Radio Golf
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stiemke Theater

 It's generally agreed that Radio Golf is not the best work in August Wilson's 10-play cycle that chronicles American life as seen from Pittsburgh's Hill district, a place the playwright knew only too well. However, while viewing a production of Radio Golf by the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, one sadly is reminded that Wilson's last play is the final echo of a powerful theatrical voice.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Method Gun, The
Actors Theater of Louisville

Great idea, I thought, when I heard the Austin, Texas, collaborative called the Rude Mechs was bringing to the 34th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays a piece about an imaginary theatrical guru whose last project, before she left the country and never surfaced again, was a single performance of A Streetcar Named Desire that eliminated Blanche, Stanley, Stella and Mitch.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Through the Night
The Aubrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse

 Following up on his successful 2006 solo show Emergence-See!, writer/performer Daniel Beaty returns with Through the Night, a dramatic monologue about the tensions between African-American fathers and sons, husbands and wives. The dynamic Beaty impersonates a slew of contemporary characters, transitioning from one to the other in quick, seamless fashion, coming up with a distinctive voice each time. He also occasionally kicks out the stops with an impassioned burst of poetry or song (Beaty could make a living as a gospel singer if he so desired).

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Ten-Minute Plays (2010)
Actors Theater of Louisville

 "Ten-Minute Plays," a sort of icing on the cake that concludes each annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville, hit a finger-licking good home run at festival number 34 with the wordily titled "An Examination of the Whole Playwright/Actor Relationship Presented as Some Kind of Cop Show Parody."

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Heist!
Actors Theater of Louisville

 This wild, knockabout piece called Heist!, created for audience interaction in Louisville's unique 21C Museum Hotel, requires audience stamina as well for standing, walking, and trailing cast members through a labyrinthine plot. But it's a lot of fun, too.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Lascivious Something
Inside the Ford

 On an unnamed Greek island, Liza (Alina Phelan) arrives uninvited at the farmhouse (Broadway-quality set by Sibyl Wickersheimer) of her old boyfriend, August (Silas Weir Mitchell). August is married to Daphne, a beautiful Greek woman who is three months pregnant. The time is late summer, when the grapes are being harvested and turned into wine.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Two Trains Running
Geva Theater - Mainstage

 This strong, smart production is another step in Geva's entirely worthy program of presenting all of August Wilson's unparalleled ten-play cycle of dramas illustrating and defining the African-American experience of the 20th century. Like most of those plays, Two Trains Running is worthwhile and rewarding in its humor, music, conflict, historical revelations, poetry, anguish and insight.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
It's Your Mother!
The Boulevard Theater

 What's your reaction when you pick up the phone and the person on the other end says, "It's your mother." Frustration? Joy? Guilt? Curiosity? Anger? Your answer may well decide your own reaction to the Midwest premiere of It's Your Mother!,a new play by Patricia Durante and Betsy Tuxill produced by Milwaukee's Boulevard Theater. The play was first performed during the Summerfest 2009 series at Off-Off-Broadway's Manhattan Repertory Theater.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Managing Maxine
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

 The plot of Managing Maxine was supposedly suggested by a local couple's romance.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
There is Truth, Love is Real
The Flight Theater at the Complex

 Doug Oliphant has been a longtime fan of Give Up, the 2003 album put out by the electronic indie pop band, The Postal Service. "It's followed me through many journeys of my life, and it has been a dream of mine to make something of it for the stage," he writes in a program note.

In creating There is Truth, the youthful Oliphant (a 2009 graduate of Central Connecticut State University) assembled an equally young, committed cast who have worked diligently and deftly to turn Give Up's songs into a theater piece.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Game of Love and Chance, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Historic Asolo Theater

 In a most unusual (and wonderful) way comes a typical favorite 18th century plot of game-playing with mixed-up identities and social classes.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Survival Exercises
Elephant Space Theater

 A mixture of "The Office" (without the humor) and No Exit, Survival Exercise depicts four white-collar workers toiling for an unnamed product design company which is launching a "talking-house" project. Although Mason (Mark Sande) has been dumped by the company for being too old, he is still on the scene when the play opens, trying to organize a sales meeting. Helping (or is it betraying?) him is Sharon (Cheryl Bricker), a blonde, mini-skirted exec who once was his lover.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Sweetest Swing in Baseball, The
Broadway Theater Center - Cabot Theater

 Although the seasonal timing is perfect for a play about baseball, Rebecca Gilman's The Sweetest Swing in Baseball has little to do with America's favorite sport. Instead, it gets into the head of a well-known painter and explores how creativity can be stymied by commercialism.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, The
Dallas Children's Theater

Dallas Children's Theater opened the C.S. Lewis classic, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, adapted by Joseph Robinette, on March 19, 2010 at The Baker Theater. "Lion" is the second of seven books of Irish playwright Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia."

Rita Faye Smith
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Sondheim on Sondheim
Studio 54

 Sondheim on Sondheim is a beautifully done retrospective with Stephen Sondheim himself (on film) narrating, describing his adventures in the world of musical theater as he created some of the most memorable shows on Broadway. It's a fine piece of theatrical history in a concept that succeeds beyond what you might expect performed by a cast of good singers, including the gorgeous Vanessa Williams whose voice is warm and rich, the very solid Tom Wopat, and the wondrous Barbara Cook.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Noah's Arkansas
Wings Theater

Wide-Eyed Productions' Noah's Arkansas, by Jerrod Bogard, is a kitchen-sink drama about a low-level, angry working-class family,. They're classic, low-I.Q. trailer trash, with a feuding husband and wife (the vivid Justin Ness and Kristin Skye Hoffmann) and his borderline psychotic son (Michael Komala), the grandfather (Erik Frandsen), and moronic rural police (Bennett W. Harrel and Judy Merrick).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
King of the Desert, The
El Centro Theater

 "Yo soy." I am. To be able to make that simple statement, actor Rene Rivera had to embark on a long, stormy, soul-wrenching journey that began in a San Antonio barrio and ended up on a Broadway stage. Rivera has fashioned an impassioned one-man show out of his Mexican-American experiences, The King of the Desert.

Written by his wife Stacey Martino and directed by Valentino Ferreira (all three are Actors Studio stalwarts), Rivera's monologue dramatizes the various challenges, both professional and personal, that he has faced in his relatively young but quite unique life.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2010
Palomino
Kirk Douglas Theater

 David Cale, a solo-show specialist (A Likely Story, Lillian, etc), returns with a new performance piece, Palomino, whose subtitle could almost be "Confessions of A Male Hooker." Having once been cast in a film as the driver of a Central Park horse-drawn carriage, Cale researched the role by accompanying one of the cabbies on his nightly rounds. Now he has taken what he learned from that experience and turned it into a play which is, by turns, bawdy, sexy, poetic and poignant.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2010
Ice-Breaker, The
Reuben Cordova Theater

The Ice-Breaker, in its Los Angeles premiere at Theater 40, is David Rambo's two-hander about a reclusive, once-famous scientist, Dr Lawrence Blanchard (Robert Mackenzie) and his would-be disciple, Sonia Milan (Ashleigh Sumner), who shows up uninvited at his adobe in Arizona.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
May 2010
Hamlet
Alabama Shakespeare Festival - Festival Theater - Mainstage

 I've been told emphasis was placed on ASF's production of Hamlet being transportable to schools. So a traditional Shakespearian set (though with one staircase and one "arras" room at house left rather than center) and minimal brought-on props seem
serviceable in all respects. Important lighting sets time, place, mood. It also sometimes stands in for the Ghost of King Hamlet, casting on various levels a gangrenous green I found unfortunate. Missed was the chance to show the late King as a Hyperion to the Satyr of Anthony Cochrane's Claudius. He's thug-like from the get-go.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2010
Lettice and Lovage
Alabama Shakespeare Festival - Festival Theater - Mainstage

 All the world's a stage for Lettice Douffet, but her act as tour guide in a dull British Preservation Trust manor hasn't been appreciated by everyone. Though she wins over many an audience, Lettice (the equally winning Diana Van Fossen) isn't appreciated by purists and straight-laced listeners to her dramatically embellished versions of the House history. (We, on the other hand, find her tour de force tale-telling the height of Peter Shaffer's comedy.)

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
May 2010
As You Like It
Stratford Festival - Festival Theater

Living up to the title, Stratford Artistic Director Des McAnuff's opening-night production of Shakespeare's popular comedy had the audience exiting at its finale with pretty much universally happy grinning faces. Despite a glittering production with an almost overpoweringly talented cast who certainly let us know that this was the work of a truly great company on Stratford's Festival Theatre's world-renowned huge thrust-stage, the production was not free of little glitches, jarring elements, and moments that dragged.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2010
One Touch of Venus
Shaw Festival - Royal George Theater

Canada's great theater center, the Shaw Festival, produced a 2010 opening week of plays that virtually repeated the pattern of their 2009 season: starting with an expectedly sure-fire couple of standards that were worse than disappointing and ending the week with two tough shows that were triumphs. I should say that the current ones are triumphs.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
June 2010
Cirque du Soleil: Banana Shpeel

 see review(s) under "Banana Shpeel"

Unbuttoned
Lounge Theater

 Andreas Beckett's affecting performance piece, Unbuttoned, is confessional autobiography punctuated with bursts of song, dance and clowning. Beckett, an intense and charismatic actor, has led a tumultuous life.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
June 2010
Stoop Stories
Kirk Douglas Theater

 Until relatively recently, if a New York playwright wanted to bring to life the neighborhood in which he'd grown up, he'd create a storyline and put a large cast of characters into conflict within that specific arena. Think Street Scene, Elmer L. Rice's 1929 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, which was set in front of a brownstone tenement and featured thirty of its immigrant inhabitants, plus a policeman, medics, an ambulance-chasing shyster, an ice-man, an old-clothes man, and two students. The play had three acts, each of which was an hour long.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
July 2010
Wicked
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

At last count, more than 23 million people worldwide have seen Wicked, Broadway's long-running blockbuster musical. So now it's Milwaukee's turn to take a peek at this phenomenon.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
July 2010
Love Never Dies
Adelphi Theater

 Andrew Lloyd Webber's sequel to Phantom of the Opera is a mixture of brilliant and unengaging. Bob Crowley gives us a new dimension of design in his sets and costumes which are nothing less than breathtaking.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
July 2010
Oliver!
Theatre Royal - Drury Lane

 There is a wonderful production of Lionel Bart's Oliver! based on Sam Mendes original production running at the Theatre Royal- Drury Lane.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
July 2010
Enron
Noel Coward Theater

Enron, a play by Lucy Prebble about the ballooning and collapsing of the energy giant's thirty-billion dollar, fraudulent fiasco opened and closed quickly in New York, but it's been running successfully in London for some time. I guess it was more fun for the British to see that debacle than the Americans.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
July 2010
Fourplay
Boulevard Theater

 Boulevard Theater, the tiny theater space in Bay View, deserves a round of applause for producing an exquisite collection of short plays under the heading of Fourplay. The title could also refer to the term "foreplay," as these little gems share a romantic theme. The result is an excellent summer refreshment.

Fourplay opens the Boulevard's 25th season. Boulevard will produce four plays this season, each of which runs from five to seven weeks.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
July 2010
For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again
Stratford Festival - Tom Patterson Theater

 Something very special happened tonight: Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival presented the world premiere of French-Canadian dramatist Michel Trembley's For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again newly translated into English by Linda Gaboriau. I read new plays in manuscript and see many of all sorts each year, but I seldom see a truly beautiful play; this one is unforgettably beautiful.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
August 2010
Terrible Tales of the Midnight Chorus, The
Bedlam Theater

 Edward Wren and Claire Harvey have been called "the king and queen of Fringe whimsy," thanks to the much-praised shows their River People Company presented in recent years at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The two, who met in 2005 while performing in a student play at Winchester University, founded RP soon after with the help of a small group of young performers and musicians who shared their interest in puppet theater.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 2010
Side Man
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

 Full of insights and information, this literate play of substance, beautifully acted, directed, and set, typifies what makes the Banyan so special. Its title character also reflects the company: a "Side Man" is one who can fill an artistic need (here musical, especially jazz, as Banyan does theatrical, particularly in summer), whether as backup, front, or in whatever role needs filling in an ensemble.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
August 2010
Jeeves Intervenes
Milwaukee Chamber Theater

 What real-life celebrity wouldn't be proud to claim the success reached by P.G. Wodehouse's fictional character, Jeeves? This impeccable English valet has triumphed in basically every medium, including film, TV (including the relatively recent "Jeeves and Wooster" series starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie of "House" fame), books and the stage (the 2001 Broadway musical "Jeeves," with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber).

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
August 2010
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Stratford Festival - Studio Theater

 This lively, fairly fast-paced production has some appealing performances and a number of attractive visual effects, but director Gabouri's imposition of a "vaudeville" motif hasn't the intellectual underpinning to make any sense. The silent-screen physical-comedy look of the interpolated slapstick doesn't connect with the conceit that Sylvia and her rejected suitor, Thurio, are performing a dreary Othello in a Victorian theater troupe. And the supposed gangsters who kidnap many of these leading characters in the woods are garbed and played in yet another style.

Herbert M. Simpson
Date Reviewed:
August 2010
Lidless
Upperbelly's Pasture

 Lidless, the powerful new play by Asian-American playwright Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, is aptly titled, if only because it lifts the lid on the dark-festering wounds left by the crimes committed by the USA at its Guantanamo Bay prison. Cowhig's work, which packs enough action into its 70-minute timeframe to make for two full-length dramas, crackles with intensity and conflict from start to finish. It is also a complex play which digs deep into character and situation, making the audience think as much as it feels.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 2010
Imagine Toi
Assembly

 Fresh from triumphs in Cirque Du Soleil's Saltimbanco and one-man shows in Paris and Sydney, Julien Cotterau is continuing to wow audiences at the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Imagine Toi features the slender, youthful, hard-working mime in an ideal setting - a spacious tent on the grounds of Prices St. Gardens, with the famed Edinburgh castle looking down from on high.

Mavis Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 2010
Dream Man
Theater 3

 Dream Man, James Carroll Pickett's raw, profanely beautiful solo drama about love gone bad, returns to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival after an absence of 22 years. The play was a Fringe hit in 1988 thanks Michael Kearns' riveting performance as Christopher, the self-styled sex-call-in king who boasts, "Give me a phone and five-and-a-half minutes, I will deliver heaven on earth. It is prime time; I am the best there is."

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 2010
Reykjavik
The Bongo Club

 Reykjavik, the hallucinatory physical theatre piece conceived, written and performed by Jonathan Young, bills itself as "a journey through the architecture of memory." The play's program also contains an essay from the neuroscientist Dr. Hugo Spiers on the complexities and mysteries of memory ("when memory is recalled, the pattern of electrical activity is recreated in the network via a process called pattern completion.") Spiers also consulted with Young on the script.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
August 2010

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