Laughing Wild
Central Avenue Playhouse

 I wasn't looking forward to renewing my acquaintance with Laughing Wild at Carolina Actors Studio Theater. Watching a previous production that starred April Jones and Sidney Horton, two accomplished performers, I'd felt harangued by Durang. But under T.J. Derham's sparkling direction, C.A.S.T. lightens the barrage of verbiage while intensifying visual interest and physical comedy.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
May 2004
Lend Me A Tenor
Coronado Playhouse

 Comedy tests both director and actor, and when it works, it is a pure pleasure. Lend Me a Tenor, at the Coronado Playhouse, under Bob Christiansen's direction, works. It works because it is well cast and well directed. Convinced that sold-out houses will continue, the show has been extended an additional two weeks from the original May 11 close to May 25, 2003.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
April 2003
Lend Me A Tenor
Cape Playhouse

 A case could be made that, in the past quarter century, two farces stand out among their competitors: Noises Off (1982), by British playwright Michael Frayn, and Lend Me a Tenor (1986), by the American dramatist Ken Ludwig. It is the latter that is closing out the Cape Playhouse's 81st season with plenty of laughter provided by its cast of eight.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
September 2007
Leonce und Lena
Athenaeum Theater

 Georg Buchner's comedy -- the author's only --- Leonce und Lena, was written for an 1836 writing competition, but Buchner missed the deadline, and the play wouldn't be brought to a stage till 1895, well after the author died from typhus at age 23.

Kevin Henely
Date Reviewed:
July 2004
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Martin Experimental Theater at Kentucky Center for the Arts

 Bored French aristocrats from the 18th century who cynically manipulate each other and set out to seduce and abandon vulnerable sexual targets for their own depraved amusement are a poisonous breed whose comeuppance is sweet in the Louisville Repertory Company's production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Michael J.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
November 2005
Les Miserables
Ahmanson Theater

 The 1985 musical, back in L.A. for the third time, holds up more than well. Combining spectacle with social consciousness and historical relevance, the show manages to remain a crowd-pleaser by dint of its powerful performances, stirring music and savvy staging (annoying turntable and all). Ivan Rutherford as Valjean and Stephen Bishop as Javert make formidable enemies and handle their respective arias with impressive chops. Joan Almedilla (Fantine) and Aymee Garcia & J. P.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
December 1999
Les Miserables
Prudential Hall

 While it's touted as having a "critically acclaimed" cast of 36, the same Tony-award winning design as the Broadway original, five fog machines, 500 pounds of dry ice, and 1000 costume pieces, the numbers for this Les Miserables just don't add up. It looks and sounds pretty dog-eared and tired despite its recent rave review in the New Jersey Star Ledger (6/11/04). The show is, unfortunately, what one tends to expect of a national touring company of a blockbuster Broadway icon.

Kathryn Wylie-Marques
Date Reviewed:
June 2004
Les Miserables
Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

 Fourteen years after its Broadway opening, Les Miserables still holds the power to enchant us, with its heart-wrenching stories and improbable alliances, intertwined with episodes of cunning, deceit, heroism, virtue, spiritual awakening, love and patriotism. All of this unfolds within the framework of the French Revolution. However, what saves Les Miserables from being a dry history lesson is the quality of the characters who struggle to survive at any cost. Throughout the tale, they are presented with difficult choices.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Les Miserables
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

 Les Miserables has become a familiar repeat in Milwaukee, as it played here just four years ago (most Broadway tours are seen perhaps once in a decade). It is indeed a welcome return, as this top-notch cast features many actors who came directly from the Broadway version (which closed about six months ago). Although it is impossible to duplicate a Broadway show on tour, this one comes close. This lavish production sparkles with rich production values and a stellar cast.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2005
Lesson Before Dying, A
Florida Studio Theater Mainstage

 The exposed brick walls of the Parish Courthouse storeroom in rural Louisiana, where most of the action of A Lesson Before Dying takes place, seem ready to implode. Under the torn-mesh ceiling in a makeshift meeting room, 1948, clash Emma Glenn (spirited Gloria Bailey), her godson Jefferson who's going to be executed, and Grant Wiggins, his former teacher. Neither an exemplary Negro nor a smart one, Jefferson is innocent of the murder a white jury has pinned on him.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2001
Lesson From Aloes, A
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

 Although it would be welcome at any time of year, Athol Fugard's A Lesson from Aloes was particularly appreciated during February's bitter chill. Set in 1963 South Africa, the play explores the emotional and physical effects of apartheid.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Let Me Sing
Booth Playhouse

 Charlotte Rep's sassy new musical, Let Me Sing, is a wonderful collection of old songs from 1899-1943. The ambitious new book, written by Rep artistic director Michael Bush and literary manager Michael Aman, comes loaded with good intentions. Make that overloaded with good intentions.

After teaching the history of American musical theater at Brooklyn College for eight years, Bush was possessed by the notion that the evolutionary scenario could be successfully brought to life onstage -- given the right people and the right tunes.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
January 2003
Let My Enemy Live Long!
San Diego Rep at Lyceum Theater

 Let My Enemy Live Long! is a close-up and very personal look at writer/performer Tanya Shaffer's adventures on a river trip to West Africa. She offers an energetic tour de force, a trip well enjoyed, a trip of personal interaction between a white Jewish woman and the natives. The educated few spoke French; the others communicated using sign language. Her story is about personal interactions between cultures -- the successes and the failures. It is about understanding and friendships.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2002
Let's Murder Marsha
Poway Performing Arts Company

 Playwright Monk Ferris has a way with words. He explores the consequences of hearing only fragments of a conversation and coming to the wrong conclusions in the riotously funny Let's Murder Marsha, currently on the boards at PowPAC.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
June 2006
Lieutenant of Inishmore, The
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz Stage III

 Stressing stupid vengence and callous violence of self-styled Irish "liberators," FST's The Lieutenant of Inishmore shows ruthless Padraic as an over-the-top yet typically sadistic terrorist. When his da, Donny, on Inishmore isle calls to tell him his cat wee Thomas is ailing, Padraic drops torturing a drug dealer strung up in an Ulster warehouse and heads home. Because the cat already is roadkill, Donny and slow-witted, effeminate Davey, who found and brought him back, catch a tabby to disguise as wee Thomas with bootblack. Padraic arrives to find them smeared, sotted, sleeping.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2007
Life And Limb
Stage Left

 The difficulties faced by disabled American war veterans in their re-assimilation into civilian life have been well-documented, and even with the absurdist spin a young Keith Reddin put on it in 1984, the trials of Franklin Roosevelt Clagg, sent home from Korea minus -- literally -- his good right arm, are by now familiar territory. But the Swing For The Fences company, most of whom are too young to even remember Viet Nam, refuse to take cover in ironic distance, instead grappling with their material as seriously and intensely as if it were 1954 instead of 2001.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 2001
Life Is A Dream
Oregon Shakespeare Festival - Angus Bowmer Theater

 At last month's Oregon Shakespeare Festival's press conference I was drawn to Laird Williamson as he sat emitting a Buddha-like radiance. As well he should; he has, for the second time in as many years, staged his own adaptation of Pedro Calderon De La Barca's intense play, Life is a Dream. Williamson spoke of the play's mysticism, its metaphorical themes, and overpowering dark intrigue. I drank in his words with my coffee, not realizing then that a magical experience at the Bowmer Theater was soon to move me.

Steve & Herb Heiman
Date Reviewed:
June 2001
Life (X) Three
FSU - Cook Theater

 What a difference a production makes! In the original French presentation of Yasmina Reza's three versions of a disastrous mis-timed dinner party, the hosts and their counterpart guests were like the couples in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Their dramatic interplay barely caused a snicker, much less laughter, from the audience. But Banyan Theater Company draws laughs aplenty from the moment Henri and caustic wife Sonia spar over how to handle their six-year-old as he refuses to go to sleep in his room off the parlon.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2006
Life, Death and Resurrection of Pulcinella, The
FSU - Cook Theater

 In an academic setting, as a demonstration of facets of commedia dell'arte and use of its traditional masks, this "exclusive performance" might have been more appropriate. Presented for the public after much hype and without an accompanying lecture, it did neither the genre nor Antonio Fava credit. Fava has been working with students at Riverview High School and Florida State University's Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training who apparently learned enough about his work to better appreciate his take on Pulcinella.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2005
Light in the Piazza, The
Sanford & Dolores Ziff Ballet Opera House at Carnival Center for the Performing Arts

 Miami's performing arts center opened unofficially in September with The Light in the Piazza, winner of six Tony Awards in 2005. Official gala events for the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts -- named for cruise operator Carnival Corp., which paid $20 million for the rights and is headquartered nearby -- didn't begin until Oct. 5, 2006. On the fourth stop of its first national tour, the Craig Lucas-Adam Guettel romantic musical was in fine form at the Ziff Ballet Opera House, the new venue that will mount touring Broadway shows.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
Light Up The Sky
Patio Playhouse

 It's opening night, the first tryout in Boston before the long arduous trip to The Great White Way. Thus opens Moss Hart's 1948 Broadway success (it ran 27 weeks), Light up the Sky. This aging play survives quite well for it tells the story, admittedly way over the top, of the trials and tribulations of bringing a brand new play by a first-time playwright to the public.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2004
Light Up The Sky
Olney Theater Center For The Arts

 In playwright Moss Hart's loving tribute to the insanity of his profession, Producer Sidney Black (Tony Hoty) says he wants his latest investment to be a roman candle that will light up the sky like the Fourth of July. Although the fictitious allegory he's backing may not survive tryouts, this revival of Light Up the Sky,directed by John Going, a master of farce, is a hit for the Olney Theater Center.

Barbara Gross
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Lights, The
MeX Theater

 The Lights illuminates via sudden flashes or prolonged exposure the gritty lives of big city (New York?) denizens in their struggles with ordinary jobs, failed relationships, and corrupting influences. In 15 galvanizing scenes the extraordinary Necessary Theater cast makes the characters they portray disturbingly real. Howard Korder's play is a kind of theatrical collage in which scenes involving five major characters and some others are cut up and pasted together. Lilian (Mary Oliver Humke) and Rose (Susan Linville) work in dead-end department store jobs.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2000
Limonade Tous Les Jours
Actors Theater of Louisville

 Charles L. Mee's seductive valentine to a sun-dappled Paris in the spring and the possibility of love between an enchanting young French woman and a somewhat boring older American man is as light as a souffle and as refreshing as an aperitif (or in this case a lemonade) sipped at a sidewalk cafe. The production values here, under Marc Masterson's fluid direction, are so strong, they almost camouflage the play's thinness.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Lindstrom And Motambi
National Black Theater Festival

 This ripening script pits a UN colonel against an African chieftain in a drama mirroring the long strife in Angola and the futility of well-intentioned mediation. John Amos, of "Good Times" fame, gets the opportunity to stretch beyond comedy and unleash the full power of his manly stage presence as General Motambi. But the spell is too often broken by Amos having to call upon an offstage prompter to read him his next line. And playwright Walter Owens gives him far too many lines to remember.

Perry Tannenbaum
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Lion In Winter, The
Legler Benbough Theater at USIU

 The Lion In Winter was one of the most powerful dramas to hit the stage and screen, as well as television, in the last half of the twentieth century. The film won three Oscars plus another 11 awards. A revival of the play opened this weekend at Scripps Ranch Theater. And what an opening it was!

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2006
Lion In Winter, The
Peninsula Players Theater In A Park

 Late in the second act of The Lion In Winter, Eleanor of Aquitaine brings "breakfast" to her three sons, all imprisoned in the castle's wine cellar. It is a very cold breakfast, one made of steel. She has brought them daggers. Eleanor hopes they will use them to escape. But the three quickly decide to kill King Henry when he arrives. It's a royal family that puts a big "D" into dysfunction, but it makes for an engaging and compelling night of theater. The Lion in Winter isn't a strict accounting of historical events.

Ed Huyck
Date Reviewed:
July 1999
Lion King, The
Pantages Theater

 The Lion King is a mega-hit in L.A. and elsewhere, a show that attracts audiences of all ages and types, so criticizing it is like a lesson in frustration and irrelevance. But criticize it I must. Not that I find it all bad; on the contrary, it has miraculous things, such as Taymor's staging, costumes and puppetry. I also find much of the music (and arrangements) stirring, and there are first-rate performances galore, notably Danny Rutigliano's antic Timon, John Vickery's villainous Scar and Bob Bouchard's flatulent Pumbaa.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Lion King, The
Fox Cities Performing Arts Center

 When The Lion King first opened on Broadway ten years ago, even seasoned New York critics were stumped about what to say. Adjectives such as "stunning," "fantastic" and "incredible" didn't even come close to describing this unique show. The best statement, I think, came from The New York Times: "It's unlike anything you've ever seen." Thankfully, that's still the case. A touring version recently opened in Appleton, Wisconsin, bringing local theatergoers their first taste of this extraordinary musical.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
May 2007
Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, The
Todd Wehr Theater

 A dazzling production by Milwaukee's acclaimed First Stage Theater brings to life the children's classic, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Though a vastly simplified version of the Land of Narnia book series by C.S. Lewis, the show manages to pack a lot of wallop into 90 minutes. (This is the prescribed running time for all First Stage performances.) In retrospect, the show does perhaps stretch a bit too far. It introduces a number of characters (such as the White Stag), and situations that are not fully explained.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2004
Little Foxes, The
Cygnet Theater

 The house of Regina (Rosina Reynolds), Horace (Michael Harvey), and daughter Alexandra Giddens (Rachael VanWormer) is a beautiful example of southern elegance. Alas, the matriarch, Regina, is a driven woman. She is in constant power struggle with her brothers Ben (Tom Stephenson) and Oscar (Tim West) and with her husband, Horace (Michael Harvey). Yet, more than greed that drives her in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes. Add to this mix the lovely, but repressed Birdie (Glynn Bedington), wife of Oscar, who himself is repressed by his brother Ben.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
November 2005
Little Mary Sunshine
Legler Benbough Theater at USIU

 She might not look it, but Little Mary Sunshine is almost 48 years old. She still has a spring in her step, even if she has a passing resemblance to the 1954 film, "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers."

Here we have six young gentlemen of the United States Forest Rangers and General Oscar Fairfax and the young ladies of the Eastchester Finishing School along with Nancy Twinkle and Madame Ernestine Von Liebedich with the charming Little Mary Sunshine. Ah, that magic number seven again.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2006
Little Night Music, A
Mann Center for the Performing Arts

 It's a perfect fit -- a musical comedy about a midsummer romance "in the country" staged in the park on a midsummer's evening. In addition, this orchestra and this show are a good match. Sondheim's score is in three-quarter time and variations of it, and the Philadelphia Orchestra has a long association with waltz music. Unfortunately we have to put up with bad amphitheater acoustics, with reverberations that make it difficult to hear Sondheim's exquisitely-crafted word play. Despite this, the music triumphs.

Steve Cohen
Date Reviewed:
July 2001
Little Shop Of Horrors
Theater At The Center

 Based on Roger Corman's horror film of the 1950s, Little Shop of Horrors is a humorous and bright musical comedy send-up of the genre and the Fifties in general. The horror of this little skid row flower shop is a bloodthirsty, flesh-eating plant, for whom the Beverly Hills diet means Shelley Winters for breakfast and Raymond Burr for dinner. A wimpy plant shop employee, Seymour (Steve Dunne) is the unwitting keeper of the bloodthirsty plant, and a brassy, tacky, but warmhearted employee named Audrey, played by Heidi Kettenring, is the girl of Seymour's dreams.

Richard Allen Eisenhardt
Date Reviewed:
June 1999
Little Shop Of Horrors
Actors Theater of Louisville

 Who has customers when you run a flower shop on Skid Row? the owner, Mr. Mushnik (Fred Major), laments to his two lame-brain employees, Seymour (Steve Routman) and Audrey (Audrey Klinger), as the day ends without a single person coming by. But when Seymour suddenly produces from the back room and places in the front window a weird-looking plant he has been nurturing, the shop begins drawing customers galore along with swarms of interviewers who make Seymour famous in every media outlet.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
February 2001
Little Shop Of Horrors
Cabot Theater - Broadway Theater Center

 Few shows rate the term "perfection." However, cult musical fans will want to rush to the box office to buy what few tickets remain for the Skylight Opera Theater's sparkling production of Little Shop of Horrors. Interestingly, the Milwaukee production arrives on the eve of its Broadway revival, scheduled to open October 2. For those unwilling to hop a plane to New York, however, there's plenty to enjoy right here at home.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2003
Little Shop Of Horrors
Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

 The Marcus Center for the Performing Arts closes its 2004-05 Broadway season with the peppy Little Shop of Horrors. This is the touring version of the Broadway show, directed by the talented Jerry Zaks. The show benefits from its newfound Broadway polish, with a cast that showcases top voices and excellent performances. Kathleen Marshall's choreography is another new treat. Much of it is lavished on the top-notch trio of Skid Row chorines. They have been given more prominence in this version; indeed, they appear in almost every scene.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
July 2005
Little Women
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

 Just as the novel, "Little Women," is more than a Victorian tale about four sisters, so is the new opera, Little Women, more than a story set to verse. It is just as much a musical as it is an opera -- except the dialogue is briefer and the songs are longer.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
September 2005
Little Women
Marcus Center For The Performing Arts

 It is doubtful that Little Women: The Musical will become a theatergoer's all-time favorite show, in the way some feel about South Pacific or even the macabre Sweeney Todd. There is much to like about Little Women, but unfortunately, the deficits outweigh the show's few but undeniable benefits.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
July 2006
Lively Lad, The
Actors Theater of Louisville

The Lively Lad, the fourth of the six full-length plays in this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, is sheer unadulterated bliss. Imagine Oscar Wilde teamed up with Joe Orton to create an outrageously droll plot for which Gilbert and Sullivan supply epigrammatic bursts of song. With The Lively Lad, the mission has been accomplished with dash, vigor, style and flair, and it's all been done (except for the music by Michael Silversher) by one man: the amazing Quincy Long.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2003

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