Siam.

Kathryn Wylie-Marques
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
King And I, The
Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

 Few American musicals retain their ability to enchant over the years, and even fewer of these "classics" actually improve with age. Since I wasn't born in 1951, when The King and I first took Broadway by storm, I cannot compare the original's impact to the current production now touring the United States. I can only marvel at how well The King and I has survived over the years.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2000
King Hedley II
Mark Taper Forum

 Can a three-hour drama with no story be successful? Unfortunately not, not even if the playwright is August Wilson, a master of the black vernacular. King Hedley II abounds in inspired speeches (some of which will be used by actors in monologue auditions for decades to come) and bursts of pungent, heady dialogue, but they don't add up to anything like a narrative which will keep you at the edge of your seat, breathless to know what happens next.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2000
King Lear
Studio 102

 King Lear is one of the supreme challenges for any company, and the professional Actors' Shakespeare Project, in kicking off its second season, has courageously stepped up to the plate. Boston has not been lucky in its recent Lears: F. Murray Abraham played it with the American Repertory Theatre in 1991, and Austin Pendleton with the New Repertory Theatre in 2000. Both were failures. For impressive enactments, one would have to go back to Harold Scott in 1958 and Paul Scofield in 1964.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
October 2005
King Lear
Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival

 Many critics call King Lear Shakespeare's tragic masterpiece, but the public has never ratified that judgment. Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet have more mass appeal. Maybe the reason people don't love Lear as much as the others is because it has a major problem with plausibility.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
King Lear
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

 Staging a production of King Lear has sometimes been compared to scaling a mountain. The play is considered (by some) to be the playwright's finest work, and it is often treated with reverence and, perhaps, terror. The Milwaukee Repertory Company opened its fall season with this powerful work. What they have achieved is a production that is both riveting and accessible. While this won't be the Lear to suit everyone's taste, it certainly does an exemplary job of highlighting the themes of Shakespeare's work.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2006
King Of The Moon
Seven Angels Theater

 Conflict between two brothers, debate over the war in Vietnam, and a discussion of the rules of the Catholic Church, all set in the tumultuous 60s, could be an interesting play. Last year, a new autobiographical play by Tom Dudzick, Over the Tavern, set in the 50's, won us over with its tasty concoction of tartness and sweetness of spirit. It was all about the Pazinski family from the East Side of Buffalo.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Kinks, Shrinks And Red Inks!
MeX Theater

 Jefferson Ensemble, formed less than two years ago in Louisville, is currently presenting three one-act plays under the Kinks, Shrinks and Red Inks! title. With these three shows tailored to their particular talents, the group's fine actors can really strut their stuff. Local playwright Elaine T. Hackett's A Clash of Invitations is the lengthiest and most satisfying of the three.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
January 2000
Kiss At City Hall, The
Pasadena Playhouse

 Why doesn't romance last? asks Joe DiPietro in this "relationship" comedy, which comes off as a slightly-better-than-average TV sitcom in its West Coast premiere production. Inspired by French photographer Robert Doisneau's snapshot of a man and woman exchanging a passionate public kiss, Di Pietro gives us two New York couples grappling with issues of commitment, unwanted pregnancy, infidelity and neurotic behavior, against a backdrop of the idealized romance embodied in the controversial snapshot (which may or may not have been staged).

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2000
Kiss Me, Kate
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 Hugs and kisses to the wonderful pair (Lillie played by Angela Bond and Fred by David Engel) who rediscover their love through sparring and starring in a musical version of Taming of the Shrew. There may be Sharon Scott's rousing "Another Opening, [but it's not just]Another Show" as director Will Mackenzie uses all his TV expertise fitting onto a relatively small stage the excitement of a Broadway extravaganza. Oh, yes, he uses the whole theater, too (so nicely for "We Open in Venice") and has more than the doublings called for by the script.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Kiss Me, Tony
Patio Playhouse

 Deborah Ann Zimmer's homage to 27 years of Tony-winning Broadway musicals, Kiss Me, Tony, is just plain fun. Starting with Kiss Me Kate and closing with The Producers, the selections make a virtual history of contemporary musicals.

She stages each number with just enough action to set the scene for the selection from the show. Musical Director Ann Savage, aided by April Haarz's vocal direction, brings panache to each song. Choreographer Dawn Marie Himlin adds to the evening's polished, theatrical style.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2002
Kiss Of The Spider Woman
Ahmanson Theater

 [Reviewed at Orange County Performing Arts Center, Dec. 1996] To make a musical of Manuel Puig's novel, "Kiss of the Spider Woman," Terrence McNally, John Kander and Fred Ebb simply put Puig's story on stage as a play, then superimposed on it 20-some musical numbers, most of which have nothing to do with the plot but feature a dazzling performance by Chita Rivera.

T.E. Foreman
Date Reviewed:
December 1996

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