Producers, The
Broadway Theater Center

 Milwaukee recently scored a coup when The Skylight became the first Midwest regional theater to acquire rights to The Producers, the madcap, slapstick comedy by Mel Brooks. (This is pure speculation, but one suspects the decision might have been based on the Skylight's recent musical successes, including last season's miraculous, pre-Broadway run of White Christmas.)

With The Producers, the Skylight scores another bulls-eye. Shadows of Broadway's Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick fade away in the glory of this big-budget production.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
November 2008
Seafarer, The
American Heritage Center for the Arts


 As the audience settles in before the start of The Seafarer at Mosaic Theater in South Florida, a ghost-gray light marks the set's window near where a Christmas tree later will glow subtly with multicolored bulbs. But for now, that ghostly light doesn't seem to enter the small home near Dublin as much as it just hovers there, outside, as if waiting to make an entrance.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
November 2008
La Cage aux Folles
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

 What fun! Never before have I seen this musical so at home -- due to pastel scenery and lighting -- on the French Riviera. New to me, too, in the costumes at the nightclub of the title: the individuality of colors, styles, textures in the clothing of Les Cagelles' introductory number.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
November 2008
Two Rooms
Nova Southeastern University - Mailman Hollywood Center Auditorium

 Two Rooms was written in 1988, when news from the Middle East was of Americans and other Westerners being kidnapped in Beirut by terrorists whose motives and next moves seemed unfathomable and unpredictable. Rather than lose currency, Lee

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
October 2006
This Wonderful Life
Asolo Theater

 Consider: This Wonderful Life is based on a perennially popular classic film, based on a heartwarming short story, and that the film has been adapted into a radio play, a regular stage play and a two-hander, and a musical comedy. Conclusion: As a one-man tour de force theater piece, it's a sure-fire audience pleaser. With a story of the power of family, friendship and good works, it brings true holiday warmth to the charming old Asolo.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
December 2008
Tuna Christmas, A
Compass Theater

 First there was Greater Tuna, then A Tuna Christmas, followed by Red, White and Tuna and, most recently, Tuna Does Vegas. Lucky San Diegans will get to see the second one starring Fred Harlow and Don Loper. These two are a dream team for this play, portraying 22 characters in less than two hours.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
December 2008
Puppetolio
Santa Monica Puppet and Magic center

 Steve Meltzer has the world on a string. The gifted puppeteer not only has put together his own one-man show but performs it in a theater he built himself, doing comic turns with a series of raffish puppets and marionettes of his own design.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
December 2008
Imaginary Invalid, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 "Over the top," said my companion as well as those we heard in the lobby afterward. No surprise: comic cartoon figures cover the proscenium arch. The curtain opens on a parlor askew, like a technicolor "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" encasing hypochondriac Argan (Douglas Jones, worthy of Moliere). Before his own cabinet full of potions and devices, he analyzes his farts and jollies over the possibility of ending voluminous medical bills by having an in-house doctor. Free. Argan just needs to wed daughter Angelique (sweet but spunky Elizabeth Ahrens) to about-to-be medico Claude (David Yearta).

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2009
Happy Days
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

 For fans of the old "Happy Days" TV series, which began a decade-long run in 1974, Happy Days, A New Musical should bring back plenty of memories.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2009
Edward Albee's Occupant

 (See Criticopia review(s) under "OCCUPANT")

Spitfire Grill, The
Players Theater

 Something different for The Players: a small cast doing an area premiere of a relatively new musical by not-too-familiar creators. Though based on a mildly successful film, The Spitfire Grill is far from the kind of cult favorite that spawned campy hits
like Reefer Madness and Hairspray.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
January 2009
Rock and Roll
Actors Theater of Louisville

 Here's yet another fictitious rock band to join the (im)mortal roster that includes Spinal Tap, Josie and The Pussycats, Sweetwater and The Wonders. It's called Danger Seven and it emanates from Lansing, Michigan, in Actors Theater of Louisville's original new rock musical.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
January 2009
Longa Viagem de Volta pra Casa
Goodman Theater

 "It sounds almost Russian," my companion remarked of the mournful melody crooned by a trio of ragged buskers in the narrow corridor, lined with dockside down-and-outs, through which audience members were escorted into the Goodman's Owen Theater. The language was, in fact, Portuguese, but no country can claim a monopoly on the Blues -- a possible reason for the Brazilian Companhia Triptal's attraction to Eugene O'Neill's gloomy picture of the New England seafaring life.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
January 2009
Long Voyage Home, The
Goodman Theater

See Criticopia review(s) of Companhia Triptal's production under "Longa Viagem de Volta pra Casa"

Date Reviewed:
January 2009
Love Song
Cygnet Theater

He sits alone curled up in his only chair next to his only lamp in his blank-walled apartment. He sees nothing; he has no life, no interests, no nothing. The light dims as the walls of his apartment close in on him. This is the life of a man called Beane (Francis Gercke).

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
January 2009
Trouble in Mind
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse Theater

In the right hands, even a half-century-old play can seem fresh and relevant. Example: the powerfully moving production of Trouble in Mind at Milwaukee Repertory Theater.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2009
Going to St. Ives
Off-Broadway Theater

 Lee Blessing's play, Going to St. Ives, is memorable from the beginning. As the stage lights come up on a quaint and orderly English drawing room, one finds the imposing figure of a gorgeously dressed African woman. She is clad head to toe in an extremely colorful and regal garment that is patterned with a bold African design. She also wears a large gold necklace and gold-colored slippers. She stands alone, waiting for her host to arrive. What caused this odd combination?

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Kissing
New Theater

 Set in New York's Central Park, Kissing is a world premiere at New Theater in Coral Gables that has a lot to do with a man's midlife crisis and his flirtation with a younger woman. It's hard not to think of Woody Allen – there's even a bit about lobsters. And there's some similarity to "Groundhog Day." And at some point the mind wanders and you find yourself recalling the moment in "Moonstruck" when Olympia Dukakis tells the John Mahoney character, "You're a little boy and you like to be bad."

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
January 2009
Importance of Being Earnest, The
Paper Mill Playhouse

 To see The Importance of Being Earnest at the Paper Mill Playhouse on Super Bowl Sunday, with only about half the seats in the large theater filled, might not sound like theatrical heaven. But if this intimate, witty comedy can make an effect under such circumstances, as it did this past weekend, it's a sure indication that those involved are doing something -- or many things -- right.

Michael Portantiere
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Mirandolina
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Theater

Got the winter blues? Tired of dealing with economic doldrums? Then put on your boots and long underwear and hike over to the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's box office for tickets to Mirandolina. You're guaranteed to laugh the night away.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Weekend Comedy
Sunshine Brooks Theater

Playwrights Jean and Sam Bobrick have captured the difference in the lifestyles of two generations in Weekend Comedy. This laugh-a-minute comedy is the current offering of New Vision Theater Company playing at Oceanside's Sunshine Brooks Theater. Not only is the play written by a husband and wife team, it is directed by one, Yolanda and John Kalb. The collaboration of both teams works.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
February 2009
Lobby Hero
Florida Studio Theater - Keating Mainstage

If you're going to write a morality play, it helps to have a moral viewpoint. Unfortunately, Kenneth Lonergan seems as confused about truth -- is it absolute or relative? -- as his characters. In a Manhattan apartment hotel, the ironically-named title character, Jeff, frequently sleeps during his night shift and skirts rules laid down by strict supervisor William. A black achiever, worried about a crime his brother may or may not be involved in, William is intent on becoming a manager.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2003
Lobby Hero
Studio Theater

Kenneth Lonergan's hit play, Lobby Hero, made its impressive Milwaukee debut on Valentine's Day. Audiences had been anticipating the production's arrival for months, based on the strength of the play's positive reaction in New York and London. Also fueling enthusiasm was a popular production of Lobby Hero that just ended its run in Madison, Wis. Thankfully, the play lives up to its hype. The opening night audience clearly enjoyed the clever wordplay and sly sight gags that give Lobby Hero its zany, contemporary twist.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2003
Lone Star / Laundry And Bourbon
Rudyard Kipling

Good ol' boys and the women who love them (or at least marry them and then tolerate them) populate the rural Texas town in which James McLure sets his sad/funny twin plays -- one for the women and one for the men. Laundry and Bourbon, the opener, takes place on the porch of Elizabeth's (Amber Davies) house. Her old high school classmate, now the mother of three rowdy kids, drops in to gossip and share a few bourbons and coke.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
March 2007
Long Christmas Ride Home, The
Dowling Theater

This is Paula Vogel's 23rd play and the first since she won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for How I Learned to Drive. This time, she acknowledges drawing inspiration from the early one-acts of Thornton Wilder, especially The Long Christmas Dinner and The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden (which she read in high school). From the former, which seamlessly covers 90 years in a short period, she avoids strictly linear time; from the latter, she takes a car journey by parents and three children.

Caldwell Titcomb
Date Reviewed:
May 2003
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Goodman Theater

Long Day's Journey Into Night was the Dysfunctional Family play that founded the genre as we know it today, and if this Goodman Theater production doesn't move to Broadway following its Chicago run, then New York's Theater District deserves to be converted into a daycare center. Robert Falls brings this epic-length confessional home in a record three-and-a-half hours with never an instant of time-stepping or fly-catching. And in spite of the Big-Name presence of the formidable Brian Dennehy, this is no star turn but a superb example of ensemble playing at its most virtuosic.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2002
Looking For Normal
Geffen Playhouse

Jane Anderson's latest, a domestic drama with a vengeance, deals with the transgender issue in a somewhat superficial but engaging way. Beau Bridges, returning to the stage after 25 years, plays Roy, patriarch of a mid-west family who drops a bombshell on his loved ones by informing them he intends to undergo a sex change. Anderson draws him as a regular guy with no female mannerisms, so much so that it was hard for this reviewer to believe the play's basic premise.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
April 2001
Looking For Normal
Diversionary Theater

Roy and Irma have been married 25 years with two children, spunky Patty Anne, 13, and rebellious Wayne, 22. During a marriage counseling session with their minister, Roy admits to feeling that he is a woman trapped in a man's body. Jane Anderson's masterful play, Looking for Normal, explores the true reality of the dilemma with both humor and the intrinsic drama it causes.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
May 2005
Loot
Stamford Theater Works

It might be downright dangerous to present the loony black comedy, Loot, with the globe of a full moon overhead and an open coffin on the stage, but Stamford Theater Works took the gamble, and the result is purely good fun. Doug Moser's brisk direction of this stylish, six-member cast, led by the intrepid Ken Parker, who is at turns contentious and choleric as the honest and beleaguered widower, McLeavy, maintains a merry pace in this piece by English Playwright Joe Orton, never letting its meter run down for a moment.

Rosalind Friedman
Date Reviewed:
September 1999
Lot's Daughters
Diversionary Theater

Diversionary Theater's West-Coast premiere of Rebecca Basham's Lot's Daughters is a dramatic, dynamic success. This multi-award winning play is set in the Eastern Kentucky hill country during fall and winter 1944. Appalachia is one of the subcultures in the United States that has seen little change. Its isolation was a result of, at least in the war years, a lack of electricity and roads. Basham's world has the stereotypes we've come to expect: the bible-thumping preacher and his pious wife, the widower, the young daughters, and a brother going off to war.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Louie And Ophelia
Regency West Dinner Theater

A love story with heart and wit, Louie And Ophelia gives L.A.'s newest dinner theater, Regency West, a noteworthy debut production. All components of Gus Edwards' play, from the writing to the acting and directing, are first-rate. The room itself, located in the heart of L.A.'s black cultural scene, Leimert Park, is large and comfortable, with a raised stage that affords easy sightlines.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
September 2000
Love Diatribe
Martin Experimental Theater at Kentucky Center for the Arts

Four years after his Love Diatribe opened in 1990 in New York, playwright/novelist Harry Kondoleon was dead of AIDS at age 39. In his later years this author of 17 plays and two novels made the horror of AIDS a central theme of his work. Love Changes Everything was the headline The New York Times put on its review of the play, and indeed it magically does in the final moments of The Necessary Theater's production.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2001
Love From a Stranger
Lamplighters Community Theater

If you like solving a mystery, you'll likely enjoy Love From A Stranger. Is Bruce a murderer or just extremely fond of macabre crimes? Is Cecily a murderess or just a frightened young lady? Based on an Agatha Christie story, Frank Vesper's twister weaves an interesting tale.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2002
Love Of Three Oranges, The
La Jolla Playhouse

The Love of Three Oranges is based on Carlo Gozzi's fairy tale. This is not Prokofiev's opera, with its marches. It is a vision of Romanian Nona Ciobanu (director, co-scenic & costume Designer) and Iulian Baltatescu (co-scenic & costume designer, Lighting & Composer). It has the feel of commedia dell'arte in this American adaptation by James Magruder. He creates a language for the characters that is, at times, obtuse, and then he uses American slang almost as an aside. The piece thus wavers between aural confusion and amusement.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
September 2004
Love! Valour! Compassion!
MeX Theater at Kentucky Center for the Arts

Over three holiday weekends -- Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day -- eight gay men spend time together as guests of choreographer Gregory Mitchell (Craig Nolan Highley) at his remote lakeside country home north of New York City. Terrence McNally's paean to the comradeship and courage of homosexual friends in the age of AIDS is vividly brought to life in the Louisville Repertory Company's stirring presentation of Love! Valour! Compassion!.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
June 2000
Love, Janis
San Diego Rep at Lyceum Theater

It was an event. It was a happening. It was a musical. It was a biography. Most of all it was a rock concert. The house lights dimmed, the stage brightened, and we time-traveled just over 30 years to the days of Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll -- Janis Joplin style. Love, Janis is pure power.

Robert Hitchcox
Date Reviewed:
October 2001
Love, Janis
Royal George Theater

Music critic Robert Christgau, writing in 1968, said of Big Brother and the Holding Company's lead singer, "Thank God for the band. If Janis had to put out like Janis for an hour a set, she would have dropped dead a year ago." This may explain why it takes three actresses to play Janis Joplin, the legendary vocalist who sacrificed heart, soul, health and, ultimately, her life, to the duende of rock-and-roll, who ruled the romantic America of the 1960s.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Love, Janis
Royal George Theater

Love, Janis is an affecting look at the last four years in the brief life of singer Janis Joplin. It is also one hell of a rock 'n' roll show. The musical is installed in the Royal George Theater for what should be a long, healthy run, as it should attract the younger generation in droves. The show will likely please a contemporary rock audience as well as the generation that grew up in the psychedelic 1960s, a decade that Joplin helped shape musically.

Richard Allen Eisenhardt
Date Reviewed:
August 1999
Love, Sex And The IRS
Derby Dinner Playhouse

Could there be a more perfect title to whet the appetite of a dinner-theater audience? Derby Dinner Playhouse's smartly honed presentation of Love, Sex & the IRS, written by William VanZandt and Jane Milmore expressly for community-theater audiences, puts a satisfying farcical feast on the table. The groaning board offers a surfeit of laugh-out-loud helpings involving cross-dressing, gender mix-ups, a nosy landlord, romantic entanglements, tax cheats, and inebriated interlopers.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
January 2004
Love, Sex And The IRS
Pocket Sandwich Theater

Pocket Sandwich Theater presents a hilarious and timely production of Love, Sex, and the I.R.S. by Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore. This play will never win a Pulitzer Prize, but when was the last time you saw a Pulitzer Prize-winning play that made you split your sides laughing for two hours? And who among us doesn't enjoy a laugh at the expense of the I.R.S.? -- especially at this time of year.

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
March 2006

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