Blue Room, The
Odyssey Theater

The Blue Room, David Hare's adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen (literal translation, square dance) is indeed a dance -- a dance of sex in our time. The two actors in the play -- the highly skilled (and gutsy) Christina Dow and Christian S. Anderson -- play a multiplicity of roles in different scenes that unfold with cinematic speed and brevity, all of them having to do with sexual encounters of one kind or another. Hare's text requires them to make love in a variety of ways, some times half-clothed, other times completely starkers.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Arsonists, The
Odyssey Theater

Swiss playwright Max Frisch's 1963 absurdist comedy, The Firebugs, gets a new translation and title by Alistair Beaton, a British playwright specializing in political satire. The Firebugs was set in 1950s Germany, but The Arsonists, we learn from the program, is set "somewhere in America -- or maybe Germany," and the time is described as "the 50s -- or maybe now."

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
All About Me: Dame Edna
Henry Miller's Theater

All About Me, written by Christopher Durang and Barry Humphries (aka Dame Edna), starring Michael Feinstein and the irrepressible Dame Edna, is a great entertainment as these two stars, wildly opposite in tone, give us, in essence, two shows. Feinstein is a handsome, sweet, charming man who can open up his chops and fill the theater with his rich melodic voice as he sings Gershwin and other classics. Edna is a full-camp, outrageous, great comedienne whose crisp quips skewer everything in sight.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Come Fly Away
Marquis Theater

Come Fly Away, Twyla Tharp's ballet-based new dance creation, with elements of ballroom, modern, jazz and acrobatics, is clean, precise and full of beautiful, fully-stretched, strong, limber bodies that take Adagio to its adagioesque limits. Tharp has access to the world's best dancers, and here are a bunch of them. With grace, fluidity and a bit of Cirque, each dancer is superb. Especially outstanding are Charlie Neshyba Hodges with the body of a slinky and a comic flair, and the captivating Karine Plantadit.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Andrews Brothers, The: The New `40s Musical
Golden Apple Dinner Theater

Using records, visuals, and pop song hits and music, Roger Bean creates new musicals that draw upon and re-create phases of the American experience. For The Andrews Brothers, he starts with excerpts of broadcasts and touring shows, mostly hosted by Bob Hope. After a film of Kate Smith introducing "God Bless America," action begins on a South Pacific base during World War II. Before going to battle, the troops are to get a USO show that will feature the Andrews Sisters.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Dearly Departed
Venice Theater - Mainstage

At his kitchen table, Bud (a "Big Daddy" of sorts) hears his sister, Marguerite, will be visiting to discuss religion with him. With a quiver, he promptly drops dead. The demise of this Dearly Departed results in his oddball family planning and attending his funeral services.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Predestined
TADA! Theater

Suzana Stankovic has a lithe, strong, sinuous body exquisite in several forms -- ballet, modern, jazz -but her innovative dance storytelling is unique. She creates mood and atmosphere with her taut, muscular, very feminine dance and acting, all with sexual overtones.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Seduction of Time, The
Theater for the New City

Lissa Moira's new creation, The Seduction of Time, is a fascinating mixture of text (by Moira performed by her and Zen Mansley), music (by the nimble-fingered Chris Wade- at the piano), song (by a chorus of fine singers) and dance (by five women and one man who plays Time - choreography by Patrick L. Salazar and Harmony Livingston). They all explore a personification of the mythic relationship between Nature and Time as they mate. It's a mystical trip - an engrossing adventure in a fantastic surreal world.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Phoenix
Barrow Group Studio Theater

Seth Barrish's style of directing his actors to be real and natural shines through in Phoenix by Scott Organ, a simply-plotted ninety-minute duo performed by the very attractive, very believable DeAnna Lenhart and Dusty Brown who are both able to convey subtle emotional changes and let deep feelings peek out. The interaction, some really cute banter, grows out of a past one-night-stand, and as the problem presented develops towards a solution, there are intellectual philosophical speculations and games as the two get to know each other and we get to know them.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Cirque du Soleil: Ovo
Grande Chapiteau

Ovo, Cirque Du Soleil's new show now running on Randall's Island, is a mixture of its theme, insects, and the gymnastic, acrobatic and circus extravaganza that makes it the most popular live entertainment in the world. It didn't engage me until the super skills started to appear: marvelous synchronized foot-juggling, a lovely rope dance, the best El Diablo (two sticks, a cord between them, and spinning tops that fly) that I have ever seen, and then a couple of first-rate clowns as bugs. There's also a bag dancer you'll have to see to believe.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Addams Family, The
Lunt-Fontanne Theater

The Addams Family, with a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, is an absurdist musical with a moribund conceit performed by two superstars (Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth) a few subsidiary stars (Kevin Chamberlin, Krysta Rodrigues, Jackie Hoffman, Terrence Mann and Carolee Carmello) and a high-steppin' chorus of ghosts.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
La Cage aux Folles
Longacre Theater

The revival of La Cage aux Folles, book by Harvey Fierstein, music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, starring Kelsey Grammer and Douglas Hodge, now on Broadway, is the epitome of Camp, with very little reality (until the end). Hodge is a great performer, but seems to be mocking the feminine character he is playing rather than being it. That he's lots of fun and a super mugger with great charisma nevertheless undercuts the real sentiment in most of the play. He is a great transvestite, a first-rate farceur, but almost never becomes a person.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
American Idiot
St. James Theater

American Idiot, music by Green Day, lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong, book by Armstrong and the director Michael Mayer, is an In-Your-Face (and Ears and Eyes) rock musical with an undercurrent of anger and rebellion. Though filled with references like The War now going on, it's fairly non-specific. The loose-limbed casual dancing seems to be singers dancing rather than dancers singing as it stays within the context of inept youth rebelling. The melodies are simplistic to a simple beat. I know, I know, they sold millions of albums.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Dying City
American Heritage Center for the Arts

At the start of Dying City, Manhattan war widow Kelly gets an unexpected visit -- during primetime TV viewing -- from the twin brother of her late husband, who died in Iraq just over a year ago. It's unexpected in several ways. For one, the visitor, Peter, is supposed to be onstage playing Eugene O'Neill stand-in Edmond in Long Day's Journey into Night, but he walked out at intermission. For another, Kelly has been avoiding all contact with Peter since the funeral of her husband, Craig, even skipping the play that opened six months ago.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Noelle McGrath Entertains!
Laurie Beechman Theater

I caught Noelle McGrath's cabaret show at the Laurie Beecham Theater downstairs from the West Bank Café. She's a warm, outgoing singer with a rich musical voice underlining a wry sense of humor. Her Bea Lilly impression doing Noel Coward is vividly comic. There is a terrific rendition of Randy Newman's "Sail Away," some Tom Lehrer, a lovely Irish ballad filled with nostalgia for the "Old Sod" and Kurt Weill's dramatic resonance.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
April 2010
Plus 30 NYC
Center Stage NY

The Red Fern Theater Company had an interesting fancy: plays that show how New York City might be in 30 years. They presents seven of them, each engaging in its own way, in +30 NYC - thru March 21 at Center Stage. There is a diversity of depths in terms of believability and reality in the writing and acting from trying to be funny as in a sitcom to a sense of truth. Most of the actors are quite good, and all are enthusiastic. But with seven writers and six directors, what's missing is consistency of style in performance.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Yank!
St. Peter's Church

The shows that work like a charm aren't the only ones that stick in our minds. For the past week or so, I haven't been able to stop thinking about Yank!, the deeply moving but highly problematic musical by brothers Joseph and David Zellnik that's now playing at the York Theater after years of development and at least two previous productions, one as part of NYMF and the other by The Gallery Players of Brooklyn.

Michael Portantiere
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Behanding in Spokane, A
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater

Martin McDonagh is mad, poetic, outrageous, inflammatory, and sentimental as he pushes linguistic boundaries beyond Mamet in his A Behanding in Spokane, now on Broadway. Profanity splashes, sloshes and drips, inundating the stage with the crude images of lower class expression as a modern Diogenes , Christopher Walken, searches for the hand he lost forty-seven years ago. He is a perfect embodiment of McDonagh's irony, an actor with great subtlety in the nuances of his madness, which grows and amplifies into something beyond absurdity.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Cocktail Party, The
Beckett Theater

T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party is given a crackling-good presentation by The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) at the Beckett Theater on Theatre Row. How can this intellectual play, concerning commonplace domestic situations, written as poetry, crackle? With the fine cast, even the shallow banter at the beginning is intriguing and engaging as discussions become more complex in an ironic marital situation. There is a mystery, an exploration of psychiatric interpretation, descriptions and analysis of complex goals in life.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Cherry Sisters Revisited, The
Actors Theater of Louisville

They were real -- those five corn-fed Cherry Sisters -- and they were really (apparently unknowingly) awful as a popular late 1800s vaudeville act that people went to see to yell insults and throw fruits, vegetables and whatever they could hurl.

Playwright Dan O'Brien in his The Cherry Sisters Revisited, the seventh and final full-length play in the 34th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, set himself a difficult task in bringing to life those poor deluded untalented creatures.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
American Tract, An
Theatre Theater

In American Tract, single mom Anne Jackson (Darlene Bel Grayson), an African-American nurse, inherits a house from the white man she looked after for many years. Located in the planned community of Park Circle, the house is a world away from the inner-city projects she called home for many years. Park City seems like paradise--until she and her two kids, Jimmy (Preston Parker) and Rodney (Larry "Bam" Hall), come smack up against the hidden realities of life in the lilywhite suburbs.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Time Stands Still
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies is about the impact, physical and emotional, of the war in the Middle East on a couple and their relationship: a woman war photographer, the very strong and compelling Laura Linney, and a convincing writer/correspondent, Brian D'Arcy James. They're both terrific.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
When the Rain Stops Falling
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theter

When the Rain Stops Falling, by Australian writer Andrew Bovell, is a dreary jigsaw puzzle of a play about a family's history in Australia and England, jumping back and forth in time, with much thunder and rain (powerful sound by Fitz Patton). It's hard to tell where some of the pieces fit in this inter-generational, angst-ridden play filled with shadowy figures fading on and off the stage as the tricky double-turntable set by David Korins does slow or fast counter-turns (and sometimes the actors do nothing).

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Come Fly Away
Marquis Theater

The title says it best. In Come Fly Away, the new musical conceived, choreographed and directed by Twyla Tharp, set to the vocals of Frank Sinatra, the dancers are often aloft or soaring through the air. There's no dialogue, just an occasional word or phrase. What isn't expressed in dance is told through gesture and facial expression.

Elyse Trevers
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Equus
New Theater

Peter Shaffer's 1973 Equus is an overtly theatrical play right from the start that, at New Theater in South Florida, retains its ability to move an audience. Powering the production -- a gone-in-a-flash 2 hours and 45 minutes -- is the seemingly fearless performance of David Hemphill as a 17-year-old who has blinded with a hoof pick six horses at the stable where he worked weekends, and the arresting work of James Samuel Randolph as the psychiatrist who battles doubts about the concepts of healing and normalcy as he treats the teenager.

Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Yank!
St. Peter's Church

It goes without saying (though I will say it) that gays in the military makes a timely topic for a musical. Yank! portrays two World War II era gay soldiers: the boyish Stu (Bobby Steggert), uncomfortable amid military machismo; and Mitch (Ivan Hernandez), the all-American who's more sensitive than your average soldier. Stu will learn to adapt and find a not-so-secret gay enclave in the army, while Mitch remains closeted.

Elyse Trevers
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Looped
Lyceum Theater

Looped, by Matthew Lombardo, is an invented take on Tallulah Bankhead - a made-up situation in which the actress has to loop (repeat on tape) one line from her final movie, and it takes two hours filled with comic invention based on characteristics and foibles of the star.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
March 2010
Dual Citizens
Odyssey Theater

Dual Citizens is the umbrella title for two separate monologues, Look, What I Don't Understand and Broken Nails: A Marlene Dietrich Dialogue. The former features Anthony Nikolchev, the American-born son of a Bulgarian emigre whose experiences as a political refugee have inspired Look Spanning the years 1944-1969, the play opens with a man (Nikolchev) staring out at the audience from the confines of a cage which ingeniously symbolizes all the jails and camps he has spent time in while attempting to make his way to freedom.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2010
Good Ol' Girls
Harold & Miriam Steinberg Center

Randal Myler gives good country, and the new show he directed, Good Ol' Girls, starts as a lively, jumpin' Country-Western romp with five dynamic women singers: Lauren Kennedy, Teri Ralston, Gina Stewart, Liza Vann, the sparkling Sally Mayes, and a zippy, four-member backup band. They're all full of spirit, and the clever, flavorful songs by Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman are an entertaining glance at Southern life. It's a feel-good show performed by a terrific ensemble of professionals.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
February 2010
Curtains
Riverside Theater

Curtains aims, in the words of a popular old commercial, to "double your pleasure, double your fun." Same goes for Manatee Players. They succeed, for the most part, in entertaining with a tune-filled musical while hooking you on its backstage murder mystery.

Though slighter than the top achievements of that major duo, Kander and Ebb, it may be their cutest. It certainly gains from the comic flair of Rupert Holmes who, after the deaths of lyricist Ebb and author Peter Stone, finished their twofold spoof.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2010
Fissures (lost and found)
Actors Theater of Louisvillie

All through Fissures (lost and found), Actors Theater of Louisville's cunningly crafted collaborative riff on how the mind works, I kept thinking how much Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and T. S. Eliot paved the way for it. This quick-moving, one-hour piece, conceived by artists from the no-longer-operating Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis and the same area's Workhaus Collective of nationally recognized playwrights, is the second of seven full-length and four 10-minute plays in the 34th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays.

Charles Whaley
Date Reviewed:
February 2010
Dreamgirls
Marcus Center for the Performing Arts: Todd Wehr Theater

For new audiences and old faithfuls alike, the current national tour of Dreamgirls is well worth a look. This 29-year-old musical, which won six Tony Awards in 1981, has a new snap, a new look and a new song to complement an already terrific show.

Despite its elaborate lighting, sets and costumes, the strength of Dreamgirls lies almost completely on the sequined backs of the three actresses who play an up-and-coming 1960s singing group called "The Dreams." (This is a thinly disguised plot based on the real-life Supremes.)

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2010
11, September
Odyssey Theatre Ensemble

Playwright Paul Kampf also acts (with Liz Rebert) in 11, September, a two-hander about 1) the role of fate and coincidence in life; 2) the tendency of the human race to bury and ignore unpleasant truths; and 3) the impact of bombings and terror on our fragile psyches. Kampf packs all that and more into his strange, dark but compelling drama, which takes place in 2009 in a Brooklyn apartment and, briefly, at an NYU lecture hall.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2010
Blackbird
Broadway Theater Center - Studio Theater

Blackbird, a Renaissance Theaterworks production, is a tale of forbidden love and human frailty. It is brilliantly scripted by playwright David Harrower and directed by Suzan Fete. The play's only two characters, a man and a woman, unexpectedly meet 15 years after their affair. The woman, only 12 at the time of their sexual encounter, is now a seemingly full-fledged adult. The much-older man, who served a several-year prison sentence for sexual abuse, started life over.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
January 2010
bobrauschenbergamerica
Inside the Ford

 Disappointed best describes my response to bobrauschenbergamerica, the much-praised theater collage by Charles L. Mee. First introduced at the 2001 Humana Festival, then remounted by Anne Bogart's SITI company in New York (and toured afterwards), the play has finally made it to L.A. in a Spyant production at Inside the Ford, the 87-seat venue supported by various local and national arts commissions.

With Bart DeLorenzo directing a skilled and spirited 10-person cast, I expected to be moved by Mee's play; instead I was merely titillated.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
January 2010
Race
Ethel Barrymore Theater

David Mamet is a writer with snap and bite (and sometimes crackle and pop), and this time, his fangs grab the legal process by the throat as a rich white man (Richard Thomas) is accused of raping a black woman. With a powerful microscope, Mamet lays arguments out there blatantly, magnifying everything as an experienced, cynical lawyer team, white James Spader and black David Alan Grier, aided by the young, beautiful new lawyer Kerry Washington, figure out whether or not and how they might defend Thomas.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2010
Venus in Fur
Classic Stage Company

David Ives' Venus in Fur gives us an interesting theatrical contrapuntal duel between an actress and a writer. It requires a suspension of disbelief from the start but works dramatically. As one who has auditioned thousands, I can tell you that in reality, if an extravagantly flummoxed actress came in late for an audition, and insisted on being seen, in the interest of getting rid of such a neurotic personality, I'd let her do her two minute monologue, or read two pages of my script, say "Thank you very much," and usher her out.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2010
Zero Hour
St. Clement's

Jim Brochu's one man show Zero Hour brings to startlingly vivid life one of America's greatest comedians, Zero Mostel. He captures the essence, the moves, the voice, the persona of the first Tevya, the first "producer," and other spectacular performances by this unforgettable character. Years ago, I saw Zero himself turn into a Rhinoceros in Ianesco's play, and Brochu gives us a taste of that.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2010
Duet for Solo Voice
Theater for the New City

David Scott Milton's Duet for Solo Voice gives us a splash of 1970s-style absurdist theater. A schizophrenic night manager of a hotel deals with imaginary dangers while the hotel residents moan, howl and screw in the background, as he dances to their rhythms.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2010
Fela!
Eugene O'Neill Theater

Fela, the Broadway musical about the Nigerian singer and political activist Fela Kuti, directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, is based on America's classic Big Band music, infused with African and other beats from an eclectic, world-wide exploration that Fela did in the 70's.

Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed:
January 2010

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