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(see Criticopia International listing under "Questa sera si recita a soggetto")
It used to be said that George Bernard Shaw's introductions were better than his plays. I don't think anyone believes that anymore. The long, extended notes that precede many of Shaw's plays are certainly testament to his mastery of rhetoric, his wit and paradox. But the thought is mostly outdated -- in the sense of obvious, not that it is no longer believed. George Jean Nathan once diagrammed Shaw's technique by writing "Platitudes" upside down and backwards. Shaw's genius lies in making the talk play, so that even his antagonist has better phrased arguments than most can invent.
(see Criticopia International listing under "Transferts")
A perfect example of boulevard theater! Here's cinema star Andrea Ferreol ("The Last Metro," second lead, for example) as wife to long-familiar theatrical lead Andre Falcon (a Comedie-Francaise Societaire Honoraire) in their posh home, when a stranger appears and asks to use the phone. It's snowing, he's had an auto emergency and, as he remarks (looking as sinister as gaunt Tom Novembre can) they're in isolated country. After daughter and son join the couple, there still seems to be a problem getting help.
Though one target of Gerard Alessandrini's satire in this latest edition of his long-running revue is the proliferation of 'brand-name' midtown shows, the Forbidden Broadway title, for 25 years (and counting), has represented the cream of musical theater parody. Fast and fearless, the "Dancing with the Stars" FoBro is 90 minutes of sheer irreverent, exhilarating, take-no-prisoners glee concluding with a sucker-punching reminder of why we love that Great White Way, warts and all.
We never learn just what the machers in Jason Wells' play actually do for a living. So densely coded is the corporatespeak that comprises their lingua franca that they could be politicians, bankers, industrial CEOs, advertising executives or athletic coaches. But what we soon learn after meeting them is that they want an opponent killed, and that they've hired a professional assassin to arrange it.
"Are we in for a concert?" asked an opening-night playgoer as we filed into the Goodman's north room - a valid question from someone anticipating another lockstep Greatest Hits revue. But just as a photograph freezes an instant in time's inexorable progression, so does this musical docudrama by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux encapsulate, with all the tension and regret that comes of hindsight, a pivotal moment in the history of American popular music.
(see Criticopia review(s) under Edward II)
In traditional marriages, after the breadwinning husband retires, it's not uncommon for his wife to look at her spouse lounging in front of the television with his beer in hand and wonder, "Where did the years go, and who is this man?" The phenomenon in Yohen, however, is complicated by several factors: for one, Mrs. Washington is Japanese, and Mr. Washington is African-American. Her parents were educated and affluent, his were industrial entrepreneurs.
The aesthetic of British author Clive Barker has been likened to that of American artist Ivan Albright: death, disease, decay, body fluids, scabs, pimples - all the icky natural shocks that flesh is heir to - are graphically represented in their depiction of this imperfect universe. But while Albright often hints at compassion for his all-too-human victims, Barker revels in misanthropy of the cruelest kind.
See whether this doesn't sound familiar: the CEO of an investment firm skims off the clients' accounts to line his own pockets and those of his family. Upon his death, his son vows to undo these fraudulent practices but is unable to do so without stinting his own kinfolk. When his son inherits the business, however, he vows to put an end to the legacy of corporate double-dealing, even if it means depriving himself, his closest relatives, and his friends of their ill-gotten bounty. If necessary, he declares, he will even - gasp! - confess to the authorities and risk imprisonment.
You see, there's this provincial village whose mayor and city council have been warned that an emissary from the king has been sent to check up on them, but that the fatal agent will be traveling incognito. Soon thereafter, this itinerant beggar wanders into town, where he is promptly assumed to be the royal snitch.
All that's certain about the death of Rachel Corrie in 2003 is that the young woman from Olympia, Wash., was traveling in the Middle East under the auspices of the International Solidarity Movement. That in the course of a protest demonstration in the city of Rafah, she deliberately placed herself in front of an advancing bulldozer. And that she was buried in the avalanche of soil dislodged by the vehicle, subsequently perishing of injuries sustained thereby.
Finian's Rainbow: simple plot, simplistic romance, great songs, terrific dancing and costumes.
So this Irishman (the pixie-ish Jim Norton) steals a pot of gold from a leprechaun (the lively, charming Christopher Fitzgerald), and takes his daughter (the beautiful, silver-throated Kate Baldwin) to rural America where she meets a big handsome guy (Cheyenne Jackson).
Once upon a time, according to Greek myth, there was a colony of creatures called Gorgons. They looked like women (beautiful women, some say), but instead of hair, their heads were crowned with writhing, hissing snakes - a sight so terrifying that a single glance would, literally, turn mortals to stone.
The best-known of these femmes fatales was Medusa, whose claim to fame is that she was slain by warrior-assassin Perseus, under the orders of King Polydectes. That's one version of the story.
"What's your job?" a young lady asks the boy she's just met. "I'm a gold-digger," replies the smitten lad. In a manner of speaking, this is accurate. He and his brother occupy their nighttimes cutting jewelry and prying dental crowns from recently-interred corpses.
A factory foreman divides his attentions between his wife and his mistress. Estranged brothers discover a disturbing legacy on the day of their father's funeral. A drug dealer and his waifish girlfriend prepare to flee their sordid life. A lonely spinster pursues a pair of old bachelors. Mom-and-pop shopkeepers consider retiring. A hot chick plays with the bad boys, but ultimately opts for the honest lad with the honest job. And an old man gazes at the stars and remembers the happy times.
Theater Momentum is a weekly "laboratory" for improv-theater post-grads looking to hone their skills in a workshop setting. Their showcase, currently playing in the loft space of the Bailiwick Arts Center (where air-conditioning renders the room temperature bearable, if not precisely comfortable), is composed of two exercises in long-form improvisation: The first of these is titled "Jigsaw," and its goal to forge a story in mosaic - as opposed to linear - narrative, while the second, "Mixtape," takes its shape from a spontaneously crafted song-cycle.
His name is now synonymous with elephantine spectacles befitting - by Broadway standards, anyway - his classically-influenced compositions, so it's easy to forget that Andrew Lloyd Webber once wrote sweet-nothing ballads, too. And if his legacy had been restricted to the score of this one-woman musical, soliloquies like "Unexpected Song," "Nothing Like You've Ever Known" and the title song would assure his place on the cabaret circuit right next to Neil Diamond, Johnny Christopher and Amanda McBroom.
You see, there are these real estate agents, competing for business in a tight market, and the geezers are worried that the young hustlers are surpassing them in sales, putting their livelihoods in jeopardy - yes, it's Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet's 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning study of greed, testosterone and white-collar male behavior. The author was writing of his times, of course, but conditions in today's society - economic uncertainty, skepticism toward land as an investment, hostility toward West Asians - are not dissimilar to those a quarter-century past.
See additional Criticopia review(s) under A NIGHT OF BURLESQUE
(see Criticopia International listing under "Il Milione")
As if proving Jerome Savary's contention that today operettas equate with musical comedies, Trois Valses is structured like the latter and ends with music that's definitely modern. Tracing the romances of three sets of lovers ( the second and third pairs descendant from the original), the Acts take place in 1867, 1900 and 1937.
(see Criticopia International review under "Le Triomphe de l'amour")
Whoever thought David Mamet would write what we used to call a "matinee comedy"? True, November satirically ridicules U.S. presidents, their chief assistants, business leaders, liberals and minorities. But what Mamet makes centrally important is skewering them with jokes or sometimes hoisting these types on their own petards.
Next Act Theater offers an evening of gleeful fun in its production of 7 Stories. In fact, there are enough funny moments to disguise the fact that this play doesn't add up to much.
The play begins with a well-dressed man (known only as The Man) perched on the seventh-story ledge of an apartment building. He seems perplexed. What should he do jump or not? Suddenly, the building's tenants pop out of the windows above the ledge. (Those of a certain age will certainly think of the 1970's TV show "Laugh In.")
(see Criticopia review(s) under "Seven Stories")
Tracers is a classic play that hasn't lost its visceral impact and relevance. First conceived by John DiFusco in 1979 (ten years after his return from Viet Nam) and developed by a bunch of would-be actors who had also served in Nam, Tracers was first mounted in 1981 as a collaborative theater piece. There was no script per se, just six grunts taking the audience on a fragmented, hallucinatory journey through the Nam war.
What would happen if the brilliant young artist, Pablo Picasso, were to meet the brilliant theorist, Albert Einstein? This is one idea presented by playwright Steve Martin in his hilarious play, Picasso at the Lapin Agile. The year is 1904; the location is a legendary bar in Paris. While the audience watch the strange goings-on at the bar, we feel a part of the scene due to director Dana Case's staging. Often the actors are referring to the audience as just another visitor to the bar. Nice touch.
Side Show opened on Broadway on October 16, 1997 after 31 preview performances and closed on January 3, 1998 after 91 regular performances. Side Show opened at the Avo in Vista on October 11, 2006 for a run of only five performances. Avo holds just 382 people. That means fewer than 2,000 people on the west coast had a chance to see this brilliant production. What a shame!
What could be more appropriate for Milwaukee than a play titled, Moon Over the Brewery?. Well, Bruce Graham's gentle play does occasionally focus on the moon, but it has absolutely nothing to do with beer. The piece is set on the edge of a Pennsylvania coal town, where hometown girl Miriam Waszyk works as a waitress. In her spare time, she paints, sculpts and makes quilts. She's also a single mother raising her teenage daughter, Amanda.
The loopy sweetness and eccentricity of Marivaux's The Triumph Of Love may account for this 18th-Century comedy's recent popularity. Ignored here for more than two centuries, The Triumph of Love had its first English-language production in Canada and a movie with Mira Sorvino and Ben Kingsley, both in 2001. A Broadway musical version with Betty Buckley and F. Murray Abraham in 1997 followed the straight play to New York, after which there was a production in Central Park and many around the US.
Trevor Nunn reshuffles and re-energizes this cynical Trojan War romance, brilliantly crafting fresh vision and purpose by effectively manipulating cast and costumes, grafting a bold new message onto Shakespeare's inchoate anti war theme. With white actors playing all the invading Greeks and blacks playing all the Trojans -- except for the infamous Pandarus -- the tone of this production becomes progressively more anti-white as the Greeks become more barbarous and bestial. Not to mention anti-empire.
This is a play that notoriously defies categorization. It is as baffling a work as its author ever wrote -- and may well have baffled him as well as us. Not that he stinted on language: it is the third-longest play in the canon (after Hamlet and Richard III; and its enormous number of neologisms increase the difficulties facing an audience. Apart from Dryden's radical refashioning, Troilus And Cressida seems not to have been performed until our own century.
Here's an example of a production that gives as much to the play as vice-versa. In its English adaptation, Trois Versions de la Vie is called "Life x 3," but the original is more like "1 + 1/2 + 1/2." Not only is the first "version" the longest; it sets up the scene (home of astrophysicist Henri and wife Sonia) and basic situation: Hubert, a colleague influential in first-rank scientific publishing, and his wife Ines arrive for an invited supper a day early.
Mid-September traditionally sees a week of season premieres at Sofia Puppet Theater. This year, following a successful opening for We, The Blackbirds (see TotalTheater.com review in the Criticopia International section), the next day brought Tup-Tup. That is Bulgarian for the sound of heartbeats. The entire show is done in black light, with segments of pink tubing morphing from one shape to another to tell a story about love. A large pulsing heart turns into a floral offering for the girl.
(see Criticopia International review(s) under "Novecento")
By turns poignant, hilarious, true and painful, 2 Pianos, 4 Hands looks at what it takes to become a professional pianist. Shari Saunders & Karin Woolridge, performers whose acting skills are matched by their piano artistry, provide superb entertainment over the course of this 90-minute show, which calls on them to create a gallery of characters with little more than a light cue to aid each transition. When we first meet them, they are adults collaborating -- painfully -- on a Bach concerto.
Here's a funny play by a man better known for his brooding motion pictures. Though he never denied his Jewishness, Leigh just recently came out with it publicly, and Two Thousand Years examines aspects of modern Jewish life as experienced within one family which is somewhat like Leigh's own.
Any large city in Europe or North America could be the setting for Brad Fraser's Unidentified Human Remains And The True Nature of Love. His seven characters use clipped speech, and the short scenes effectively characterize the pace of contemporary urban life. Even more telling are their fragmented relationships that substitute for love and affection. Actor/waiter David (partially autobiographical on Fraser's part) yearns for something more than quick sex.
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