Taming of the Shrew, The
Coronado Playhouse

  The cover of the program for The Taming of The Shrew shows it all as the lovely shrew, Katharina (Victoria Mature), clobbers Petruchio (Pete Shaner). The Coronado Playhouse production of William Shakespeare's classic, adapted and directed by Keith A. Anderson, is one of the most physical I've seen. I do hope the pratfalls
and physicality leave no lasting bruises on the cast members.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Lonesome West, The
Pelican Theater at Barry University

 In Leenane, the village in western Ireland where Martin McDonagh set three funny and fierce plays just more than 10 years ago, relations between relatives and friends often are a matter of close-in combat with savage blows to the body and psyche. The Lonesome West, one of those plays, gets a top-notch production by the young Naked Stage theater company near Miami. At times it renders the close-in audience breathless.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
February 2008
Love's Labour's Lost
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

If one of Milwaukee Shakespeare's goals is to attract young audiences, then this production of Love's Labour's Lost earns an A-plus. Although this version may not appeal as much to Shakespeare purists, it's a lot of fun to watch. Credit goes to director Jennifer Uphoff Gray and the set, costume and lighting designers. The combination of these elements is practically seamless.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Lying in State
Caldwell Theater - count de Hoerne Theater

 There are election-season jokes being made in Boca Raton, Fla., these days, but they're not about butterfly ballots or hanging chads. Rather, Caldwell Theater Company has mounted a fluffy if middling confection called Lying in State, in which a state legislator's death touches off a panic over who will run for his seat – his ex, his girlfriend, his brother, his go-fer? -- during which time his body goes missing from the funeral home.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
September 2008
Imaginary Friends
Globe Theaters

 Imaginary Friends is novelist/screenwriter Nora Ephron's first foray into theater. Her screenwriting talents are clearly shown in this drama with music. Ephron brings many of the techniques of film to the stage, including close-ups and framing of scenes either with curtains or lighting. The play opens depicting playwright Lillian Hellman (Swoosie Kurtz) and novelist, book and theatrical critic, Mary McCarthy (Cherry Jones), after their deaths in the `80s. They reminisce -- though usually as enemies.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2002
Imaginary Invalid, The
Yale Repertory Theater

 Recently my husband and I were invited to a reception to honor and meet Hillary Clinton; it was to be held Tuesday evening, September 21, 1999 in Westport. I sadly had to refuse this offer because of my obligation to review the first play of the Yale Repertory season, Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid, a comedie-ballet in three acts, with music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. This production boasts a new translation/adaptation by James Magruder, direction by Mark Rucker, and original music and arrangements composed by Gina Leishman.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
September 1999
Imaginary Invalid, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

 If as much attention had been lavished on the play's literary facets and far-out commedia characterizations as there has been on quirky production values, we wouldn't have to be told how classic and funny is The Imaginary Invalid. For example, take that wonderful opening scene (here preceded by a superfluous Punchinello) of Argan poring over his medical bills and whittling them down to the size he wants to pay. Now, while robust Dean Anthony laboriously plinks sou after sou on a side table, it's the gals on chairs facing backward on each side of the stage that divert attention.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Imaginary Invalid, The
Theater Three

 On August 29, 2005, Theater Three opened a wonderfully rowdy, frenetic Moliere chestnut, The Imaginary Invalid, with a new translation in mostly rhyming couplets by T3 co-founding artistic director, Jac Alder. Some of the rhymes miss their mark, but why quibble about an otherwise joyous production?

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
September 2005
Imelda
East West Players

 Despite all the apparent sweat and labor spent on bringing the world premiere of Imelda, A New Musical to life, it doesn't reveal anything new or interesting about its subject, Imelda Marcos. Although this musical biography of the First Lady of the Philippines gets all its facts straight, the audience really doesn't care much about Imelda's rise to fame. At least, not in the way many audiences cared about Evita, a musical which basically travels the same route as Imelda.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2005
Importance Of Being Earnest, The
OnStage Playhouse

 The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde's experiment in Victorian melodrama, is part satire, part comedy of manners, and part intellectual farce. Originally a three-act play set in London and Hertfordshire, the OnStage Playhouse production is moved to Manhattan and the Hamptons, updated about half a century, changed to two acts, and has one minor character eliminated.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2007
Importance Of Being Earnest, The
McCarter Theater

 The McCarter Theater chose to end this millennium with a 19th century play described by its author as "a trivial comedy for serious people." Many have said that The Importance of Being Earnest is the greatest stage comedy. The McCarter production was both clever and daring while faithful to Oscar Wilde's wit. Director Daniel Fish staged this Earnest with creative lunacy. Algernon's apartment featured a stuffed zebra and a huge pool table, both of which were used for funny stage business. In the second act, characters spoke at times from a tree swing.

Donald Collester
Date Reviewed:
October 1999
Impossible Marriage
Horse Cave Theater

 Her exasperated mother and hugely pregnant sister vehemently agree that Pandora's determination to marry a much older man, a philandering poet who wears a ponytail, will indeed make for an "Impossible Marriage." They'd like to sabotage it but find themselves grimly expecting it to go through as they scheme and vent in the garden (nice design by Jeremy Artigue) on the family estate outside Savannah, Georgia.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
August 2002
Impossible Marriage
Martin Experimental Theater at Kentucky Center for the Arts

 Giddy, headstrong Pandora Kingsley (Leah Michelle Roberts) is hellbent on marrying Edvard Lunt (Emmett Bowles), a writer more than twice her age who has divorced his wife of 23 years and deserted his seven children. In Beth Henley's deliciously subversive Impossible Marriage, Pandora's genteel Georgia mother (the splendid Laurene Scalf), hugely pregnant older sister Floral (Susan Shumate), and Edward's morose eldest son Sidney (Mike Brooks) do everything they can to abort the wedding.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
May 2006
In the Beginning
Experimental Theater

 And God Spake. He spaketh about Romer's tribe, folks not mentioned in the good book. The tribe is upset with Eve and her apple-eating habit in David W. Hahn's story, In the Beginning, currently running at the Experimental Theater on the campus of San Diego State University.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
In the Lap of the Gods
Venice Little Theater - Stage II

 According to the director of In the Lap of the Gods, "The puzzles presented by the playwright spiral through historical events, then up into a future haunted by images of past gods, all viewed through the slightly skewed lens of the absurd." The absurd, however, implies existence of a center. Playwright Myroup displays none with his pageant in which "everycaveman" Moe goes from nature's cycle of birth and rebirth eventually into a future on a starship where he can determine fate with the push of a button.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Indian Ink
Wilma Theater

 The plot of Indian Ink, by Stoppard standards, is rather simple. Flora Crewe, an English poet with a bit of scandal in her past -- liaisons with H. G. Wells and Modigliani -- comes to India in 1930, develops a relationship with an Indian man and allows him to paint a nude portrait of her. Meanwhile she is wooed by an English officer stationed there, and we don't know how far either of her relationships went.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
May 2002
Infinite Ache, An
Off-Broadway Theater

 Life is short, goes the saying. You'll never know how short it is until you witness the breathtaking pace of An Infinite Ache, now showing at the Next Act Theatrer. How fast, you ask? This mating dance goes from awkward first date to comfortable old age in the span of 90 minutes. The two-character play involves two ordinary people living an ordinary life in Los Angeles.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2006
Inherit The Wind
Coronado Playhouse

 Normally, The Coronado Playhouse, known as The Theater by the Bay, is a warm and friendly place to have dinner and see a nice production. Not this time. There were pickets outside declaring a faith in the most literal interpretation of the Bible. I crossed the picket line to get my ticket.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
June 2007
Inherit The Wind
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 The authors were wise to insist that the program for Inherit the Wind, specify Place and Time as "A small town...not long ago." The play still represents places in America that are parochial and resist change, where, unfortunately (just so you know where I stand), "the right to think is very much on trial." Here, being free to think means being able to teach scientific theory, even if it seems to or does contradict long, stanchly-held beliefs.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2002
Inherit The Wind
Geva Theater

 It's no surprise that Geva Theater's elaborate revival of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's rousing courtroom drama, Inherit the Wind, plays like gangbusters, bringing its opening- night crowd to their feet. And, despite being slightly more than half a century old and based on a notorious historic trial that took place more than 80 years ago, the play is, sadly, all too timely.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Inspecting Carol
Legler Benbough Theater at USIU

 It seems that many, many playwrights dream of and write a play about staging a play. Daniel Sullivan, conspiring with the Seattle Repertory Theater, did just that. Their Inspecting Carol, directed by Gil Savage, is currently on the boards at Scripps Ranch Theater.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Inspecting Carol
Labyrinth Theater

 The laugh-out-loud funny Inspecting Carol, by Dan Sullivan and The Seattle Repertory Company, premiered at Seattle Rep December 11, 1991.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
November 2006
Inspector Calls, An
OnStage Playhouse

 What begins as an engagement celebration suddenly darkens when... An Inspector Calls. J. B. Priestley set the action in 1912 in North Midlands, England. Enter Inspector Goole; exit happiness.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Interview with Paul Robeson, An
Off-Broadway Theater

 Billed as a "dramatic biography with music," An Interview with Paul Robeson had an impressive world premiere at Milwaukee's Next Act Theater. This play is the creation of the production's two actors, Paul A. Mabon (who plays Robeson) and John Kishline (who plays a New York Times reporter). The subject is ideally suited for drama, as the real Paul Robeson battled for racial equality in America at the same time he was in demand worldwide for concerts.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
Intimate Apparel
Lyceum

 San Diego theater season 2005-2006 has been the finest in our history. The quality of productions has been consistently higher than previous seasons, and it's across the board, from community and independent theater to the professional venues.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
Intimate Apparel
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Theater

 Not since the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre staged a sparkling production of Sam Shepard's "Buried Child" in 2001 has there been such a wondrous blend of talent and storytelling on the Stiemke Theater stage as one finds in Intimate Apparel. Lynn Nottage's play is exquisitely written, expertly directed and beautifully performed by a talented cast. As the curtain opens, one is immediately swept into the world of black society in New York City, circa 1905.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Inventing Van Gogh
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Theater

 Playwright Steven Dietz is to be commended for tackling the myths and legends surrounding renowned artist, Vincent Van Gogh. In creating this odd work about Van Gogh's life and his legacy, Dietz strays from the biographical to the fantastical. Inventing Van Gogh moves back and forth through time, pairing contemporary angst with that suffered by artists in the late 1800s.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2003
Invention Of Love, The
Cygnet Theater

 Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love, currently at Cygnet Theater under the direction of Sean Murray, is not for theater and literature lightweights. It helps if you have studied Greek and Latin literature along with having a passing knowledge of poet A.E. Housman. If not, Google Housman or come early and take advantage of the study guides. The synopsis included in the program is also a good guide.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2005
Invention Of Love, The
Wilma Theater

 Starting in middle age, men frequently get an urge to revisit their pasts. Some, like Faust, want to become young again. Others fantasize about just going back for a visit with ourselves as young. Ah, what we could teach ourselves! With A. E. Housman, the ultimate pedant, the potential is intriguing. Tom Stoppard has chosen Housman to be his time-traveling subject in The Invention of Love -- an absorbing story of a man at the end of his life, examining his formative years. Like most Stoppard plays, it is intellectual yet rich with emotion.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
February 2000
Iphigenia at Aulis
6th at Penn Theater

 If you appreciate theater excellence, catch Iphigenia at Aulis at 6th@Penn Theater, where Dr. Marianne McDonald's contemporary-English translation from Euripides is accessible, and this story comes through loud and clear under Douglas Lay's dynamic direction.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
July 2006
Iron Kisses
Geva Theater

 This fourth play by James Still developed by Geva Theater from staged readings through full production is his most appealing. A fairly straightforward drama about a small-town Midwestern family, Iron Kisses offers little innovative except that all characters are played first by a male actor, then by a female actor, and then the two together. But Still's warm, familiar picture of parental and sibling love, difficulties and development is exquisitely composed and ultimately genuinely moving.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
March 2006
It Ain't Nothin' But The Blues
Geffen Playhouse

Why it took five writers to put together a bookless musical with few spoken words is a mystery. What's not a mystery, though, is the appeal of this show, which is a joyous, rollicking, vest-pocket history of the blues, a national art form which usually doesn't get much attention from mainstream, white bread America. An eight-person cast, all of whom sing, dance and play instruments, takes the audience on a swift, finger-poppin' journey into the origins of the blues, backed up by slide projections and a smokin' six piece band.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
November 1999
It Ain't Nothin' But The Blues
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

Without a traditional kind of book, It Ain't Nothin' But the Blues nonetheless speaks eloquently to blues history and tradition. Vocalists act out their lyrics, mime emotions, dance, instrumentalize as historical projections back their tales and wails. Progress from African tribal music through slave singing all the way to country western and Chicago-style blues shows how strongly the roots of blues were planted, its seedlings transplanted and cross-fertilized.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
October 2004
It Runs in the Family
Patio Playhouse

 Farce: A light, humorous play in which the plot depends on a skillfully exploited situation rather than upon the development of character.
Ray Cooney: British playwright and foremost farceur (practitioner of farce).
Sherrie Colbourn: A director accomplished in the direction of humor.
Patio Playhouse: An Escondido community theater currently staging It Runs in the Family.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
It's All True
Adrienne Theater

 In 1930s movies Mickey Rooney said "C'mon kids, let's put on a show." And in real life, in 1937, Orson Welles did virtually the same thing, cobbling together a musical in a disconcertingly haphazard manner. Jason Sherman's new play, It's All True, recreates the tumultuous birth of that musical, The Cradle Will Rock, but he gives us so much more.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Murder
Pegasus Theater

 Unlike the opera, where nearly everyone dies at the end, Pegasus Theater's trademark "Black & White" murder mysteries have many people getting bumped off early on but leaving enough suspects behind. And in true whodunit fashion, everyone has a motive.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
November 2001
Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol
Third Avenue Playhouse

 It's easy to give another Christmas Carol a "bah, humbug." Dickens' heartfelt exploration of the nature of the human heart is often reduced to flashy stage effects at the countless holiday presentations of the work. Tom Mula's one-man show - adapted from his own book of the same name - is something else entirely. Presented on a spartan stage (a couple of chairs, a desk and a beautiful image of space as a backdrop), Mula explores Marley's own road to redemption. Mula takes on a host of characters with plenty of style and wit.

Ed Huyck
Date Reviewed:
December 2000
Jacques Brel: A Parisian Cabaret
FST Cabaret Club

 Jacques Brel is no longer alive and well and living in Paris, as he was when he became world famous. Is that why a "Parisian Cabaret" revue of his songs mostly features death? Oh, love too. But it's fated. The art-deco leaded glass framing the stage arch and backing the piano cordons off the performers. Clad in black leather, crepe, velveteen, rayon, they begin a "Marathon" like robots, miked to the teeth. From then on, they proceed as if "The Desperate Ones" they sing about.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2002
James Joyce's The Dead
Ahmanson Theater

 Winner of the 2000 Tony Award for Best Musical, James Joyce's The Dead comes to L.A. not long after its New York closing, with most of its cast intact. And what a splendid cast it is, starting with Stephen Bogardus serving as narrator/participant Gabriel Conroy (played by Christopher Walken in New York). Bogardus is poised and articulate as he guides the audience through the annual Christmas party at the home of his aunts Julia and Kate (Sally Ann Howes and Marni Nixon), in 1903 Dublin.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2000
James Joyce's The Dead
Arden Theater

 This intimate drama with music has an off-putting title. It's awkward, Joyce's name isn't going to sell many tickets, and I heard some patrons didn't want to see a show about death. There's nothing Arden artistic director Terry Nolen can do about that, of course. What he has done is mount a quiet, sensitive production of this lovely little play. He's staged it so we feel that we're eavesdropping in the home of Dublin's Morkan sisters on the occasion of their annual Christmas-time dinner party. The actors play to each other, often turning their backs to most of the audience.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
June 2002

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